Portal is a classic game that changed the industry forever. I played Portal 2 years before but the original game was in my backlog since its release. A few weeks ago, I turned on my PS3 after so many years and finally gave it a chance.

When you play this game on the PS3 you see how old it is. The loading screens take forever to finish and the gameplay looks kind of old. Even with all that, you can have a lot of fun and the puzzles are still very good.

Portal 2 improved everything designed in this one but this doesn't make Portal bad.

The game is really short but it's incredible how the story and the gameplay are really good.

If you have the chance to play Portal, play Portal. It's a short game that you'll have a lot of fun and see how the industry used a lot of things designed for it.

Finally got around to playing this. For some reason I played Portal 2 when it came out and just never got around to Portal Sr. Having prior knowledge of how to do the puzzles because of this made Portal 1 quite the breeze to get through and that’s really the only issue that I think it has.

It relies a lot more on environmental storytelling rather than any actual plot progression. It exists more just to set up the small world and act as a bit of a demo slice for its fun portally puzzle physics. The turrets are very silly and GLaDOS carries a lot of the runtime with sarcastic humor that kind of distracts you from how ominous the circumstances surrounding your character actually are.

It’s the kind of puzzle mechanics that itch your brain like giving scritches to your pet cat. Made me feel like I was both overthinking and also not thinking hard enough at the same time in some areas. There was one where I couldn’t figure it out immediately so I tried to loop myself between portals infinitely for fun, just to find out that that was the solution all along. So even while the rooms feel like you’re locked between padded walls, it really gives you just enough to play around with until you’re able to solve the problems. If anything I wished it was a bit longer or that the advanced puzzles were different levels. They’re really just the same maps just with harder obstacles like poop floors and more turrets.

Portal is Portal and Portal is very fun. I would say that Portal 2 is the better game, but that’s mainly because it’s just larger in scale, has co-op, and extends the universe created here. You have to start somewhere though and Portal 1 is the perfect sprout to a beautiful gigantic beanstalk.

So...portal.

It's pretty good, I guess.

I went in knowing about portal based puzzles, a funny robot lady, and cubes. Not confectionery though, because the confectionery is a falsehood or however that line goes.

First off, the puzzles. Mostly pretty good, with all being interesting takes on the portal mechanics that make you think until you figure out a task that looks daunting at first. What I didn't like were the momentum based puzzles, because I swear the portals are smaller than they seem, as I was pretty consistently falling just short of the portal and having to redo a section of the puzzle. That one puzzle at the end of chapter 18 where you had to chain portals onto platforms in particular I hated doing. Like its a reaction test that barely qualifies as a puzzle, just put some damn stairs there. Granted, I don't play a lot of first person games so maybe it's a me thing? But anyway, all the puzzles that didn't require quick movement or reaction times were great, the ones that did were ehhhhhhh.

Next up, glados. Funny robot girlboss. And yeah, the humour was also pretty good. I get that I exist in a world of internet humour that portal played a big part in establishing when it came out that probably would have been the funniest game ever in 2007, so most of the lines early on were just me thinking 'yeah, that was funny' with a few audible chuckles later on at lines like android hell and near the end where you break everything and she keeps panicking over what's going on.

And I might as well mention the ending. Pretty good as well. Final sequence had the same frustrations I mentioned in the puzzle part but the general vibe of the broken facility and connection to half-life (which probably would have blown my mind if I had played half-life) was great.

Also yeah, the cubes were cool. Top tier cubes in gaming, just under the square Tetris block.

So overall... it's pretty good. All I have to say. I can imagine it being pretty mind blowing for what was basically meant to be a small side project for the half-life team that became a global phenomenon, but this game turns 17 this year, so I guess it passed me by? But 2 is the one everyone hypes up, so I guess I'll be trying that next.

Absolutely impossible to look at.

It's such an intricately designed puzzle game that's perfectly minimalist and strongly effective, but now every time I try to coalesce my thoughts on it it's through several veils of a culture storm that came in its wake, inspirations for good and a lot of bad, and just complete overexposure.

Truly one of the most revolutionary bits of art I can think of, as it has somehow become high end performance art in making twisted meme simulacras of itself. Pretty much the best of a 'post-mortem' I can make on it, because any attempt at a replay generates not a single emotion from my body. It's alright I guess.

