I’m writing this immediately after playing, so these thoughts are fairly fresh. Therefore, I may be missing a whole bunch of key information/clues/analysis. That said: I’m so mad. I worked really hard getting Chell out of the lab, and what happens? I am unable to move when the time is right and Chell gets dragged back to god-knows-where as she lays in party position. FRUSTRATING. Even more frustrating? THE CAKE WASN’T A LIE? I saw it! Chocolate frosting! Yum!? Unless the cake was Chell. In that case… yikes. Either way, this felt like a very sad ending that may or may not be unique to Chell. I get the feeling that someone else has shared a similar fate.

GLaDOS’ dialogue during the boss fight was super awesome, honestly I wanted to drag it out just to hear her talk. It was hilarious. I immensely enjoyed how so many aspects of the game mechanics came to play in that final sequence, truly we had to think in portals! Figure what can and can’t be done. The introduction of the rocket launcher bot was also very neat and I just loooovvve how doors can open and some rapid-fire machinery can be waiting for you. That was just great. One qualm I had with the end sequence was getting into the vent at a certain part. It was too high to jump, I couldn’t blow up the tube for a cube (and I felt so smart for thinking of that, but it didn’t even work!), I wound up just stacking two chairs and using those. It was just difficult for no reason, in my eyes, but that may have been a mechanics thing.

A lot of questions were left unanswered, though I get the impression that they’re answered somewhat in the second game. Some things I’m curious about: Is Chell okay? Who is Chell? What’s going on outside (it looked fine… If that was actually the outside)? Where is everyone? Who is writing on the wall? What is the purpose of the chambers, what are they trying to find out?

Ending aside (the ending was actually fine, I’m just bitter), I really enjoyed Portal and hope to make time to play Portal 2!