When comparing Puzzle Quest vs Portal, the Slant community recommends Portal for most people. In the question“What are the best modern examples of games that have successfully combined genres that seemingly should not have worked together?” Portal is ranked 1st while Puzzle Quest is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Portal is:
The main mechanic of the game revolves around solving different puzzles using a handheld portal device - a device that can bend space and time to create a wormhole through which you can move.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Combat, perfected in a match-3 game
The core of Puzzle Quest comes down to its combat. You make a move, then your opponent gets a move. If someone runs out of life, they lose. If you matched four gems or more in a row by the time your turn ends, you get a second turn.
Gems have different colors. Matching gems of a color gives you that color mana, and instead of making a match, you can choose to cast a spell, which costs certain kinds of mana. Not too complicated.
Until you realize that your opponent is wearing an item that makes him regenerate life when his yellow mana is full. So you decide to steal all of the yellow mana on the board to fuel one of your yellow-colored spells and to prevent him from regenerating life. He casts a spell that siphons your yellow mana and gives it to him. You both go back and forth, retaliating against the other's strategy, until only one person is left.
The game is limited by your ability to play it. Not only does your chosen class dramatically effect your playstyle in the game, but so does your gear, often times changing how you play your character entirely.
Pro Good PvP implementation
The game supports PvP, where fighting an opponent who is just as smart as you can be challenging due to the great balance of play in multiplayer for evenly matched players. What is even better is that there are optional handicaps for matches between players that have different skill levels.
Pro Requires solving spatial and physics based puzzles using portals
The main mechanic of the game revolves around solving different puzzles using a handheld portal device - a device that can bend space and time to create a wormhole through which you can move.
Pro Humorous telling of a dark story
Portal is known for its humor. Even years after it's been out in the world people are still quoting and referencing it in everyday situations.
Pro The game leaves clues to a deeper story
Throughout both Portal games there are hints left in various forms that fill in more of the story, including information about Chell's personal history.
Pro Innovative gameplay
Portal has won multiple awards for innovative design. Using a first person view and portals that allow one to traverse a room through one placed in one location to the other placed in another location to solve puzzles was and still is a very unique game design.
Pro Created one of the most memorable characters in gaming history - GLaDOS
GLaDOS, or Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, is the main antagonist of Portal games. She is voiced by Ellen McLain with the voice later processed to sound closer to how a text-to-speech program would synthesize a voice.
GLaDOS initially functions as a guide to the player and is only later revealed as a manipulative, narcissistic, sinister and passive-aggressive character that wants to kill the protagonist.
GLaDOS is the main force that moves the humorous yet dark narrative of Portal series with her remarks being simultaneously hilarious and terrifying.
Pro Character-driven
Even though the only organic sentient being in this game is the player's character, this game features some of the most memorable and intriguing characters in fiction or in gameplay. GladOS obviously, but also the drone robots that sweet-talk the player to a sudden death (and then forgive you when you dismantle them), the clues left behind by former test subjects, the abandoned hints of what the lab used to be like. It tells a story without telling a story, and immerses you more than most other games can ever hope to achieve.
Pro Made people fall in love with an inanimate, virtual object
The game made people emotionally attach to The Weighted Companion Cube and feel uncomfortable when later forced to incinerate it.
Pro Merges first-person shooting mechanics with platforming and puzzle-solving
Portal uses an engine that was meant for a first person shooter and creates puzzles that need solved through various stage with the use of platforming. While not the very first game to merge platforming with and FPS the puzzle aspects make it unique in that no other game had done this specific combination yet.
Pro Making it halfway and completing unlocks new content
Getting to the halfway point in Portal will unlock challenge maps and finishing the main story will unlock advanced chambers.
Pro The sequel contains an AI powered by a potato
If that is not funny, then nothing is.
Cons
Con AI "luck" is unquestionably unbalanced
There are many instances that see the player questioning the insurmountable luck the AI often receives as it will skip obvious moves that any person would play that end up resulting in a match 4 extra turn when more tiles fall down, as if it knew that would happen. Sadly this can happen often and is how the game increases difficulty.
Con Somewhat short
Portal takes 2-3 hours to complete which means it can be completed in one sitting. This may not be enough game for the money for some people and should be considered before purchasing.
Con Portal mechanics not used much to their best ability
Certain parts of the game sees the player using portals to manipulate sentry guns that fire rockets in order to progress in that stage, Mechanics like this make for a really enjoyable way to manipulate ones environment but sadly are not used too often.
Con Outdated graphics
The game was released in 2007, making it somewhat of an older title, because of this the graphics will not be on par with modern releases.