Shoot two portals -- enter through one, exit through the other. That’s the main principle of the Portal franchise, and that mockingly simple premise defies the incredibly complex game mechanics in Valve’s second outing with the Portal gun. Plus, this time around you can add motion-detecting turrets, tractor beams, some “thermal discouragement beams” (AKA lasers) bridges made of light, and gels that affect your momentum, jump height, and portal placement to the mix. That’s Portal 2.

These are the "thermal discouragement beams."

The new features are doled out slowly at first, but the multitudes of uses for each new feature means they’re always difficult to master. Up until the very last level, you’ll still be discovering how air vents can be used as weapons and how propulsion gel can help you run up walls. Eventually, you’ll understand the core of the game so thoroughly that passersby will watch in awe as you breeze past seemingly impossible tasks. Still, for every moment you feel like a space-altering genius, there’s a moment that will turn you into a hopeless child trying to push square pegs through round holes. Be warned: Portal 2 is much, much harder than its predecessor. 

It’s also much more interesting, expanding upon the story and the settings of the first. You reprise your role as Chell, the same Chell that was mercilessly subjected to the whims of an evil AI named GLaDOS in the original. You awake to find that not all is well in the Aperture Science Labs. In fact, something’s gone terribly wrong that might have destroyed the lab, killed off society as we know it, blah blah blah...oh, and GLaDOS is back.

Well, this is awkward.

It’s been years since your last encounter with the hysterical and horrible AI, but she hasn’t forgotten about how you “murdered her” in Portal. Bad news begets worse news as you realize your only hope for survival lies with an AI core named Wheatley who’s about as sharp as a potato.  Luckily, his first misstep leads you right to your beloved Portal gun. A hilarious and fantastically voice-acted story then ensues.

Meet Wheatley.

The campaign took us just north of eight hours to complete, but playtime will vary greatly depending on each your capacity for puzzle solving. And no, you won’t be spending all eight hours in drab medical white labs. As the story progresses, so will your surroundings, which range from 1950s testing facilities to the dilapidated outdoors. That's big news for anyone who found the first Portal’s bleached-lab setting a little too drab.

But the biggest news of all is certainly Portal 2’s brand new co-op mode. The co-operative play allows for cross-platform gaming and offers two players almost 40 levels to learn to work together, which is barely enough -- closing bridges behind you, even at the expense of your teammate's life -- is perfect evil fun. If you thought managing two portals in the campaign was difficult, wait until you have to manage another person (who has two additional portals). 

One robot shoots orange and red portals, the other blue and purple.

Thanks to a handy highlighting feature, it’s easy to point out a specific item or area, so you’ll still be able to complete the most advanced puzzles without voice chat. This is where Portal 2 shines brightest; however, it’s also the only place we ran into an insurmountable glitch, a spot that crashed our iMac three times, but didn’t crash the PC version. Valve will likely fix this immediately, but being forced to beat a level on a Windows machine was a punishment not even GLaDOS would cause.

The bottom line. Very few gaming moments can compare to completing a particularly difficult Portal 2 puzzle. Whether you’ve played the original or not, the dialogue will have you laughing, the unsolved puzzles will leave you pulling your hair out, and the completed ones beaming like mad.