Essentially the perfect sequel - it expands the original experience in every direction to create a much more full-featured game while sacrificing nothing.
The understated writing of the 'story' is once again wonderful, but is now very explicitly a metatextual exploration of the director's complicated feelings about the original game's success and the necessity of a sequel. Not particularly well-trod ground for mainstream video games in 2005! That a game this good was essentially made under duress, and that the game itself is constantly pointing that out and making light of it only makes it that much more funny and intriguing.
But most importantly .......... guys ......... you can roll so much bigger in this one!!! Even having played it like ten times over the years, this STILL activates areas of my primitive game enjoyer brain that have been dormant since sometime in the arcade era. Pure, primordial gaming stuff in here.
The understated writing of the 'story' is once again wonderful, but is now very explicitly a metatextual exploration of the director's complicated feelings about the original game's success and the necessity of a sequel. Not particularly well-trod ground for mainstream video games in 2005! That a game this good was essentially made under duress, and that the game itself is constantly pointing that out and making light of it only makes it that much more funny and intriguing.
But most importantly .......... guys ......... you can roll so much bigger in this one!!! Even having played it like ten times over the years, this STILL activates areas of my primitive game enjoyer brain that have been dormant since sometime in the arcade era. Pure, primordial gaming stuff in here.