Have you played it and if so, what are your thoughts on it? To me, Portal is the best game to come out of 2007 and the shining star of the Orange box. It looks just like an 'ordinary' FPS yet is a blend of puzzle and action and adventure. The obstacles are neither too difficult nor too easy and there is a huge satisfaction to be gained from conquering a setion that had you stumped. The use of humour too is nicely done and GLaDOS is hilarious to listen too.

Portal can be finished in a night so it's a terrific slice of casual gaming. Also the physics and logic of some of the puzzles is effortlessly magical.

If ya haven't. you should try it.


I think that to many, the Orange Box was about EP2. To me, it was about Portal. All the other contents were secondary... The cake is a lie.

I loved it and so did most of my friends. It's one of those games even a non-gamer can get into and enjoy. I had a few friends over one night and I ended up showing it to one of my 'gamer' buds and next thing I know everyone is gathered around the monitor trying to solve the puzzles and wanting to sit in the 'drivers seat'. It was a lot of fun and we played well into the night.

The Orange Box to me was a collection of HL2 and it's episodes. Portal was like an epic gift inside the box!

When I got the Orange Box the first game I played was Portal. I played it twice.

The game is just brilliant in every regard. The design, the humor, the cake. I love the turrets too, almost was a shame to send them flying

...
Well...
It was average at best in my opinion... I don't know why it just was. After about 14 chambers I found myself struggling to continue, I just didn't have the drive to carry on. The game had so much hype and barely lived up to my lowest expectations.
But then I didn't really like Episode 2 all that much either... But that's for another thread...

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Veiled Duality

MNDF, you're the only person I know who doesn't think Portal is great.

I know. I'm the only person I know who doesn't love it too... :/

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Veiled Duality

I must admit, being a gaming idiot when it comes to puzzles i got very frustrated towards the end, but I didn't lose the drive to play because i wanted to find out more about this place I was confined to and hope to face-off to GLADOS.

As for the hype? I had only heard portal was a game n the Orange Box and only saw the trailer and being the trigger-happy FPS nut i am i expected it to be a puzzle game that would be a snack in my manly shoot-em-up game diet.
So yes portal did shock me as a game with a very interesting story that was simple on the surface but very deep when you paid close attention.

But I can relate, for Bioshock I went apeshit for when i was lining up to buy it at EB games after all this hype that was going on. The beggining ride was very good, felt like one of those amusement park rides in a sense, and the first part of the game had a nice little Half-Life reference.

And yet after playing I got bored, to put it.. it was too easy. You had a big fat arrow pointing you towards every single goal and when you needed to collect items to fix whatever went wrong on your journy the arrow suddenly dissapears leaving you clueless. But the story was fairly good and the twist ending was very clever when you look back on it, but it was a bit weak when you had to replay the entire game again to get the "good" ending, since you got the evil satanic bad-man ending since you only harvested 1 or 2 little sisters.

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