Rule quantity one in every of Backlog Membership: Work by means of your pile of unplayed video video games separately, and talk about them with different individuals. Rule quantity two of Backlog Membership: Do not discuss Backlog Membership.
Simply kidding! Inform everybody. Please.
This text is a part of our new experimental collection, Backlog Membership, the place we (Nintendo Life!) decide a sport that is prone to be on our listing of “video games we must always get round to taking part in”, after which we (NL + you!) spend the following month taking part in that sport. We’re lastly catching up with Portal 2…
Earlier than 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.
Earlier than 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 sport. There’s nonetheless an evil robotic woman, however now there’s additionally a spherical Stephen Service provider. There’s nonetheless a portal gun, but additionally some new mechanics, perhaps involving numerous forms of goo. There are nonetheless cubes, and turrets, and rooms filled with puzzles, though I wasn’t 100% certain in regards to 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 feel I ended up liking it much more than Portal the primary. Regardless that the unique sport laid the unbelievable, seminal, genre-defining tracks, Portal 2 builds on them in a means that solely Portal may, and that, for me, is what elevates it above the unique.
Think about, if you’ll, being tasked with making a follow-up to one of the universally beloved video games of all time. A sport that has grow to be considerably of a cultural monolith. A sport that has spawned numerous others, inspiring each mechanical puzzle twists and a technology of writers who need to create a villain even half as compelling as GLaDOS. I feel I’d simply give up my job and go into hiding. It is like attempting to make Citizen Kane 2. You’d need to be mad.
Fortunately, 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 enormous that got here earlier than it, Portal 2 takes the whole lot 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 accountable for the entire thing, and divulges the hitherto unseen human aspect 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. After which laughing at you for being silly. And fats.
However Portal 2’s humour is not simply constructed on insults. It is 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 really die, and eventually, about stopping a facility from exploding by defeating a mad-with-power fool savant AI with the assist of your former nemesis. It is absurd that you just’re locked in a cage of unending 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).
As soon as you’ve got arrange an absurd premise, together with a deranged villain or two, the whole lot is free sport. Absurdity makes an excellent canvas for comedy, as a result of it holds up a funhouse mirror to the actual world — it’s a warped reflection of basic truths, a approach to spotlight the madness of the issues we take without any consideration, like demise, work, mortality, and the pursuit of information. And what are you able to do, however snigger?
However better of all, Portal 2 by no means tries to be something however what it is. It’s sheer character improvement, with puzzles. It doesn’t try and channel Avengers-level dialogue, the place the whole lot should 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 must always have MORE writing.” I imply, sure, technically, it has extra writing, nevertheless it’s not bloated. All the things has a goal, 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 basically, actually likes house.
The purpose is that Portal 2’s writers understood one thing very important: Much less is extra. Giant swathes of Portal 2’s ranges are silent areas, with the occasional enter from Wheatley or GLaDOS if you resolve the puzzle. Examine that with some trendy video games, like Justin Roiland’s upcoming sport, Excessive On Life — a sport through which your gun can, and can, discuss to you, continuous — and you will realise how a lot that silence contributes. Jokes are funnier if you lower out all of the sub-par filler jokes, clearly, but additionally, that silence means that you can revel within the sport’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 strains of turrets as they get catapulted right into a fiery pit (“Nooooooo!” and “I did the whole lot you aaaaasked!”). Even the meta-narrative of the chapter titles and the achievements are designed to elicit amusing, 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 reduction to play a sport that trusts you. I am not going to go all “again in my day” right here, as a result of truthfully, early video games have been too imply with their tutorials, and the much less mentioned in regards to the obtuseness of point-and-click video games, the higher — however being trusted to be sensible makes you really feel sensible. Or… perhaps I am simply smarter than the moron orb. However no matter. I will take it.
What sport ought to we play from our backlog subsequent? Tell us within the feedback — we’re not doing a ballot this time! You get to choose! Additionally, inform us what your favorite little bit of Portal 2 is. Mine was house. Spaaaaaaaaace.
