Game of the Month #125 (June 2025) - Portal

Portal is a new single player game from Valve, creators of Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike. Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal has earned over 15 Game of the Year Awards and offers gamers hours of unique gameplay. The game is designed to change the way players approach, manipulate and surmise the possibilities in a given environment; similar to how Half-Life 2's Gravity Gun innovated new ways to leverage an object in any given situation. Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space.
How long is Portal?
When focusing on the main objectives, Portal is about 3 Hours in length. If you're a gamer that strives to see all aspects of the game, you are likely to spend around 10½ Hours to obtain 100% completion.
Platforms: Linux, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Genres: First-Person, Platform, Puzzle
Developer: Valve Corporation
Publisher: Valve Corporation
NA: October 9th, 2007
EU: October 9th, 2007
Alias:Portal with RTX

So played portal a long time ago. It is an excellent little puzzle game. Makes good use of the source engine to showcase different ways to play with FPS style games. The puzzles quickly ramp up with new different mechanics surrounding the use of portals. All this held together by the rather sarcastic GLaDOS. It is a rather short game but it is only a tech demo and was later expanded in the sequel. A very heavy recommend.

Similarly, I played Portal a long time ago; in fact, it was one of the first few games I beat. It's a classic in the genre for a reason, and a pretty easy one at that. So I would also recommend it to people who don't have much experience with puzzle games.

Congrats Portal! I've played this game already but I do wanna replay it. Recently tried to play Portal RTX but ran into issues with getting it to run properly. I'll try to get it working again so I can participate.
Either way great game and a must play

Portal is an incredible game. My advice to anyone new to it is to plan on playing portal and portal 2 back to back. They're both fairly short, fun, and not too difficult, so you may as well get the whole story in one go. They have some of the best antagonists in gaming, or perhaps even all media.

Enjoy!

I think most mainstream popular games rarely if ever live up to the hype but this game most certainly does. Played this and Portal 2 recently on Nintendo Switch and had a great time with both. Portal 1 might just be one of it not the greatest short games ever made. You ever want proof that a game on the short side can be great, this is it all though there will be some who complain about it being too short anyway. It's rather impressive how well made the game is for a game that had it's popularity start due to it being part of the Orange Box. I did give Portal a 10/10 which I rarely give games. If I also wanted to recommend playing video games for the first time, I would tell them to play this. Sure it's a puzzle game but the way the game teaches you and the fact that you don't to worry about backtracking, good reflexes or resources on top of it's short length just makes it so easy tell some random person to play depending on how much I like them enough to want to play it.

I'm quite proud of my review I wrote for it too. I managed to write a game review taking up the HLTB character limit that manages to be mostly positive, I never thought that was possible even in my most positive reviews there is usually a section or two writing criticisms:

https://howlongtobeat.com/game/7230/reviews/u-Civilwarfare101/1

I wish Valve was still making single player games since they were great at their craft but what can you do.

Wow really shocked that it took this long for Portal 1 to be GOTM.

Played this years ago, and still remember that first playthrough with fondest memories. Such a unique game, and absolutely worth completing at least once!

Well I finally managed to get Portal RTX working! I had issues with it being stuck at 30fps despite unlocking the frame rate but hey now I can play at 100fps with no issues. Anyways I played for like an hour before getting hungry, just as much fun to play as it was the first time.
I remember the first time playing it and being blown away by the portals and seeing through them, the way you fall and turn and interact, all these years later and that same feeling lingers on as I play it again. Such a technical marvel of its time and it holds up very well to this day, love the comedy and the puzzles are an absolute joy to figure out. It helps that I have little memory of what actually happens and the solution to most of the puzzles since it's been that long.
Will continue playing later

I'm glad Portal won GotM. It's a masterclass in game design and one my best gaming memories in recent years. Yep, 'recent', cause I played it for the first time only... 8 month ago. No idea why it took me so long.

I will definitely replay it this month, I just have to complete (or drop) a few other games before.