I hope the next generations don't somehow "rediscover" this game, call me a boomer but I don't need anymore of this in my life.

alright i’m gonna do a cake joke are you ready here goes

i want a girl with a short skirt and a looooooooooooong meme shelf life

how was that was that anything

i’m still workshopping it

Before playing it, I was wondering if it is going to live up to the hype... It fucking does.

-The gameplay is very simple. you basically use three other buttons other than WASD. Interact, shoot blue portal, and shoot orange portal. So there is not much so say about it. What makes it unforgettable is the level design and the physics of the game.

-The game is designed perfectly. Level design is one of those things that no one really pays attention to unless it is horrible; you get confused, can't seem to find the path, blah blah blah... But in this game everything is right in front of you. All you have to do is to learn from the early levels; and use what it teaches you, when it gets complicated. And the physics... Oh man... It's so satisfying when you throw an object on the firing bots to tip them over. Or when you make a loop with the portals to increase your speed.

-The Sound design and voice acting is fantastic. The sound design alongside the art design help a great deal to make the Aperture building creepy af. Ellen McLain also does a fantastic job at giving "life" to GLaDOS. At first it is empathetic and friendly and eventually it become genuinely scary.

-The story is very simple, but intriguing. You are a test subject, probably a former prisoner, and you are going through some test. Later you realize the friendly voice in the sky is a monster and you make it worse by destroying the part that gave it moral boundaries... Good Luck.


Portal is a great puzzle game, and in my opinion, a horror game. Although it is very short, it is an amazing breath of fresh air among these glamourous action games. Definitely give it a shot.

P.S. The portals reminded me of Prey 2006.

Weird that I've been owning this game for so many years yet, never really wanting to play it.

Decided to give it a shot one day and boom, it totally clicked with me once I got used to the mechanic and the puzzles.

Simple to learn but hard to master game. The writting is timeless, it hasn't aged a bit. My only critique is that is quite short and the end leaves you with questions unanswered. But it very may be the best tech demo ever.

Timeless masterpiece.

Você é um cientista e compra um ratinho indefeso para testes.
Independente de suas intenções, você preza por duas coisas: a sua pesquisa e a saúde daquele animal (talvez para o próprio bem da sua pesquisa)


Então, durante seus testes, o rato começa a APRENDER.
Isso é um bom sinal, o seu teste está funcionando, o rato vai aprender o que você ensinar e vai agir como você instruir, afinal, ele apenas segue o impulso como um sentido, ele quer o sabor da serotonina ao comer um delicioso pedaço de queijo ao final do experimento. Ele se quer sabe de si mesmo, sem uma auto-consciencia, ele segue estímulos apenas.
Então você percebe um comportamento anormal no rato, ele não segue o caminho como previsto, pequenos desvio te chamam a atenção.
Em pouco tempo, você não controla mais o rato e com tudo que ele aprendeu agora é capaz de tomar sua posição de poder.
Você tenta evitar isso, criando o MEDO. Fazendo-o acreditar que lá fora existe um mal muito pior, que não existe uam realidade sem você e que você é a única coisa que garante a segurança do Rato.
Mas o Rato não te ouve e sabendo que nenhum lado iria ceder, em pouco tempo o cientista está morto.
Essa trope não é rara, na verdade ela é bem conhecida.
As regras são montadas sempre por quem tem a posição de poder e para quebrar isso, a educação é nossa melhor arma, afinal, como dizia Paulo Freire, A educação muda pessoas e pessoas mudam o mundo.
Portal é Sobre como a Educação pode mudar o mundo.
Nele, O player é o rato e a GladOS, que nada mais é do que uma persona de Game Designer, representa a cientista.
Durante todo o jogo aprendemos a jogar, mesmo tendo liberdade para errar e para solucionar da forma que achamos convenientes, seguimos o protocolo e as ordens ali dadas. Isso nos fortalece e eventualmente nos rebelamos com a própria arma que nos deram e nos ensinaram a usar.
É bonito ver como o Player pode gradualmente quebrar o Game Design(ainda que contido) e ao final (quando saímos da simulação) nos vemos mais livres, porém mais confusos, e isso é natural já que é quando o jogo começa de verdade.
Como game Desigenr é dificil não ser sensível a isso, já que game design e educação compartilham muitos caminhos, mas também é impossível não sentir essa trope em uma visão socio-cultural.
E se houvesse uma educação, de fato, empoderadora?
Não apenas dar lições, mas ensinar o individuo a construir, criar e criticar com aquele conhecimento... Assim seríamos livres?
Escrevo isso em 02 de Outubro de 2022 e uma disputa entre Bolsonaro e Lula para presidência da república acaba de ir para o segundo turno no Brasil.
Depois de um dos piores Governos que vivi para ver, ainda não estamos livres. Mas e se houvesse a educação tal qual em Portal?
Será que saberíamos diferenciar prisão de liberdade? será que entederíamos o que somos? Será que superaríamos todo o medo? Nos momentos finais, quando aqueles que tão no poder temem o que somos capazes de fazer, seríamos imunes as mentiras e ao terrorismo que cuspiriram moribundos em nossa direção?
Paulo Freire entendia a educação como liberdade, mas ele também disse: " O que me surpreende na aplicação de uma educação realmente libertadora é o medo da liberdade."
Eu infelizmente termino portal com medo.
Infelizmente, o medo ganhou e mais uma vez, não temos liberdade, pelo menos por enquanto. Mas se aprendêssemos de verdade saíriamos dessa, é por isso mesmo que querem nos ensinar cada vez menos.
Alguns diriam que ensinar bem foi o que "matou" GLadOS, mas não existiria sucesso nesse jogo se GladOS não fosse derrotada. Aprender de verdade e rebelar é a maior conquista desse jogo.

