What noknowncure said. And like I said, developers should learn the general lessons from Portal, not just rip off the Portal mechanics.
With that I mean I prefer how Portal lays down general consistent rules. You know how Portals behave, how the gel does, the light bridges,...
You got the tools, you know what they do. What you need to do now is to figure out how to use them in the given situation to reach your goal.
Another great thing: you truly get better with time at using these tools! I never got better at any traditional adventure. Why? Well, because once you got the basics, the interface and the idiosyncrasies (pixel hunting, taking any object that isn't nailed down,...) figured out, there isn't anything more to learn. Sure, there are easy and difficult puzzles, but I don't feel anything prepares you for the difficult ones, which is probably the reason why I suck so much at them!
But with Portal you genuinely get better, you learn how to use the tools given to you! So I hope for some difficult puzzles with the DLC!
Oscar: Reading your post again, I see that this precisely the aspect you don't like. I guess we won't reach any agreement on this one then.
Portal's puzzles are much more consistent and less arbitrary than those of adventures whose sole mechanic is item combination. There are no cat mustaches, no rubber duckeys. I have to disagree with you on this point Oscar, I don't think that traditional adventure puzzles are very diverse. To generalize, they're always, always the same kind of challenge, to combine one object with another, and recently that's within a interface that doesn't allow you to express your intention very clearly since one click does all! Sure, many excellent games relied on item combination. I'm sick of it anyway, I don't see any way forward with this ancient approach.
By relying on these kinds of puzzles the gameplay in traditional adventures is much too one-sided. There are many, many more possible kinds of challenges that could be designed, so why rely on item combination?
