Holy fuck, you guys, I avoided this thread for weeks because I was afraid of spoilers, only to find that I missed a whole discussion on cutesy-ass language and the social acceptability thereof?!?!
Fuck you guys, seriously. In the ear hole.
I had never played Portal, until we got Portal 2 and Pedro convinced me to try co-op. I was so ashamed of how badly I sucked that I thought I should at least play the first few levels of the first one so I could learn the controls better, and then I got sucked into the story and now I'm halfway (??) through Portal 2.
I almost quit the first one for the reasons Cort mentioned. It is frustrating to know exactly what you're supposed to do but lack the hand-eye coordination to do it without retrying sixteen times in a row. I'm not a superstar gamer or anything, but I am definitely no greenhorn, and I had a lot of trouble getting things to line up right sometimes. The PC version was worse, though; playing 2 on the XBox is ten times easier. Also, 2 focuses more on the puzzles and less on getting the timing right, which is pleasant. More flying through the air at ridiculous speeds; less returning to previous save points. Win/win.
Nabu, if you like Fallout, you will like Portal. It is different, it feels more like candy, but it has a good story and more humor and the puzzles are not masquerading as side quests, they are honest-to-goodness spatial reasoning puzzles.
And it's hilarious. I LOL'd many times. And the voice acting is fantastic. I love to see games where they put a lot of thought into the graphics *and* the writing *and* the voice acting -- it's such a rare trifecta. But both Portal games have the hat trick.
Definitely play them in order. They are sort of short -- Google says about 4 hours for the first one, though I think it took me closer to five (split over 2 nights and one morning), and 2 is much longer -- I'm on my fourth hour or so and Pedro says I'm not quite half done. (But he might be lying.) Still, worth a play-through, especially if you already have the first one sitting around.