Thanks @delenn13
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Yes. Cute T-Rex. XD.
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As someone who also didn’t like Portal, I can tell you it’s because it was billed as a puzzle game, but there were next to no parts that actually require the player to stop and think (and most of those were in postgame). Instead, most of the challenge comes from not being able to see everything and having to explore a bit (with the solution becoming obvious once you know what you have to work with), and the rest of the challenge coming from quick reflexes.
For example, Test Chamber 15 requires you to aim and shoot a portal onto the floor after you’ve been launched from another portal but before you land so that you maintain momentum and get launched over the wall. Figuring out you have to do that? Not hard; there’s even a picture in that room showing what you have to do. Actually getting the aim to be precise enough AND QUICK ENOUGH so you don’t just barely miss your portal and land on the floor, killing your momentum? Pretty darn hard for what’s supposed to be a puzzle game. Advanced Chamber 18 also makes you quickly shoot a portal after being launched, but you have to turn 90-degrees to the side instead of just aim down, because pointing the camera that way while in mid-launch is the only way you can see and hit the portal-compatible wall you need to shoot.
I feel like the game’s reputation is only because early adopters were Half-Life fans who either never played a puzzle game before, or who only played arbitrary point-and-click adventure games and just assumed all other puzzle games were that bad.
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I absolutely adore Portal 1 and 2 but that’s more so because of the story and Glados and because the cake is a lie, not particularly because the puzzling is so good or whatever.
also, you cannot minimize how innovative this game was though. There simply was nothing like it at the time gameplay wise either
how often does a game come along that plays rly well, has a great story/dialogue, and truly innovates with completely new gameplay elements?
I don’t see how it would be underserving of its reputation. But perhaps you felt that its reputation was purely based upon its puzzling elements while it’s actually so much more than just that.
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Sure I can! Just because something is unique doesn’t mean it’s good. If anything, the fact that most of the praise was just from its novelty and story (not how it stood on its own merits) is one of the most damning things you can say about the game.
Plenty of games revolutionized their genres while still being good games in their own right. Meanwhile, every single first-person puzzle game I’ve played has the same issue of crucial elements being blocked from view unnecessarily until you wander around a bit or happen to point the camera in the right direction at the right spot. Some “innovation” you’ve got there.
Responsive controls is a low bar, especially when divorced from level design and genre.
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Its novelty and story are part of how it stands on its own merits by pure definition. That is extremely rare in gaming and, again, cannot be understated nor minimized.
When I say “you” I mean in general, as in ‘it should not be minimized’, not you personally. You personally can minimize it all you want.
Again, a game forcing you to explore is a good thing as well imo, but you are free to disagree obviously.
Gameplay is not a low bar; it is, again, something where it does stand on its own merits. The gameplay is rly good and fluid. Expecting a minimum of skill from the player is not a bad thing. Of course it might not be for everyone, but not every game is for everyone.
I think in this case we’re just going to have to conclude that you indeed don’t feel that this game was deserving of all the praise that it got. The reason I responded is merely because this game is one of the few games I feel would be worth it actually putting some time in to explain why I think millions upon millions of ppl disagree with you in this case.
And that’s just fine. Opinions are personal.
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dang you guys are really going off on this portal thing huh…
i’ll start off with my own tangent… i am a fighting games n platformer kinda guy…
i suck at first person anything whatsoever…
but even ik portal is an amazing game… for all the things M00 stated n more…
its not for everyone i agree… no game is…
it doesn’t make the game any less amazing considering all it did for its time…
its a first person puzzler with skill being part of the solution…
the puzzles may have been easy for you but that would just mean your a smart cookie…
i struggled with it for sure sometime around getting the companion cube…
but idk how young i was when i first played this…
and dangnammit that cake WAS A LIE!!!
sorry sorry…
so the story goes… this game was a tech demo for this portal mechanic (this was that innovative mechanic m00 mentioned… 3d puzzling not so much)…
sometime in the making they decided lets add a story element with twist n turns this just made the player want to get through it cus the ai was hinting at some darker stuff for a bit…
that’s just icing on the cake… that’s STILL A LIE!!!
was this game perfect… no… but was it glitchy unfinished mess…
also no at least in my experience n my pc sucked at that time for sure…
i’ll use your logic here Imaynotbhere4long…
just because you dislike the game doesnt mean its bad…
it just means its not for you…
and thats ok…
just dont discredit it for what it is…
its a slap to the face to the devs and the people who enjoyed it…
i’ve played so many games and ive come across some real bad stinkers for sure…
in terms of polish, gameplay, story, just overall really BAD games…
but this one isnt one of those…
i mean have u played games like flatout 3, life of black tiger, even more recently “the day before”
when u say bad thats the kind of games i think about…
oh man i think i gots ptsd… specially that black tiger game since i grabbed it on ps4…
what was i thinking!?!?
sorry didnt mean to ramble but im very passionate about games…
heck everyone in this website is…
i dont intend to change your mind on the game… not my goal…
i just hope u can b considerate of others when bashing a game for not meeting your standards in that regard…
im pretty dumb so the later puzzles took me a bit of guessing…
shoot baba is you whooped my a** but i still loved that game…
anyway the ball is in your court… n ive be happy to discuss how a tech-demo turned game merit enough of a following to get its own sequel…
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Very respectfully explained @xxoonxx1 
Never played Portal myself, but would as it’s from another time.
