Portal

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⭐ 9.5/10

(Originally written by Joseph)

After taking a few months to beat Zelda, it was nice to play a game you can beat in a few sittings. Portal took me about 3 hours, and that's about the amount of time it takes to beat a Zelda dungeon, and I decided to play this game in part because I was still on a puzzle high after that one.

I actually think Valve and Nintendo have similar gaming philosophies. But while Zelda was 120 hours with plenty to love and not love, Portal is 3 perfect hours of gaming. It really succeeds on every level. The puzzles are genius, the physics are brilliant (also how did they make this?!), and the story is hilarious! Very witty interjections from the robots that have you trapped in their futuristic hellscape testing facility. This is sci-fi done right, so kudos to the writers. There is just enough plot to keep this game rolling along without getting in the way.

So yeah, totally recommend this one. Loved everything about it. The companion cube killed me, and that final escape sequence was somehow exhilarating despite being so basic. Just short of a 10 because I feel like giving it a higher score than Zelda is mean. The cake is a lie!!

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