Portal Walkthrough
Test Chambers 11 Through 15
 Now
that you’ve past through the initial testing, things are going to start
heating up. You’ll notice as the tests progress that the solutions
become more difficult to achieve, take longer to execute and require
ever-increasing speed and reflexes, but hey, you came this far! In fact,
you’re already halfway through, sort of…
Test Chamber 11 – Shoot a portal on the wall and
wait until you see a floor you can walk on to on the other side, then
jump through and press the button waiting there. A door will slide open
on the other side. Shoot a new portal in that other room, and jump
through the orange portal when you can. When the orange portal is about
to be shot on the wall opposite the energy socket, shoot a new blue
portal where the energy ball scorch mark is in the room you’re in. After
it powers the lift, wait again until you can walk out on to it through
the portals. Ride it up to the new Aperture Science Handheld Portal
Device and you will now be able to shoot orange portals as well as blue
ones (with the right mouse button). Press the button on the platform and
shoot a portal in the new room that opens up above you, then ride the
platform back to the wall and shoot an alternate portal there to get
through and exit (but before you do you might as well have some fun
getting used to the new alternating portals you can shoot).
Test Chamber 12 – This is sort of a repeat of Test
Chamber 10, but this time you have total control of the portals
involved. Use momentum leaps (described in the previous chapter and
below) to get to the top of this chamber, where you will find a weighted
cube used to open the exit door. We’re going to safely assume that if
you’ve gotten this far, you can figure out the chamber by this simple
description on your own.
Strategy Tip: You can shoot portals as you fall,
meaning that you can create your own slingshot effect by falling out of
a portal and shooting the floor below you to create even more momentum,
or shooting at another area in midair that was previously unreachable.
This becomes an indispensible skill in later stages of the game.
Test Chamber 13 – Shoot a portal on the wall and
another up by the weighted cube on the second level. Grab the cube and
place it on the floor button, then go up to the second level to get into
the main chamber out the door. Shoot a portal on the ceiling above the
energy socket and a second on the scorch mark where the energy ball
bounces so it goes into the socket. Now create a portal on the ceiling
over the platform so you can get on to it and grab the weighted cube.
Bring it down to the floor, put it down for a moment and move the portal
in the ceiling to over the first platform of the room. Without even
going through it, you can drop the cube through the portal on the wall
and, if you positioned the ceiling portal correctly, it will fall and
land on the button. Move the ceiling portal again to over the second
platform and drop on to it yourself, then shoot a portal into the room
on the other side of the door that opens. Portal over there and you’re
done.
Test Chamber 14 – From the entrance take a left and
walk down the hall. Stairs will rise up as you approach. Shoot a portal
in the corner of the wall to your left opposite the weighted cube high
up on the pedestal. Turn back around, jump down where the stairs just
were and shoot an alternate portal in the floor to fly through so you
can pick up the cube. Carry it to the button in the middle of the
hallway. Go through the door at the other end of the hall and come
around to the second hall with the acid pit. Shoot a portal in the far
room with the bouncing energy ball, then one near yourself to walk
through. Place a new portal on the scorch mark and go back out to the
hall. There are two platforms that rise and fall into the acid with a
stationary platform in the middle. Wait for the two platforms to just
come up, then run and jump across them to the other side. Go back to the
main hall and shoot an alternate portal above the energy socket. The
ball will fly into it and you can use the lift in the middle of the main
hall for your exit.
Test Chamber 15 – As you can see, the tests are
starting to take longer to solve and are requiring more and more logic
and reflexes, and this chamber is the first particularly tough one,
divided into multiple rooms.
Room 1: Shoot two portals on the left wall,
one facing the energy shield and the other on the scorch mark. As soon
as the energy ball comes through, run through the shield and shoot a
portal over the energy socket and a second where the energy ball will
hit the wall. With proper timing the ball with loop around and land in
the socket. Take the lift to…
Room 2: To get over the screen, you need a
lot of momentum, but a lot of the floor is metal tile. Shoot one portal
aiming for the screen high up on the wall above you, then go off to the
side where you’ll find stairs and a pit. Shoot an alternate portal in
the pit and jump into it, then when you come flying out shoot the same
color onto the floor where you’ll land just before the screen, then
you’ll really gain speed and go shooting out over it into…
Room 3: Where you’ll use another momentum
leap to get over another screen where an energy ball bounces off an
angled side of concrete, against the wall and then back again. You want
to shoot the flat wall where it makes its second bounce with an
alternate portal on the exact opposite side of the room, so that the
ball will bounce off of the one angle, through the portal, then bounce
off the other angle and go toward the energy socket on the other side of
the screen. Once you do this create a portal at the top of the back
wall and an alternate below you, make sure you fall into the alternate
again or re-shoot it as you fall and you’ll slingshot back over the
screen where the platform hallway is now activated, but running
backwards. Shoot a portal at the end of the hall you can see and an
alternate on the wall beside you. When you see a platform go by get on
it and replace the hallway portal further down the hall around the
corner, then ride the platform back to the big room and repeat until you
reach…
Room 4: Here you find one of the more
frustrating puzzles of the game. At the top of the room are two chambers
on opposite sides with buttons, each controlling half of the gates
blocking the energy socket in the center back of the room. Both buttons
are timed, and one timer lasts longer than the other. Basically, you
need to move fast and trigger both buttons, and while the gates are
still open get the energy ball in the room to fly toward the socket. We
really can’t express exactly how to do this in precise words, but the
biggest hint we can give you is to hit the button marked with a "one”
symbol first (on the left side of the room from the entrance). This
puzzle is so dependent on timing and luck that some players actually
complete it without realizing how, thinking for a few moments they
screwed up and needed to try it yet again before seeing that the socket
is actually activated and they can leave.
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