Ooh and looking forward to the Switch freebies starting tomorrow. Kinda addicted to Primal Light rn. Or maybe I just like playing the Sandwormies! 
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My nephew mentioned to me years ago that I would love Portal. I had owned the physical disk for years before I finally took time to play it. I’m not drawn to puzzles too much, so it started out with me thinking “why did my nephew think I’d like this?”. By the time I finished it (and later Portal 2), the things that I liked (according to my memory), included:
-
The PHYSICS, using concepts (even at an intuitive level, though I’ve studied Physics) of the force of gravity and various forces that impact the momentum of mass, was a very favorite part to me in creating solutions via the addition of Portals to the equation (something we don’t get to “try” in real life).
-
The type, style, and quality of humor that occasionally makes appearances.
Now to create another pun for @xxoonxx1 - It is unusual for a game to discover both the “gravity” and the “humor” in situations. 
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I had a longer post written, but I think I can boil it down to this:
How am I supposed to figure out what games are for me if people keep misrepresenting them? Portal is advertised as a puzzle game, the positive reviews are saying it’s a puzzle game, and even some of y’all are still saying it’s a puzzle game! My issue isn’t that the game has exploration or skill requirements, but that these elements make up the vast majority of this so-called puzzle game, with the puzzle elements being very minor (if they’re even present at all). For comparison, Half-Life is similarly venerated, but it’s properly marketed as a first-person shooter, so I know I won’t like it. For another comparison, Baba Is You also has a unique core mechanic, but for all the game’s faults, it actually has a focus on puzzle-solving like it said it would.
I’m not discrediting Portal for what it is, I’m judging it based on the standards everyone told me it meets. You can argue that it’s an important/influential/good game all day, but it’s not a good puzzle game.
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I think the whole world agrees that it’s a puzzle game
It’s literally considered one of the best puzzle games of all time
I fear you’re gonna have to agree to disagree with Planet Earth on this one 
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Well, Steam tags are notoriously bad, so I tend to read a few reviews and get an idea of cons and pros, measure those against my previous gaming experience and go from there.
On a separate note, last night I read YouTube reviews of a movie and most were like: “it’s a waste of time”. Steam reviewers are harsh; YouTube commenters kinda insulting rather than critical. So, I watched Sand Sharks and it was dumb, the effects were awful and I loved it! XD
In the end, you have to experience stuff for yourself, no matter what the masses say. Some of the people be reasonable and trying to help, the others, well, should just starting making their own stuff 
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While it is not necessary for everyone to love Portal, I find it patently absurd to claim it is not a puzzle game, not a good game, and is somehow a twitch-reflexes game.
Portal is definitely a puzzle game. @M00 has this one pretty well covered. At some point you have to accept that if you have a very special definition of a word that nobody else uses, perhaps they aren’t the ones using the word wrong… Inconceivable, right? Perhaps the word does not mean what you think it means XD
A Steam rating of Overwhelmingly Positive for both a game and its sequel does not come easily. With a current total of 437,590 reviews across both Portals, 98% approval rating on both, that is about as close to objectively good as any agglomeration of opinions can be. Overwhelmingly Positive as a rating does not come to misrepresented games. You cannot get there with a good game that doesn’t bring in the type of people who will like it. You cannot get there with a bad game that is marketeered into the stratosphere. That kind of rating only comes from making a very good game AND representing it well. Obviously this ties into the point about it definitely being a puzzle game.
And finally, my wife loves these games. My wife, who had not played any FPS games. My wife, who in fact had to be shown how to hold her hand on a keyboard in the WASD configuration in order to play an FPS game, and who then went on to very happily play both games in the living room with no mouse and only the track pad on her laptop… this is not a twitch reflexes game. Part of the puzzle is figuring out how to position and orient yourself such that reflexes are not required.
So the game wasn’t for you; it didn’t push your buttons. That’s fine. Nobody would argue with that. No need to try to trash the game, though; not much traction to be found on that route.
