Welp, I think my decision for Game Of The Year 2011 just got a lot harder.

And before I go any further with this piece, let me say that this is not a review. I got the game late yesterday, and because of the schedule of my real job at the Post (ie; the one that pays the bills) I didn’t have a chance to dive in until last night.

I haven’t finished the game, I haven’t played co-op, and I didn’t want to rush the experience. So, fffff.

Again, this is not a review, but I did want to talk briefly about my experience so far and say point blank that it’s worthy of your dollars.

I also want to note that I’m playing the PS3 version of the game, and I friggin love the fact that I get a free copy of Portal 2 for my PC along with that purchase. Thank you, Valve.

For the uninitiated, Portal 2 is a first person shooter without shooting. Which is to say, you don’t send bullets flying on their way into any enemies (though some enemies will do that to you).

Instead, you use your portal gun to — you guessed it — open up portals (there are two flavors: a blue entrance and an orange exit) and use them to solve the puzzles that the wonderfully evil GlaDOS throws at you.

So, really, Portal is a physics-based Puzzle-Shooter.

I loved Portal, and I love Portal 2 as well.

I laughed more in the first ten minutes than I have in … man, I don’t even know. The entire game so far is brilliantly funny. The humor is dark, and impressively so. As such, I find it pitch perfect.

Here, in fact, is that first bit:

Credit obviously goes to Portal 2‘s writers, but — ye gods — I don’t know if the game would be quite this entertaining without Stephen Merchant as Wheatly.

One thing I will say is that the puzzles aren’t confounding me as much this time around as they did with the first Portal (I’m near the end of Chapter 4, myself) — I don’t know if this is because I’m already familiar with the mechanics or not.

Another point is that I’ve noticed the lack of challenge levels and that bums me out.

But, veering back into the positive, Portal 2 is fun as hell. I’m having an absolutely wonderful time with it.

I can’t wait to charge into the co-op.

And I’ll be posting more on Portal 2 as I make my way through it.

Perhaps the most important part of this ‘article’ (aka, Valve love letter) is the fact that the Yogscast guys are doing the co-op…

Carry on.