[Oscar]

Whoa, let's step back a bit. Portal was very good, I liked it and Portal 2 a worthy expansion of the same idea. It's definitely not a reinvention of the adventure game, or a successor to Myst, in my opinion. Lots of shooters have clever puzzles: Portal being based around them doesn't make it that different. I mean, where do you expect adventure games to go if Portal is the future? You could feel the developers being stretched for ideas when the 269th variant of 'find a distant white patch to shoot at' or 'find a place to drop down into a portal to shoot yourself across the room' in Portal 1, let alone the number of times those devices overstayed their welcome in the sequel.

Both games were really fun, enjoyable and fairly mindless rides but that's all. I'd be horrified if all the depth of my adventure games were to be funneled out to focus strictly on 'clever' physical puzzles devoid of meaning, replacing the vast range and diversity of adventure game puzzles with a hundred different ways to use a rubber chicken. And in terms of story, I don't think anyone here would argue with the fact that most adventures have storylines more meaningful than 'computer gone nuts', even considering how well that particular storyline was done in System Shock and many other games.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Portal for us adventurers is that it's too damn easy. That's always a problem in games relying on vertical rather than horizontal difficulty - one challenge (shooting, jumping, RTS-ing, portalling) on a learning curve. It's one type of thinking getting harder and harder until the game ends. You're never going to get stuck in the way that satisfies adventure gamers. I never had to go to a walkthrough during both Portal games, and doubt I ever would need to even if the hardest puzzles possible were employed.