Portal Puzzles by Valve

kotaku.com

65 points·3pt14159··8 comments

Wow to the puzzle solvers.

On a side note or two; I so loved this game. It was the first game in many many years that I actually played to the end. In hindsight I also like the fact that Valve has not oversold the (to be?) franchise. But now I am ready for a sequel. There is a cake!

Now, all I need is time to actually play it...

That was the beauty. Portal wasn't a huge time sink. The whole game could be completed in a few hours, but still had a great story and depth.

I think that says something about how games are being produced, versus how they should be. One hour of quality, memorable gaming beats the hell out of 52 hours of rat killing, herb collecting and princess escorting. Yet the budget of a game is directly proportional to the amount of content you have to put in, not its quality—the quality is inversely proportional to the amount of time allowed to deliver each piece (so it hurts doubly to have to produce more), and the experience level of the developers/writers/artists/etc (so it hurts triply, since more content = more burn-out = more churn = less experience on each new project.)

I love how they had to dial in to an old BBS. Valve never ceases to amaze me with their creativity.

They also made a fun puzzle/teaser when they rolled out the first Portal game:

http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=199757

Okay, I've had my surreal moment for the day. I was not expecting to see a thread I made four years ago when I clicked that link.

After completing Portal I've been looking for a similar-quality game for a while. Braid was decent, but I'm very excited about what Valve is cooking up with a Portal sequel.

I'm wishing for a multiplayer portal where I can eliminate others through clever portal usage.

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