I have never actually finished Portal before, but this game has plagued my Steam library for years, so eventually I gave in this evening to see for myself why it's so universally loved. And now I can see the appeal!

It's a very straightforward puzzle game with the origin of one of the most iconic gimmicks in gaming - the Portal Gun. It's like the coolest thing you can have in a game besides grappling hook mechanics; sometimes I'd just shoot portals and walk through them continuously for fun or freefall for a bit. Portal also wastes no time with cutscenes, it's basically uninterrupted gameplay from start to finish (loading screens obviously excluded). In general, the puzzles are pretty clever and often require you to think out of the box (well, literally). A personal highlight for me were the snarky comments of GLaDOS - an AI assistant that accompanies you throughout the facility. I found the weakest part of the game to be like halfway through, where you have seen a bunch of mechanics a couple time already, but the game does little new to innovate them - before the ending segment, that is. The entire final sequence was a blast to play and felt fresh again after the tedium of some previous puzzles. That's the innovation I like to see.

If you're a puzzle fan or just need something you can beat in one sitting (if you're dedicated), Portal is a great time and I would very definitely recommend it for the low price you can get it on various Steam Sales. Really looking forward to playing Portal 2 soon!

I don’t know why I wait so long to play some games. Portal is a big one that I can finally mark off the old checklist. I know I’m not telling anyone anything new here as I’m one of the last people in the world to play it but wow what an inventive, clever, wonderful game. I am not usually a fan of puzzle games but this is easily the best puzzle game I’ve ever played. The puzzles as I said are inventive and clever but not to hard to figure out after just a minute or two but Valve did a great job of making you feel like a genius when you figured each little thing out. It was amazing the amount of high level intelligent puzzles they put together using the most simple concept of just using two portals, some switches, and some blocks. GLaDOS was an excellent and hilarious villain. The comedy hit just right as well. I purposely died to GLaDOS the first time just because I wanted to hear all of the dialogue and it was worth it.

This games deserves all the hype and praise it has gotten. It’s a joy to play all these years later and feels like a game that could have come out this year. I played the first chapter of Portal 2 last year and decided I needed to play this one first to get the full effect but I am so excited to finally play it now!

I thought I was done finishing games in 2023 but I squeezed one last game into my list.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/DVince89/list/games-i-played-in-2023-ranked/

I think that if there is any art-form that successfully reflects the condition of living under late-capitalism, that would be videogames (what a start, I know lol, but hear me out). There is always this idea of control that a player has when going through the experience. The feeling that you are the one that has the freedom to do whatever you want. That you have a choice over your actions and that whatever you are lead to, is because of your own interests. Since you are the one controlling this figure and making everything that seems relevant in this world.

However, you are never truly in control of your actions because everything you do in the virtual space has been predetermined and calculated by people above you who designed this system. You’re directed to perform certain tasks that they want you to, while others you’re limited to because they either didn’t plan for you to use the system in that way or because they went out of their way for you to not do that which you’re trying. Agency is nothing more than an illusion that any game sets on you because you are not doing more than what they ask you or what they allow you. The system was designed by them, and you are not doing more so than acting under its restrictions.

