Building comparison
head to head
PortalvsThe Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Neither is simply harder - they are hard in different places. Portal demands more execution; The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition demands more variance.
Portal
Optimization · Pure Optimization
The portal-gun puzzle game whose solutions are everything.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Optimization · Pure Optimization
Lateral-thinking puzzle solving that converges to a walkthrough once solutions are known.
Portal leans Optimization (Pure Optimization); The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition leans Optimization (Pure Optimization).
PortalThe Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Axis by axis
Execution4 vs 0
Portal leans clearly harder on execution.
Portal
Portal placement timing modest.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Pointing and clicking has no physical ceiling
Reads0 vs 0
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Portal
No adversary modeling player.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Insult swordfighting is scripted dialogue lookup, not prediction
Variance0 vs 3
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition leans clearly harder on variance.
Portal
Deterministic chambers; no randomness.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Puzzle solutions are hidden information until discovered
Optimization8 vs 6
Portal leans clearly harder on optimization.
Portal
Pure puzzle-solving optimization.
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Once solutions are known the game is fully solved
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.