Rule quantity certainly one of Backlog Club: Work by means of your pile of unplayed video video games one after the other, and focus on them with different individuals. Rule quantity two of Backlog Club: Don’t speak about Backlog Club.

Just kidding! Tell everybody. Please.

This article is a part of our new experimental sequence, Backlog Club, the place we (Nintendo Life!) decide a recreation that is more likely to be on our listing of “video games we should always get round to taking part in”, after which we (NL + you!) spend the subsequent month taking part in that recreation. We’re lastly catching up with Portal 2…

Before I performed Portal, I felt like I knew a lot of the plot simply from cultural osmosis. There’s an evil robotic woman, there is a gun that shoots holes, there is a dice that you just love, and there is cake, till there is not. I knew the writing was sharp and witty, and I knew there was a track on the finish. I performed Portal, and I used to be proper about all of the issues. Thanks, memes.

Before I performed Portal 2, I felt like I knew some of the plot from cultural osmosis, and a few of it from extrapolating from the primary recreation. There’s nonetheless an evil robotic woman, however now there’s additionally a spherical Stephen Merchant. There’s nonetheless a portal gun, but additionally some new mechanics, perhaps involving varied forms of goo. There are nonetheless cubes, and turrets, and rooms filled with puzzles, though I wasn’t 100% positive concerning the existence of cake this time (idiot me as soon as, and all that).

I completed Portal 2 this previous weekend — sorry for the month-long delay, by the best way! I used to be on an prolonged vacation — and I believe I ended up liking it much more than Portal the primary. Even although the unique recreation laid the unbelievable, seminal, genre-defining tracks, Portal 2 builds on them in a approach that solely Portal may, and that, for me, is what elevates it above the unique.

Imagine, if you’ll, being tasked with making a follow-up to some of the universally beloved video games of all time. A recreation that has grow to be considerably of a cultural monolith. A recreation that has spawned numerous others, inspiring each mechanical puzzle twists and a technology of writers who wish to create a villain even half as compelling as GLaDOS. I believe I might simply stop my job and go into hiding. It’s like attempting to make Citizen Kane 2. You’d should be mad.

Luckily, some individuals are mad, and they’re braver than I’m, as a result of that is how Portal 2 got here into existence.

Standing on the shoulders of the large that got here earlier than it, Portal 2 takes all the pieces you thought you knew about Aperture Science, units it on fireplace, and dances upon the ashes whereas calling you fats. It reduces its sensible villain to a literal vegetable, places a moron answerable for the entire thing, and divulges the hitherto unseen human facet to the “science” — the person who began all of it, his experiment-loving assistant, and the waves of check topics that got here earlier than you.

Its jokes depend on you having performed the primary one, and having arrange the animosity between you and the homicidal AI that’s now naught however a spud upon a spike. It depends on you being a trusting participant — one who is aware of how puzzles and video video games work — as a way to torture you by pulling away the rug. And then laughing at you for being silly. And fats.

But Portal 2’s humour is not simply constructed on insults. It’s constructed on absurdity. There are ever-mounting stakes — it was about wanting cake, then about escaping from a decaying manufacturing unit, then destroying your former nemesis who did not truly die, and at last, about stopping a facility from exploding by defeating a mad-with-power fool savant AI with the assist of your former nemesis. It’s absurd that you just’re locked in a cage of endless experiments, as a result of science. And it is absurd that the cage exists within the first place, all due to an increasingly-unhinged man with an excessive amount of cash and never sufficient foresight (though everyone knows these exist in spades).

Once you have arrange an absurd premise, together with a deranged villain or two, all the pieces is free recreation. Absurdity makes a fantastic canvas for comedy, as a result of it holds up a funhouse mirror to the true world — it’s a warped reflection of basic truths, a technique to spotlight the madness of the issues we take as a right, like dying, work, mortality, and the pursuit of information. And what are you able to do, however snort?

But better of all, Portal 2 by no means tries to be something however what it is. It is sheer character improvement, with puzzles. It doesn’t try to channel Avengers-level dialogue, the place all the pieces have to be a quip and nobody can ever show true feelings; nor does it take a look at the success of Portal’s writing and go, “ah! We ought to have MORE writing.” I imply, sure, technically, it has extra writing, however it’s not bloated. Everything has a objective, whether or not it is a setup for a later joke, foreshadowing, or simply extra perception into GLaDOS’ character. And typically, it is only a extended joke about an AI that actually, actually likes area.

The level is that Portal 2’s writers understood one thing important: Less is extra. Large swathes of Portal 2’s ranges are silent areas, with the occasional enter from Wheatley or GLaDOS if you resolve the puzzle. Compare that with some trendy video games, like Justin Roiland’s upcoming recreation, High On Life — a recreation during which your gun can, and can, discuss to you, continuous — and you may realise how a lot that silence contributes. Jokes are funnier if you reduce out all of the sub-par filler jokes, clearly, but additionally, that silence permits you to revel within the recreation’s absurdity with out feeling prefer it’s being shoved in your face.

Portal 2 trusts its gamers to be sensible sufficient to get a refined joke, or to note the environmental storytelling of its ludicrous office posters, or to take heed to the dialogue traces of turrets as they get catapulted right into a fiery pit (“Nooooooo!” and “I did all the pieces you aaaaasked!”). Even the meta-narrative of the chapter titles and the achievements are designed to elicit fun, just like the bit the place he says “that is the half the place I kill you” and the chapter title and achievement pop-up promptly agree.

And it is such a aid to play a recreation that trusts you. I’m not going to go all “again in my day” right here, as a result of actually, early video games had been too imply with their tutorials, and the much less mentioned concerning the obtuseness of point-and-click video games, the higher — however being trusted to be sensible makes you really feel sensible. Or… perhaps I’m simply smarter than the moron orb. But no matter. I’ll take it.

What recreation ought to we play from our backlog subsequent? Let us know within the feedback — we’re not doing a ballot this time! You get to select! Also, inform us what your favorite little bit of Portal 2 is. Mine was area. Spaaaaaaaaace.