Puzzle · 2011 · Valve · local · online
Portal 2
Two robots, two portal guns, one test chamber after another — and a computer doing its level best to turn you against each other.
What it is about
You get a portal gun, and with it physics stops being your problem. Two openings, blue and orange, connect two places in a room: go in through one and you come out of the other — carrying exactly the momentum you brought with you.
From that the game builds task after task: get cubes onto buttons, redirect lasers, fling yourself across chasms, use gels that make surfaces slippery or bouncy. There is no fighting — there is thinking, swearing, and then thinking again.
The co-op campaign is its own story with two robots and its own chambers. Both of you have a portal gun, so four openings at once — and most tasks require one of you to fling the other, catch them, or at the decisive moment simply leave them standing.
Our verdict for couples
Two robots, four portals, and a computer that takes every opportunity to hint that it considers the other one of you the weaker half. The puzzles are built so that neither of you can see both halves: one stands on the button and describes what happens, the other fires and cannot see it. The co-op campaign is a full one and stands on its own, it just is not the main campaign — and anyone who has played that alone first gets half the jokes in the first place. Over Remote Play one copy is enough, even if you are sitting in different cities.
Pros
- Puzzles are genuinely built for two
- Over Remote Play one copy covers distance too
- Runs on any machine
Cons
- The main campaign itself is solo
- PC only
Suitable from
Hobby
- Conflict potential
- Harmonious
- Cosiness
- Cosy
- When you can stop
- After 15 minutes
- How long it lasts
- 5–15 hours
What other co-op fans say
In the reviews the co-op campaign counts as a game in its own right, not an extra — several say it is substantial enough to pass for a second title, and some consider it the better half. Twenty hours for the story and co-op combined is a frequently quoted figure. You read practically nothing about arguments or frustration; the puzzles are built so that both of you are needed, and the reviews accordingly tell of solving things together rather than shouting at each other. The one recurring drawback is mundane: you need someone to play it with.
- “perfect single player campaign. somehow even better co-op mode. best co-op game ever.”
- “The story and co-op campaign took me about 20h to complete”
- “I just wish I had friends to play the multiplayer with”
Summarised by machine from 60 Steam reviews, not written by our editors. The quotes appear verbatim in those reviews.
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