Oscar, Interplay, I have to disagree. It's a quantum hole cannon, sure. That means it's roughly gun-shaped, but that's where the similarity ends. There are lots of gun-shaped tools in this world that do not kill people, and the portal gun is one of them. It is a tool, plain and simple. If you made it a magic wand, it would still have the same effect; it would merely shift from being sci-fi to fantasy, which would mean it wouldn't have been made by Valve, because they don't do sword and sorcery.
The game is a First-Person Puzzle Adventure, and an utterly brilliant retooling of the genre, at that. So good it defies all genre conventions, and still dares us to accept it on its own terms, which is as it should be. This is the logical successor to the Myst franchise, folks. It's all there, and it's a lot of fun to play, no matter what you usually play.
I don't want to sound pedantic, but you really need to stop fighting this, folks. Portal is radically different from what we've grown used to, but in all the ways that count, it's what needed to happen to this genre. Now we can move forward.
Not all AGs need to be like Portal, but it's about time game developers started thinking outside of the box, like the developers of Portal did. They're out there. Portal's not a fluke. The innovations added to Portal 2 were developed by another hungry young team of students, like the original Portal was. New mechanics and new ideas about ways of using them are being developed every day. They are non-violent, thoughtful, entertaining, challenging, and they are also wildly successful. This Is What People Want.
Rather than arguing that Portal will never be Monkey Island, isn't it time we accepted that it doesn't need to be in order to be what needs to come next? We can't just pretend 1999 never ended.
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