I absolutely loved this game. Poking around the bowels of Apeture was awesome. I don't understand the people complaining about the length. I've got 12 hours out of it so far and I haven't even touched the multiplayer, which seems like a decent length to me.

Okay, you seem to be slightly confused :) Stephen Merchant is Ricky Gervais' comedy partner. He co-wrote The Office and co-wrote and co-starred in Extras. Merchant did not rip off Gervais. Wheatly is virtually identical the character Merchant played in Extras: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmGaW-z2g3Y

I really don't get all the bitching about the loading. Portal 1 was exactly the same, with all elevators (maybe except the one before level 2) being loading screens; the only difference was that in Portal 1 the loading background was a snapshot of what you were looking when the loading started while in 2 there's that blackish loading screen.

Also, the game loads extremely fast even on my 5 year-old ass laptop, so I rarely have any reason to get annoyed by the loading.

So you're not going to buy a very good game purely because it isn't another game instead? How does that make any sense at all?
Portal is a puzzle game. Opening it up too much either makes puzzles completely impossible to design coherently, or removes puzzles entirely and just makes it about basic navigation (and there WERE parts like this in Portal 2, which were the worst parts of the game since they mostly revolved around finding the portal-able surfaces rather than actually solving anything). It's all about the puzzles, and everything else is just very well done window dressing.

There may be a ton of loading areas, but that's just Source for you. Consoles can handle massive stages in other games just fine, this is just a quirk of Source and it's been present from Half-Life 2 on up. Just because it sucks doesn't mean consoles are to blame here. The chapters are not all the same size, and there are a few twists that keep things interesting. You're essentially still in an extended intro. There are a couple cake mentions, but by and large Valve is as sick of that meme as everyone else. Besides, Aperture is HUGE, and a TON of time has passed, so it's not particularly odd that you don't run into a couple pieces of graffiti again.

Also, stuff still works because Aperture is the single least likely science lab to ever exist. You may not know it yet, but this game is pretty much all about Aperture. Plenty of people said the gameplay was great when it first came out. But they're puzzles... once you've solved them you can't go back and just solve them again. The personality is what keeps it in peoples' heads after the game is over (and keep in mind, it came out four years ago and can be beaten in an hour easily if you know what you're doing, so there's only so much content to discuss). You know, just like every adventure game ever made.

I mean, you seem to want Portal to be something it's not. It's a game with puzzles that you have to figure out and execute. If that's not your thing then it's not your thing, but it's not a flawed system and a ton of people happen to really enjoy the puzzles.

So it's wrong to want Portal to be more of a challenge like every other puzzle game under the sun? *facepalms*

If you read what I wrote, it's the low level of intelligence needed to solve the puzzles that bugs me. I've been playing puzzle games for 20 years and Portal is easily one of the least challenging ones so it's hardly asking much to try and add a difficulty level for those who, you know, are better at puzzle games than the average person on the street. Plus, the times when I didn't immediately see the solution, it was because of needed trial and error "What happens if I push that button? Okay and will placing a portal there propel the cube far enough? Let's try" etc. This is not the basis of a good puzzle game - and it's hypocritical of the press to have slammed puzzle games like this before because they were too easy or required trial and error yet because it's

a) Valve
b) has comedy
c) is well presented
d) has a great setting

the only game aspect is forgiven. Funny. Not. You can say people enjoy the puzzles but that's besides the point - it's about consistency and offering a scaled experienced according to your skill level and neither Portal game offers it and the fact that the press is mostly silent as hell about this, shows how biased/incompetent they are since it's the biggest complaint I've seen of Portal 2 in several places.

The puzzles weren't easy *per se*. They would have been far more difficult if Valve hadn't subconsciously guided you to the examples. Personally, I was playing Portal 2 for the experience more than the puzzles (and I'd be lying if I said one or two puzzles didn't trip me up for a while).

I enjoy a ton of stuff, so stuff your attempts at belittling me. I even enjoyed Portal 2, which seems to have sailed over your head.

Then it should have been a $20 pack-in like the original, not a $50 attempt at a major franchise. And I don't agree with you anyway, frankly. There are moments in Portal 2 that feel like we're headed into something new, like the concept is going to expand beyond test chambers and funny voices, but then it turns back to test chambers again. By the fourth or fifth round of chambers I'm sorry but the veneer wore off for me.

I still enjoyed it, but it was a middle-ground experience. It was just more Portal with better special effects, which gets it a middle-ground score.

Good review .

It depends on how big an analytical mind you have I guess - but because Valve didn't offer any scaling in difficulty, it's the same for everyone and that means "easy" to me. I don't think it would have been impossible to add trickier parts to a level (especially since they're all loaded separately) so it's Valve who is at fault here, there's no excuse for it. A proper games adds a scaling experience to suit everyone - not much to debate about.

In my case there were only two chambers that had me stumped. The first simply because I didn't see the switch. And the second was the final test chamber. But I still enjoyed seeing all the chambers come together upon solving them.

It'd be nice to know if you're still in chapter 3, because that's why I was dismissing your complaints about the difficulty. If you are, then you're not even a third of the way through the game, so it's a bit too early to complain about things like plot, setting, difficulty, etc as though they're never going to change from here.

The Portal 2 comedy is a terrible derivative of The Office/Extras.

Chapter 7 actually. I expected it to get harder but it got easier with the gel. The only time I got stuck for a whole 5 minutes, is because I was trying to find a complex solution to something that was so easy and obvious that I didn't even think it would be that easy ... but it was.

For presentation and setting, it gets a nice big 10/10 but the puzzles could have been a LOT better and the test chambers really are the weakest part of the game.

That happened to me several times, I actually got briefly stumped trying to think of elaborate solutions when it was actually as simple as finding a white wall up high or something.