Did you know you can throw objects in Portal 2? You pretty much use your player camera as a cannon to fling objects by letting go of them while moving your view. This is not intended, so clever throws can just bypass or break some puzzles.

This quirk came up in a puzzle while playing co-op with a friend. We figured out a throw that would bypass the main part of the puzzle.

I’ve played the co-op campaign multiple times, but this time I was playing it with a friend who hadn’t. It took them a while to get used to thinking with four portals. I would hang back and let them take charge in solving the puzzles, since I’d obviously know how to solve them. Except…

The exit door is locked by a laser that’s high up. We’ll need to block the laser, but a barrier obstructs easy access to it.

This level, Funnel Drill, I didn’t remember how to solve, so the two of us were stumped together. After some co-op thinking, we had roughly narrowed down the flow of the problem. We needed to pass an object through that barrier to block a laser with it.

We played half-court basketball instead.

I help my friend throw a ball through a portal in a weird way that breaks the level

I had an exit portal facing the laser. As soon as the ball came out of it, I quickly sent out an excursion funnel right behind the ball, completely bypassing the need to carry it through the barrier.

We probably could have figured out the puzzle in the time it took us to get a successful throw.

Bonus video 🥏

I throw a disc like I’m playing ultimate with GLaDOS! It actually lands in the disc reader!

After a few tries, I throw a giant computer disc into a disc reader.