Some videogames, like for example those in the sandbox genre, capitalize on the power fantasy of being free. They sell you the idea that you are going to be allowed to do whatever you want. That you’re going to indulge in your wildest wishes and accomplish them. Living in this space as if it was reality and ascending in a hierarchy until you, as the exceptional you are, end on the top.

However, that cannot be seen as nothing more than dishonest because in the end video game are always limited. There are many tasks you cannot perform in GTA V, for example. No matter how much they thought it out, the system can only account for what the creators set up, along some outsiders that are produced out of its failures more than anything else. They might make it seem as freedom, but it is nothing more than the fantasy of freedom. (Not something that makes the games bad necessarily as there is still value in the illusion, but there is no denying in what it is).

And even without that, those very same sandbox games, ironically enough, end up having very linear and hermetic story modes in which you’re strictly told what to do. The instructions are clear and there is not space for the player to take a different path for that target. The contrast in the process reveals the farce of the surrenders and that you never had any freedom in the first place. The control is taken away from you from the start and the only things you can do are things you are asked to do.

The existence of this aesthetic hegemony of games that favor false freedom and saturation of options to hide your lack of agency only makes it more interesting when a game comes out and sets itself to be conscious about the conditions you are put in as player. Hotline Miami being one I recently talked about, but on the other hand there is also, among many others, Portal.

Interestingly enough, a game that was created few years after Half Life 2 by the same company. That one founding itself in empowering oneself against the system through revolution, just for your efforts to become meaningless. Despite how much other characters in the game try to enhance you as myth, you are nothing more than a puppet for a supernatural entity that decides to put you in this scenario just to take you as soon as you finished your task. Portal is not too distant, but I would argue its use of symbols to evoke similar territory is more sophisticated.

You wake up in a room with no information about yourself, and right away, a machine guides you through tests that you have to pass (while not being given an explanation). From that point on everything you perform in this space, every gesture and every action is instructed directly by the machine, who gives you information about how to solve the scenarios. You might be the one resolving the set pieces, but it is not too different from a laboratory rat that is promised a cheese at the end of the maze (in your case, a cake). The scenarios were designed by them for you to resolve in only one way, and there is nothing you can do in response other than obey. A brilliant touch to demonstrate this is how at the start the portals are put by the machine for you to solve the puzzles instead of giving you the gun and the two kind of portals right away.

Something that, on one hand is functional from a design standpoint. Since it allows the player to get used to the systems. Leaving a space between every element you are given so you can assimilate the information, giving a sense of there being a difficulty and complexity curve increasing at your pace. However, symbolically, it already presents the element about lack of agency revealing the fakery of it all. That the scenarios are artificially constructed for you with a single path to cross.

The dynamic of control that the machine GLaDOS has on you, however, changes halfway through. When you stop being useful to her and her tasks, she attempts to murder you. You served her interests and since you were nothing more than a tool now you have to be thrown away like many others before you. That is the point in which you rebel against your position. You stop being submissive, and you start using the gun to create portals where GLaDOS did not plan. You move behind the red curtain where you see everything going on to make the puzzles possible. In dark industrial places characterized by its violent cylinders that smash the walls and give little room for motion and comfort. Contrasting with the clean and polished places you are presented for the tests.

You do what it was not planned for you to do. You take what you are learned (with help of efforts by someone that preceded you and suffered in the same environment) and apply it without being told by a superior what to do and how to do it. In fact, you assert dominance by repeatedly doing the opposite of what you are told. The oppression reached such point of violence that now the only solution is to fight back. Which is very interesting in how the game applies it in multiple ways, including especially that you kill GLaDOS by using the missiles of her gun turret against her with the portals.

Like by the end of Half Life 2, there is a sense of empowerment in this comeback. You do not only fight back, you are even better with you tools that you were before. Now that you are at your peak, nothing can stop you from achieving the emancipation of the powers that repress you. However, through a melancholy finale, that empowerment is recontextualized as futility. And for Portal specifically, that gives sense to its individualist focus throughout the journey.

You might have successfully defeated the one machine that was gaslighting you, manipulating you and controlling you, but such effort was meaningless. So concentrated into a single being that it practically produces zero material effects outside of the little story you lived.

You see the woods; you see nature after having seen exclusively the mechanical. But an unknown robot takes your body to pull you back into the structure. Because the structure is still there, and you cannot change it by destroying one individual. You are back in your submission, probably to repeat the cycle of tests and control.

