Beating the Backlog: Portal (2007)

Look at all these unplayed video games I own. Some of them, purportedly, are among the greatest games of all time. Let's beat those games.

Rank: #1 of 1

Time to beat: 3-4 hours.

A blue portal allows you or an object you're carrying to move through many solid surfaces. A second orange portal spits out any object or person who first enters the blue portal. Your player-character can jump.

The set-up thus, is straightforward, the puzzles not-so-tough. But the game's simple physics model makes movement a joy, and though the writing is sardonic in a way that the internet latched onto overly hard, and then beat into the ground, it's much cleverer at the end, than it is at the beginning. And it's capped off by a truly wonderful end-credits surprise.

A classic of the Web 2.0 era.