To the poster above: I think you’ve misunderstood the intention of the article slightly. It is not trying to list funny games, but is exploring why comedy does and does not work within games, supporting this with views from industry professionals. I don’t think that there is any implication that Portal, specifically, is an unworthy comedy game. Also, all the reasons you have outlined suggest portal is a well-balanced and “comic” game, but in no way groundbreaking or defining. You have simply reiterated some of the points in the main article, citing Portal as an example.

1) Like the original Secret of Monkey Island, it began as a relatively straight-faced game about puzzle solving. The humor first emerged when someone on the team was messing around and decided to give the character(s) some funny lines.

2) Not including the humor would not have affected the basic gameplay of puzzle-solving, flinging, and dealing with turrets. In fact, the humor needed the foundation of the rest of the game-in-progress to exist in the first place. If the team had started with “make this funny” it would have been very different. Compare the first two Secret of Monkey Island games to every Monkey Island that came after.

3) Rather than just adding distracting “funny” lines, the humor is used to enhance the game in many ways: justifying the ridiculous situation the main character is in by having the computer be an (entertaining) sadistic loony, hinting at the back-story, driving the current story forward, expanding GLaDOS’s character, and rewarding the player for progress made (the *player* doesn’t care about the cake, but might chuckle at a cake-based joke). The funny makes the player care, and if a line doesn’t work they got rid of it in playtesting.

4) In addition to the scripted funny, there’s plenty of opportunities for (a phrase I just came up with) Dynamic Slapstick. There are plenty of opportunities to drop cubes, accidentally misdirect a lethal energy ball into yourself, fall into a toxic pit, be shot by a turret, not quite dodge a rocket in time, and so forth. The scripted humor puts the player in a mood to chuckle at their own pratfalls and try again instead of just being frustrated and giving up.

There’s also the satisfaction of sabotaging cameras, violently dispatching turrets via high speed objects and other means, finding creative ways to dispose of the radios and other “little victories” that can happen any time the right props are available. In the case of the cameras and the turrets there are several randomly-determined lines that reinforce the behavior by rewarding the player with a spoken punchline; so there is some reliance on the script but the timing is player driven.