I finished Portal, finally.
While Portal takes approximately 3 hours long to complete, I actually played it on and off for the past 3 months. I’m a very very casual player.
The game could have done (and saved a ton of money) without the story. I felt like I was more of a hamster running through a maze and solving puzzles for the whole thing. And that is fine. The story was in the way, and it wasn’t really that new and innovative, and it felt sterile and meaningless. It tried to hard for you to give a shit and keep playing, but in the end even Garfield minus Garfield reflects insanity and loneliness better than Portal did, and GmG wasn’t even written! Myst had the same story structure and and that game was made fifteen years ago. I guess they finally figured out how to make that style appealing to people who play games for a living.