Just played this. I used Christmas as an excuse to play a new game for the first time in about two years. Woe is me.

Anyway, it's alright. A lot a more cinematic than the first one - at the expense of the puzzles being a hell of a lot simpler more hand-holdy, and correspondingly much less satisfying - so I don't know what crack the reviewers seem to be smoking when they are saying this is better than the first. It's a step back.

Still pretty good though, although the constant, endless cutesy monkeycheese humour really isn't as funny or clever as the scriptwriters think it is.

Bah humbug. 

I liked it okay, despite the Valveness of it all. But then, as is the case with puzzle games, I hit a puzzle I couldn't figure out so I stopped playing. I haven't looked up a solution because that is to me no different than not playing, as the solution is the game. But I have lots of other games to play. 

But it turned out the solution was always just a case of looking for that one spot-lit patch of white wall in the distance that you missed the first time. Not really a puzzle so much as a "look harder" exercise. 

I understand that the difficult puzzles in
Portal 2 were moved to the co-op side of things, where you'd at least have someone with you to bitch about them. The extent to which I had to apply cheats to get the game to render on my laptop means I never played the co-op mode myself... 

Especially if you try to get the achievements as well. 

I remember getting stuck a few times but the solution is always apparent ... once you see it. Valve does puzzles really well.