The funny thing for me is that, even in the first game, I was mostly being carried along by the writing. I thought GlaDOS was funny, and I wanted to hear more, so I gritted my teeth and got through the puzzles. I barely remember any of the puzzles from the first game.
Whereas, given that Portal 2 gives things a stronger sense of place than “puzzle room 7”, I can remember the puzzles a little more, even if mainly what I was being carried along by was the writing, again.
This is why I think I’ve bounced so hard off of all the Portal clones that game out over the years (Q.U.B.E. etc). They’re all stick and no carrot.
yeah, I had a similar experience. portal 2 has a great sense of “now apply what you’ve learned” so it’s more satisfying to me in that way. the whole thing with the gels kind of felt like a boondoggle though, beyond the moon paint. idk. I’m not trying to assert its objective superiority or anything. I just like it for what it is.
i loved that first portal despite the obnoxious virility of the theme song & the annoyingness of the die hard fanbase (later used for full effect during the popularity of Undertale). it was just barely difficult enough to make it feel satisfying when you solved a room but not long enough overall to feel like a slog. it was a tight, well-written, well designed experience with some fun little narrative trappings in the background. i haven’t picked it up in a while but i would still recommend it to people looking for novel first person games they haven’t played, even still.
the second one, though, a little harder to recommend. it’s much longer, more “jokey”, has some weird post-Bioshock underground level vibes at some point, but really neat paint-mechanics. i played it once, really enjoyed the time, but never felt like picking it up ever again. (i remember the co-op being great but don’t remember finishing.)
these lists basically just exist to annoy people like us and be the consensus opinion of 12 year olds/adults who are emotionally still 12 year old (after all i remember very dutifully reading EGM’s best games list from the late 90’s when i was 12) but i do wonder when we’ll get to an era where Nintendo doesn’t dominate these sorts of lists. or does 90’s Nintendo contain so much of a grip over the popular discourse around videogames that we will never be free?
one of the units for the class i’ve started teaching is that they have a design a couple short Portal 2 levels. i had not actually played Portal 2 before picking up the class so i got used to it by playing a bunch of random user levels i found. to this day i have still not actually played the campaign. the assignment was also supposed to be solo but i accidentally told them they could do co-op as well. so i did have a good time with my friend trying to figure out some incredibly inscrutable student levels (not their fault per se, some of them had never done any sort of level/puzzle design before). it is bizarre the sorts of things people will do when they don’t understand level or puzzle design at all.
90s Nintendo is going to shift from being the default golden era once all the people who grew up with the PS2 being their first console get into positions of authority.
TV Asahi broadcast their top 100 games of all time list which was the result of a survey of 50 000 people a few weeks ago and it gives us a glimpse into the future where 90s Nintendo just slowly gets replaced by 2010s Nintendo:
