New World Gaming: Portal 2 Puzzle Solving Feels Like Immersive Zen

I'm still engrossed in Portal 2, and here's what I think is amazing about the puzzles in the game, and its predecessor: How zen they are. At least for me, I can rarely solve a room test with conscious, A-B-C connective causal logic. Instead, I find it works better to clear my head and just experience the environment and interact with all its complexities in the moment, and suddenly, a solution just happens. Often there's not even a discrete "aha!" insight; instead, all of a sudden, I'm just doing the thing that solves it. (Say, plunging headfirst though a portal to trigger a complex set of events.) And just as often, I'm not even sure what I'm doing while I'm doing it is correct. It just happens.

To be sure, some of Portal 2's rooms are strictly solvable with linear or geometric logic -- particularly the ones with laser beams. In my experience, it seems the rooms that require the most zen* involve a lot of porting and leaping. I'll often try a port leap without consciously knowing what will happen, then realize after the fact it was exactly the right thing to do. It's a really profound, unique, and supremely sensation.

This speaks, I think, to the immersive quality of the Portal games: The graphics are so detailed and hyperrealistic, it's impossible to separate out all the individual facets of a puzzle room (where the cubes and buttons are, where you can plant portals, and so on.) Instead, in a very real sense, you need to be aware and present in the entire environment on an intuitive level. In Portal, often the best way to escape a room is to first be part of the room.

What's been your experience playing Portal 2 so far?

* I acknowledge I'm probably using the term "zen" in a loose popcult way that's likely to give Buddhists justifiable butthurt. I welcome their theological smackdowns in Comments!

Comments

[Adeon Writer]

So the tagline "Now you're thinking with Portals" can be up there with most of the other cryptic Zen sayings. :) Sweet.

That said - I hope you last to the end. It's a VERY large game, and it can get pretty hair-pully-outy toward the end, particular the climax but, preserver and the ending is is so jaw-droppingly awesome, it's totally worth the time and sweat.

I'm now running though the 2-Player component of the game with my SL-partner, which has it's own separate storyline and is very charming in it's own way... and crazy with 4 portals.

[Hamlet Au]

Wow, Adeon, I can't wait. I'm at the part where I escape from GLaDOS with the help of the little UK robot. (Or as I call him, "Ricky Gervais on a rail.")

[Talvin Muircastle]

His name is Wheatley.

And I just died for the first time in the climactic scene, because I ran out of time. Going to take a little fretting to get this just right. :)

[Coughran]

The Buudhist who would give you a "smackdown" is not truly practicing Zen.

[Az.]

Not to be rude, Hamlet, but how much time do you spend on gaming vis-a-vis other activities? As a habitual gamer, I found that Portal 2's rooms lent themselves very well to exactly the kind of analysis you describe, separating out all the elements (etc). And I don't even play first-person shooters (or puzzlers) most of the time.

In particular, one thing that stood out as different from the first game was that very often, especially in the early game, the only course of action is the correct one. If you're supposed to make an extremely long jump, the designers only place a very small portal-able launch surface, and only allow you to do the initial launch from a given height (by reducing the height variation in the room and using railings, etc.), such that it's virtually impossible to fail. I suppose this lends itself to the sort of "zen" experience that you describe... until the player realizes that they're being led around by the nose. Valve's designers are brilliant when it comes to this kind of psychological... well, trickery is probably too negative a word. Subliminal hints, perhaps.

The game does open up a bit in the later levels, though. Less handholding, which is nice.

[Hamlet Au]

"I suppose this lends itself to the sort of "zen" experience that you describe... until the player realizes that they're being led around by the nose."

Oh I know Valve is leading me by the nose -- or "gently nudging by the hip" is maybe a better way to put it -- but in the most zen levels, it doesn't feel that way. I actually think the later levels, after you (spoiler alert) escape the testing area, require more linear logic. After awhile I start automatically looking for the angled panel that should be inevitably portaled so I can make a big jump of some kind.