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Folks have invented many different kinds of puzzles throughout the history of mankind. Based on my own concept of what can be called a puzzle, I would say that Portal notably includes puzzles (among other genres that it also encompasses). And, if someone were to invent a new type of puzzle in the future, that has never been seen before, it could also be assigned the term puzzle by a lot of folks, even if it could not be closely compared to any puzzle from the past. A common definition of the word puzzle is typically “Something, such as a game, toy, or problem, that requires ingenuity and often persistence in solving”. For me, Portal included those aspects, I had to try a number of things using my personal capacity of imagination, cleverness, etc, before I discovered various solutions to the Portal’s puzzles. Yes, I would say that the game is not “exclusively” puzzles, but I would guess that is also true for the vast majority of puzzle games, and I personally liked most (if not all) of the multiple aspects of Portal, including the puzzle aspects.
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tell me about it… arkham knight is still labeled under horror…
the objective in portal is literally figure out how to get to the next test via your portal gun n the environment provided while avoiding death…
doesn’t that on paper sound like a puzzle game…
b/c ik fighting games i’ll talk what ik… 2d fighting genre wasnt a thing before the 3d fighting kicked in
before that there was no need to call it a 2d fighter vs a 3d fighter or even a 2.5d platform fighter…
which is something like smash brothers… 3d models in 2d space + platforms…
puzzle genre are the same… so many sub-genres
mechanical puzzle, hidden object puzzle, jigsaw puzzles, cryptic puzzles, mazes, tile matching,
crosswords, riddles… etc
these are all sub genres or types of puzzles
exactly… not so much the first in this case but the 2nd definition…
trial an error my friend… sometimes u have to jump outside your comfort to find something u like…
2 examples for me…
1.) undertale… i was bugged n bugged until i said ok i have it i’ll play it…
freaking loved it… the game is so meta its crazy…
beat both genocide n pacifist run with pacifist being the hardest…
also that music freaking amazing…
2.) descenders… down hill procedurally generated rogue-like biking game…
this game is ridiculously fun… and of course has really good music to go with it…
i’ve recommended this game to friends n family that mostly play shooters… cod, fortnight, etc
for them to tell me nah not my cup of tea to…
yo i played it n it was badass…
i can spend a life time spouting games i enjoyed that are not widely known about…
but i picked 2 cus we aint got time for that…
oh scratch that i have one more puzzle related one u might enjoy if u dont already know about it…
3,) the return of the obra dinn
recommended by a friend n finished to completion…
the sheer task of uncovering what happened to the crew of this boat with still black n white frames and audio alone of the moment of someone’s death was overwhelming at first but piecing them all together n noticing every detail made me feel like a real detective n was the best mystery solving game ive ever played… (i’ve not played that many lol)
if anyone can recommend me another i’d b down…
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Sounds to me like you’d absolutely love Outer Wilds if you have not yet played it. If you have not then only look it up so far as to see whether your computer can run it. Just like with Obra Dinn, the whole point of the game is to uncover the mysteries and once that’s been spoiled you can never get that experience.
You might also really like The Sexy Brutale, also a game about uncovering a mystery but it’s a lot more puzzle aligned where you use knowledge uncovered through time loops to gain access further to areas and events in a mansion. It also has an absolutely amazing soundtrack.
Having now spent an hour listening to this soundtrack again I must revise my previous statement “absolutely amazing” simply does not cut it, it is sublime. It is also one of few and early examples of dynamic soundtracks that changes a lot depending on what’s going on in the game. Not that well represented in the static soundtrack outside the game of course, but there’s still a lot of cues I can pick up on that reminds me of events of the game even now almost 7 years after I played it.
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So beautifully put. 
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@Imaynotbehere4long
It sounds to me that you found the puzzle elements of Portal (a game from 2007) too easy. Thus you were left with the physics challenges, which you are not good at. And because of that, you didn’t enjoy it.
To add on to this. It’s figuring out which genres you like/dislike, which requires trial and error. Then figuring out out of those, what specific elements you like/dislike.
For example: I don’t do horror games. I kinda knew horror wasn’t my thing from movies, but gave Amnesia a try - traditional horror - and determined nope, no horror games. But what I didn’t know until trying Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is that extended to all horror genres with one singular exception. Which is if I get to kill said horror(s). (ex: Binding of Isaac, Killer is Dead, Left for Dead). Plague Tale: Innocence informed me that I needed to check the tags on anything that looks like it might have horror. I got blind-sided by that one since horror isn’t necessarily a focal point.
I think this is something similar to what you’ll need to do except instead of “none of unless”, it’ll be “all of unless”.
Even with that, occasionally you’ll pick up a game you were excited about, just to not enjoy it. I picked up Slipways during the winter sale because I generally like space exploration and it sounded fun. Except Slipways definition of exploration was different than I expected, and I ended up not enjoying the gameplay.
Anyway, just my two cents.
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