You missed my point about the "new color scheme" thing, it's a common expression implying something that has been cheaply refurbished for the sake of looking new while it's actually not. In short, it's something like how you'd feel after playing every EA Sports NHL game back-to-back. People who have been playing games for many years, such as myself, often become very bored with seeing the same thing over and over in every game we play. Almost everything made nowadays is either a sequel or derivative.
Regarding the braindead-mouth-foaming Halo 3 fanboy reference, I wasn't specifically talking about you, this is a long thread and it's not the only one that's been made on the internet for the purpose of saying, "portal was meh". By and large, people who don't "get" portal are people who need things to be flashy and exciting. Other people who don't understand why it's good are ones who haven't considered how much they paid for it, or they haven't played games long enough to recognize something original when they see it, since every game still seems like something new to them.
Here are some of the things I think are good about Portal:
-Features real humor, not "fingerquotes wacky" as yahtzee put it, or poorly written, out-of-place typical game humor
-Central "gimmick" has never been done before (a portal gun)
-Features physics to a degree few games do, and does it well
-Has no significant bugs, unlike many other recent games
-Is the first puzzle game from a company known only for FPS, but it's well done which is a pleasant surprise
-Above all else, it's almost free
Was it easy? Sure. Does that actually mean anything in light of its quality and exceedingly low cost? No.
The argument isn't, "it's the best game ever", the argument is, "it's the best, most original $10 puzzle/FPS game", primarily by virtue of the fact that it's (one of) the only puzzle/fps hybrid(s). Portal is nowhere NEAR what I'd consider the "best" game overall. It's simply one of the most original and unexpectedly well-made ones in recent memory. It's like this, Valve has never produced something that wasn't a high-quality blockbuster, so when people heard they were working on a puzzle game, their reaction was something like your reaction might be if you heard that PopCap was making a hardcore FPS. Beyond this, it was also exceedingly well-made and polished, even if it was rather short and easy.
Basically, it can be summed up like this: What was the last first-person physics puzzle game you played? Now let me ask you, what was the last fps game you played that featured things you've never, ever seen before in another game?
(Since you don't seem to be familiar with common english expressions, no offense intended, my point above is: I can't think of another fp/physics puzzle game, and I also can't think of an FPS game that was original. So Portal was extremely original, which is something you only see very rarely.)
