Teaching game mechanics too well

[Fanta Grape]

HAH! It's another Portal 2 thread! You can't escape them, fool! YOU CAN NEVER ESCAPE THEM! AND PORTALS ARE MADE OF PEOPLE!

Often at times a game won't explain its mechanics properly. I found this to be rather true in Persona 3 with ambiguous micromanagement and meta-game concepts that trouble many JRPG's, and I found it to be unfortunately true of many older games that had many things explained in text, via the instruction manual. On the other side of the spectrum, I think Portal may have been too good at teaching me the mechanics. I had immense difficulty with it at first and it took me quite a long time to understand how to play it properly. It's a creative idea and the fact that the game was 90% tutorial really helped with the final level. Skip ahead to Portal 2 and I had literally no trouble with it. I was never stuck for a long period of time and the only major problem was the reoccurring issue of trying to find a surface I could shoot onto. I found the game extremely easy, despite the fact that the early puzzles in the first game had me totally baffled.

Was Portal 2 easier or more difficult than the original?
Did this negatively affect the game?
Has this happened with any other game?
Is there an alternate solution?

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Although I will actually marry portal as soon as the law allows me I love it that much, I see your point.

While most games have a difficulty curve that increases over time, Portal is the other way around. I started off having literally no idea what I was doing and dying constantly, but once I'd got more or less half way through the test chambers and had figured out the meachanics, the game only got easier from there.

 

[GothmogII]

Noticed that in the story mode of P2. Most of the puzzles I didn't even have to think about and to be honest a good portion of the game felt like a long tutorial designed to get people back up to speed rather than necessarily being aimed at people who'd actually played the first game.

There were one or two that did genuinely challenge me, but those were few and far between.

The Co-Op was much better in this regard, mainly because I went in with the mindset of trying to solve them as one player and ended up stumping myself as a result. There were few of those where I could figure them out wholly on my own and I often needed my Co-Op partner's help, which is exactly how it should have been.

 

[Katana314]

Don't most RPGs have an inverse difficulty curve? For instance, in STALKER, most people will agree the beginning is one of the hardest parts, before you have awesome equipment.

Portal 2's issue, I would suggest, largely stems from just being too easy. The players pick up on the mechanics quickly, but then there's little room for challenge anymore.