Revisiting Portal 2 was not something I expected after running through the first Portal game in one shot. I first played Portal 2 a day after its release. A friend and I played through the entire coop campaign in a matter of hours. It seemed we were among the few who got through the coop campaign, as the forums were chock full of frustrations and various questions.
Considering that Portal 2 coop entirely depends on the quality of your partner, I could understand why some people had trouble, especially if you partnered up with a stranger through matchmaking (ugh, the trolling possibilities).
Shortly after we beat the coop campaign, I fired up the single player campaign and solved the first few puzzles. I then took a very long break.
My assessment of the game was that it was just another Portal game with gels and refractor cubes. Furthermore, I felt Portal 2 didn't take enough risks, didn't have enough secrets, and wasn't as shocking and revolutionary as the first game overall.
Fast forward 3 years later, I finally decided to beat Portal 2. I'm happy to admit my original assessment was wrong. I didn't give the game enough of a chance. Simply playing through coop was not enough to experience everything there was to offer. It turns out there were many secrets, most of which I didn't realize were secrets until I did an achievement run.
There were more mechanics than new gels and cubes. The story ended up being very good, closely tied to Greek mythos. Finally, the graphical fidelity looks pretty good as well. I upgraded from a GTX 460 to a GTX 670 and got a new 23" HDMI monitor during the three-year break. Needless to say, my experience was much better the second time around.
I was enjoying myself so much that I even ran through the single player challenge mode. And why not? it was basically select parts from the story with a portal and time counter. I didn't go too crazy but if I felt I could go faster with fewer portals I would do so.
I found that my stats from the portal and time challenges for every map across all 9 chapters were ahead of the curve. Well, ahead for the most part. I struggled in particular with one map that I'll discuss shortly. Here is a set of my performance curves on alternating records for a random map in each chapter:
Again, all but one of my maps are similar to this. I'm not here to shatter any records since I'm not particularly great with puzzles. However, I was happy to finish my maps in the same echelon as some of the elite.
Are you wondering what map I struggled with? That would be Three Gels in The Reunion chapter.
After spending hours on this map, I just wanted to finish it. I would have had much better numbers if I could get my bunny hop and air strafe acceleration down.
But that's okay. I was more than content with what I achieved. Now, all that's left to do is round up a few coop achievements, and I will 100% complete another excellent game!