Enjoy everyone :)

Portal is a pretty good game, I beat it a number of years ago. I'm not the biggest puzzle game person but I remember having a lot of fun with it, it's a must-play in my book. For anyone who doesn't have experience with this and Portal 2 I very highly recommend playing that one as well, Portal 2 is an awesome experience.

I have an AMD GPU as well which brings Portal RTX out of the question for me, which eliminates the one thing that I would likely replay it for, but it looks neat. However I'm close to full achievement completion with it, so I'll play through the challenge levels and advanced maps for that. Yall have fun!

Welp I beat the game and it crashed xD

Regardless that was a lot of fun, I'm glad I got to replay Portal like this. In the end I tried to bring the cube you get right before getting into the turret area with mud, right to the end and I managed to! It was a fun little challenge because I got up in less orthodox ways. Sadly the cube cannot be carried to the final boss but that's alright, the boss was awesome and hilarious.

Also thought it was funny how in the RTX version you can find 4090s scattered all over the game. Like to imagine someone was struggling to survive down there and was just cuddling up their expensive GPU for comfort xD

Welp I beat the game and it crashed xD

Regardless that was a lot of fun, I'm glad I got to replay Portal like this. In the end I tried to bring the cube you get right before getting into the turret area with mud, right to the end and I managed to! It was a fun little challenge because I got up in less orthodox ways. Sadly the cube cannot be carried to the final boss but that's alright, the boss was awesome and hilarious.

Also thought it was funny how in the RTX version you can find 4090s scattered all over the game. Like to imagine someone was struggling to survive down there and was just cuddling up their expensive GPU for comfort xD

"Welp I beat the game and it crashed xD"

GLaDOS said that was enough of that, get OUT.

Welp I beat the game and it crashed xD

Regardless that was a lot of fun, I'm glad I got to replay Portal like this. In the end I tried to bring the cube you get right before getting into the turret area with mud, right to the end and I managed to! It was a fun little challenge because I got up in less orthodox ways. Sadly the cube cannot be carried to the final boss but that's alright, the boss was awesome and hilarious.

Also thought it was funny how in the RTX version you can find 4090s scattered all over the game. Like to imagine someone was struggling to survive down there and was just cuddling up their expensive GPU for comfort xD

Oh, you didn't hear the nice credit song then? That's honestly very sad...

Oh, you didn't hear the nice credit song then? That's honestly very sad...

Oh I had completely forgotten about it, thanks for reminding me. Thankfully this is my 2nd run through Portal so I had already experienced it, amazing credits sequence.

I've played this! Many times actually. Very easy game to beat, at best I can beat it in over just a hour. This game thinking about it now refreshed the Half-Life universe for me and I honestly thought this was a much more fleshed out game than any of HL2's episodes which I found to be disappointing. I'll always have a soft spot for this game and it stands with one of my favorites. So many memorable moments, from the showdown with Glados to some of the humor and many of the interesting puzzles. Always found it to be a really good addition to the Half-Life canon.

replayed earlier in the week - copying this from discord

just did a replay of Portal with RTX - 1 hour 44 minutes - mostly remembered my way around, but had a couple of moments where I had to think a little

I still really enjoy Portal for what it is, but there's definitely some age showing in the engine (I mean, it's old now) even with the upgraded textures and RTX graphics - in fact, the best thing about the RTX version is the translucent surfaces, like the red buttons and the excursion tubes - they have some really nice lighting and refractions going on there.

ultimately though, it's hard to get mad at Portal - it has become a victim of its own success as we have all heard the memes and the jokes a million times over, so it feels very overplayed and dated - however, I can still remember the first time I played it, loved it, and was surprised and enchanted throughout - it's still a great game - even if it's overhyped and overplayed

So I start replaying Portal this morning and so far, so good. I really love the first few chambers, everything is so intuitive, can't remember a game with better tutorial levels.

Since my first playthrough is still recent and I remember most of the puzzles, I think I'll take my time and try to find all the secrets and easter eggs.