For example, a map might have its floor replaced with acid, or turrets might be protected in cages to prevent you from knocking them over. These took existing puzzles and then tweaked them to make them harder. I'd also still like to see a return of the advanced mode puzzles that were a feature of Portal.

The same jokes, the same insults, the same everything over and over again, when all you really care about is getting through the puzzle as fast as possible. Even if you didn't grow tired of Wheatley's schtick during the regular single-player game, challenge mode-where you might replay the same test chamber several times in a row to hone your technique and improve your scores-cranks up the annoyance factor to a whole new level.

My interest in the mode was rather curtailed, however, because I could not make GLaDOS, Wheatley, or Cave Johnson shut up. In Challenge Mode, flags mark the finish line.Īny map can be played and replayed in challenge mode. If anything, the difficulty was a little uneven, with the hardest maps coming in the middle of the chapter.

It took a little while to get back into the Portal groove, but once we got into the swing of things, none of the puzzles presented much of a challenge. The test chambers are tied together with a loose storyline GLaDOS is under attack, and we have to vanquish the attacker.Ī leisurely playthrough of Art Therapy took my playing partner and me about 90 minutes. The chapter has nine different test chambers, using the full range of lasers, buttons, cubes, hard light, and so on. The art installations are, of course, test chambers, and the proper appreciation of GLaDOS's artwork often requires taking an acid bath or being dropped into a bottomless pit.

GLaDOS has created a series of art installations that Atlas and P-Body are invited to appreciate. The theme of the new chapter, 'Art Therapy,' is. The original game's co-op chapters were each themed after the gameplay elements they introduced: gels, excursion funnels, and so on, mirroring the way the single player game introduced one new element at a time. The first DLC for Portal 2, named Peer Review, has just been released, and it adds a fifth (or perhaps sixth, depending on how you count) chapter to the co-op campaign. It was smartly constructed, fun to play, and had more than its share of delightful moments, making good use of the extra complexities that a two person, four-portal world enabled. One of the great joys of Portal 2 was the co-op campaign.

Portal 2 coop levels