I feel i have to clarify why i picked Portal as an example of good puzzle mechanics. Thats because there are no good puzzles in RPG's or in adventure games. Very rarely have i seen smart, interesting puzzles in old adventures. And i played them all as a kid. But it was always a group effort. Five friends or more would come up with increasingly insane ideas to solve Monkey Island or Grim Fandango puzzles. That was actually the best part of those games. The friendships we'ed create trying to figure out some BS, unintuitive puzzle.
However these days the only game adventure game that did puzzles well is Resonance. There is a puzzle at one point when you come to laboratory door closed by a standard 10 digit keypad. When you examine the keypad you realize the digits 1,3,4 are a bit faded so they are most likely part of the password. You try out a combination only to realize the password is made up of 4 digits not 3. So one digit must be used twice. You search through the lab and find a broken down PC whose only working application is the Calculator. The Calculator is also kind of messed up except for displaying Pi correctly. Most people know that Pi is 3.14. Fewer people know Pi's 3rd decimal which is 1. So the password is obviously 3141.
The example above is a great puzzle. And it follows all the rules of the "fun" puzzle as figured out by Valve.
Sadly smart, interesting puzzles like the one above are almost never found in adventure games or RPG's.
Now please give me an example of a similarly intelligent puzzle in D:OS. Almost all are either pixel hunts or trial and error puzzles. Both types are horrible and should never ever be done by anyone ever again.