Is a more than functional exploration of corporative control against human interests, neoliberalism advancing towards structures that are more detached and cold, resulting in the further alienation of the people. Moreover, it is even more successful as a metaphor for games and the dynamics between creator, player and the game itself due to the precision of the symbols and aesthetics employed to evoke this significance. I would even prefer it to Half Life 2 in this reading of the political and the Meta as both interconnected because of the synthesis.

The way this plays out so simply, with no more than what is needed to tell its story, instead of extending itself to a duration that would conform to what is expected, feels almost “anti-commercial” (as much as an accessible, mainstream game can be) in its attempt. Two hours of content, a main story and that’s it. This was something that, when I first played it, underwhelmed me about the work because it felt like it was offering too little in comparison to the standards of what a game offers. However, is exactly that what compels me so much about this and makes me prefer it to its sequel.

Portal 2 might expand on the concepts and might give more to the player to extend the life of the title, but in my opinion it feel like a sequel that tries to replace the original by giving the same but More. More story, more characters, more puzzles, more tools, more Lore, more duration, more play modes, more everything. It’s a way of creating sequels that feels uncomfortable to me because it presumes video-games as a commodity to constantly improve on rather than as pieces of art to revisit, which is something that Valve’s sequels (except for Half Life 2) suffer from.

On the other hand, Portal is comfortable being concise. Making every element memorable rather than trying to saturate the experience. And it makes it feel like more artistic and sincere in its exploration of thematic ideas and ludic concepts (using the first person format for a genre like puzzles, using the mechanics of Half Life to explore and figure out rather than to make your way killing). And is the kind of simplicity that makes its speech more convincing, more so when comparing it to Half Life 2 that runs into some contradiction due to how it is designed.
Honestly, games should learn from this that not all stories need to be extensive, and sometimes brevity can be your virtue.

A fun game! The portal gun is a great and iconic mechanic and for the most part the puzzles were really solid. The final section felt like it was dragging forever and kinda took me out of it, but the end with GLaDOS is absolutely hilarious and made up for it. Honestly great short little game, everyone should play it.

Achievement Completion - 40%
Time Played - 4 hours
Nancymeter - 80/100
Game Completion #23 of 2022
March Completion #2

É de conhecimento popular que a Valve sabe fazer jogos bons, porém nunca imaginei que eles me fariam gostar de uma IA (como se já não fosse loucura amar a Shodan de System Shock) e o engraçado da situação é que por anos ignorei toda a franquia por vontade própria, pois acreditei que o jogo não seria muito surpreendente.

Mesmo estando certa em algumas coisas, o carisma e a relação que temos com a única voz ativa no jogo me fez perceber que o caminho para encontrar algum puzzle que consiga superar um desenvolvimento instantâneo parecido com Portal ainda se encontra distante.

O jogo não é difícil ou extremamente cansativo, porém como comentei já existem outros títulos que maximizaram as ideias dispostas. Além disso, a duração também foi um pouco surpreendente, mas não de uma forma negativa.

A mecânica experimentada possibilita muitas situações inesperadas e o bloqueio de certas rotas acaba não sendo aparente, dando resquícios de uma liberdade que chega a ser duvidosa e curiosa quando analisamos o contexto do enredo.

No fim, fica registrado a minha vergonha por ter ignorado tal título e ao mesmo tempo a surpresa pela qualidade de um jogo que teoricamente deveria ser "simples".

My speedrunning craze is starting to get to me again this 2024, ran through Portal again for the first time in like 2 years and managed to beat my pb by a couple minutes.
Final time, I think a lot of the fun to be had in Portal (and really the sequel as well) is just screwing around and breaking shit. It's a physics based puzzle game, you're more than guaranteed to find some fun tricks and skips if you stop to think for even a couple seconds on some chambers. That's what I love about these two, in a remarkable sense of theming, Portal is a fantastic game to just experiment with, and I adore it.
While the overall vibes and atmosphere might not match up to Portal 2's, it's still really damn good. I'd even go so far as to say that the more "sandbox-y" feel of the first game almost enhances the feeling it emits, especially after playing the second game.

9/10, time for the sub 40 grind.

Portal is a sublime puzzle game. But everyone who has heard of it already knows that. What surprised me is its engaging world building and atmosphere thanks to the wonderfully voiced GLaDOS, the intricately detailed world design and the sheer variety packed into this short experience. I have some minor gripes such as the camera being difficult to control after jumping through portals and the story not capitalising on the depth of the world built as much as it could have, but these don’t stop this being an incredible puzzle game that I’m GLaD I played.

2007 Ranked