One, Two, Testing
The first official DLC for Portal 2 came out today. It’s a new Co-op campaign.
Now this kind of play is probably great fun, but I still haven’t managed to play the co-operative campaign that originally came with the game. Because, you know, you have to be organized enough to dovetail the windows in your packed social schedules and all that.
So I was kind of hoping for a new set of Valve-quality Portal 2 single-player maps.
It’s OK though, because instead the Internets sent me a new set of better-than-Valve-quality Portal 1 single-player maps: Try Anything Twice by HMW. I spent around four hours on Sunday playing through this masterpiece.
Try Anything Twice is very much to my tastes. There are no very tricky moves, and fairly few halfway tricky ones - instead it’s all about the puzzles. Said puzzles are very well-paced; I was consistently stretched but never got totally stuck.
There’s a nice central concept/conceit: you solve each of the five maps twice, the second time around with some minor changes to the situation which demand major changes to your solution.
The level architecture and engineering is beautiful, with chambers rearranging themselves like something out of, well, Portal 2.
Lastly there are a few new game mechanics with great art and execution. The element introduced for the second try of the last chamber gives rise to the most mind-bendingly enjoyable puzzles I’ve seen in any Portal context.
Better than any other Portal mod I’ve played. Download it.
