I will not lie by telling you all I didn't created any expectations for it because... the hype I created around this game before actually playing it, was immense. The strongest factor that influenced my hype, is how highly rated this game is, considering how popular it is.

There is always a ratio between popularity and rating because the most common scenario is: A game is tremendously popular and even being really good, the amount of people who can vote and review for this game drastically affects the overall rating of it and because of that, generally speaking, popular games tends to have mixed reviews, The point I'm trying to bring here is: The more popular a games gets, the higher is the probability of it not being well scored.

So, for a game launched a decade ago and being one of the most played games on Steam, achieving such a thing of being immensely popular and still holding a high position in the ranking of the most well-rated games of all time, is definitely not an easy task. Honestly I believe it's very hard actually. It's a thing that definitely catched my curiosity but I didn't tried it for years thinking "I guess it's good but not that masterpiece everyone keeps calling it." I was expecting a good game but not an awesome one. Turns out it went way beyond I expected.

The mechanic itself it's incredible, fascinating and unique... and there is no expiration date because I played it in 2021 and even after playing almost every kind of game, I still got fascinated by it. After a few minutes playing it, I felt the atmosphere was a bit unsettling. I didn't paid much attention to it in the beginning because I was blind by the portals mechanics itself. Through the chambers, my only friend seems to be an Artificial Inteligence who sporadically tell you some random informations and... jokes. Despite the fact you play with an I.A speaking to you the entire time, I felt the atmosphere was still unsettling in a mysterious way.

Everytime I solved a puzzle, I spent a while analyzing what I had to do, I always got the feeling of "Damn, that was so obvious how I didn't see that earlier." That was me after spenting 30 minutes trying to figure out where I should place a portal in one of the levels, then feeling so stupid after finding out the answer.
This game is definitely a memorable experience. Not a game that you play then completely forget about it after a few days. It's good in a way if someone ask me a recommendation, I would consider this game as one of the options!