I replayed Portal, today. Hadn't in quite a few years, and it's a short game, so I thought why not. Short story short, it's a good game, and I like it. Here are some random thoughts.

- It feels underbaked on a replay, almost half of the game is a tutorial and while that's understandable it only truly gets fun in the second half. This isn't a hot take but I'm sure it'd get more interesting if it was even just an hour longer.
- I can't really tell if it feels like the game's trying to force memes at times, or it's just that since they became memes, it retroactively feels like it. Regardless the writing's usually just good enough to get away with it, but there are some moments of cringe.
- I like the few more atmospheric moments, Glados is great but there's something to say about how her always having some dialogue often prevents that vibe from becoming apparent. She's great and I'd never remove her from the game, but it's food for thought.
- The OST is really good. It's not something I remembered at all but Valve is really good at subtly underlining cool moments with their soundtrack.
- I bet that if Portal came out today, we'd be getting a whole wave of yellow paint discourse around it, it's not very subtle with its signposting.
- Suffers slightly from hand-holdy Valve level design, but not nearly as much as the Half-Life 2 games. I only had a few real "ha-ha!" moments, but they were pretty good ones.