As a bit of Dominos humor, it's alright. It's fun seeing the Noid and other Dominos characters have a wacky adventure. As a platformer, I think Yo! Noid 2 is only ok. The movement is a bit more stiff than I'd like, but the real issue is with the level design, which doesn't do a great job at directing players to the ideal path. There were many times when I just had no idea which direction I was supposed to be going, and I think the level design is a big part of that. At the very least, Yo! Noid II is very forgiving with its checkpoints, so even if the game is a bit obtuse, it never becomes tedious. It's a fun little fan project, and I think its worth running through if you want to see the game's humor, or want to see a bite sized platformer.

I played Portal once or twice over the years, but I admit to being enough out of the loop with what it was doing that I didn't really get the hype about it being an amazing or especially hilarious game. That I think put me at odds with the game, enough that I gave my last attempt back in 2016 or thereabouts after getting stuck on one of the puzzles.

For whatever reason, I gave this a bash the other day, seeking to play something relatively straightforward where I wouldn't have to be dealing with too many things. Admittedly a strange sentiment to hold considering what Portal asks of you, placing portals carefully to make your way around and solve puzzles, but you only have to worry about one puzzle at a time. The overall clean design means it's easy enough to figure out what and how you need to do things, though I admit that the later tests got quite tricky.

That final part of the game is a very nice change of pace, focusing purely on navigational puzzles, and there's some great visual design that creates a tangibly grotty, depressing monolith of machinery. In general the presentation's really good in that subdued fashion where you can sense something in the moment, like the ambient synth score by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky.

It's such a frequent thing to happen with these super well-regarded games, that I eventually come round to them on my own terms and find that they're pretty cool titles even if I don't love em like everybody else does. But that's not a bad thing, and that's pretty much what happened here with Portal. Cool little puzzler that I could comfortably play through, though I don't fancy trying those more difficult challenge rooms lol