Hello everyone, welcome to the Kotaku Game Club. Today will be our last meeting discussing Portal 2. After covering many aspects of the single-player experience in our last few meetings, today we'll be talking about the co-op missions, which offer a whole new set of surprises and challenges.
Since Portal 2's co-op contains some story elements, including its own ending, we must warn you once again that this discussion may include spoilers.
If you're a Game Club first-timer, here's a primer: Our goal at Kotaku Game Club is to experience games as a community, so we play a specific game each month, meeting each week in the Game Club's comments section to discuss our thoughts on a many aspects of the game, including its narrative and mechanical themes and our own responses to them.
Our meetings start at 4pm Eastern every Thursday, and last an hour or so. The Game Club is here to get everybody talking with each other, so don't be afraid to bring up any topic related to the game, speak your mind and start a dialogue with other posters.
Here's your question of the week: Does Portal 2's co-op effectively re-create the essence of the Portal experience?
One of the topics we've discussed in recent weeks was the nature of controlled experiences in gaming. Though they don't hold your hand, Valve uses clever puzzle and level design to ensure that everyone advances through the game the way they want. This allows for the subtle story cues and the hands-off teaching that define the series. Adding a second player dramatically reduces the efficacy of that type of design since the two players can (well, must) focus on each other as much as they do the level itself.
That's all, folks! Congratulations on completing another month of Kotaku Game Club! As always, there will be a thread below where you guys can let me know what game you'd like us to play next: We will most likely be going back to playing something current next month, so keep that in mind when coming up with ideas. We will make an announcement as soon as we choose what game to play next. Stay tuned and thanks for playing!