The Cake is NOT a Lie

I finally got around to beating Portal today.

I had bought it pretty much straight after it came out, then I heard rumours that it was damn short so a few hours in (as in 2 or 3) I decided to put it aside so I could "savour" the experience.

In reality, I completely forgot about it and moved on to other games. Then today I felt compelled to try beat it.

Very shortly afterwards, I was listening to the ever so brilliant Still Alive and considering myself a very happy man.

Now that I'm looking back on everything, there was a lot of well-deserved hype for this game. But there are some problems with the common perception of this game that I don't really agree with.

Well, there's really only one problem I have.

People complained that the game is so damn short and I know I've made a bit of a point of it too, but I don't think that it's really an issue of length because the pacing, atmosphere and general gameplay is just pure fuckwin awesome so making it longer can tinker with the awesome. It does seem to have a small problem of appearing like an extended tutorial, considering the way the levels are staged in manner that seems to back that up, without really being a tutorial. Sort of a "do it yourself" tutorial. Weird, but it works.

On the plus side, looks like there's more to come, so I'm just thinking of this as the build up to the second one. But if the second one lacks GLaDOS or the various rat holes with "the cake is a lie" scrawled all over them in blood . . . or even a lack of Companion Cube, then there will be chaos, outrage and sheer bedlam!

There is one thing that really bugs me though.

Everyone seems to think that the cake is a lie.

I don't think the cake is a lie.

You may get *GIANT SPOILER* at the point you're meant to receive cake but pretty soon afterwards there is cake.