> Maybe you should base your sense of satisfaction on [...]
If senses like satisfaction were fully voluntarily controllable then arguably there would be no need for games in the first place. I feel there's generally more satisfaction from overcoming a well-designed concrete obstacle rather than self-hindering that accomplishes nothing in particular and that could've just been avoided. At the end of the day all challenges in games are artificial and avoidable, but some separation (like having to go into settings, enable cheats, then open dev console to enable godmode, rather than just having a godmode keybind) is good for tricking the brain.
That said, the challenge of the Portal games (outside of challenge modes) is almost entirely in the puzzles rather than fast reflexes, so I don't think a slow-mode would really take away from anything challenge-wise. I'd guess it was just a bit awkward with dialog, and simpler to design puzzles around not requiring fast reactions rather than introduce a new control. In comparison, something like yellow paint giving away the solution definitely would be detrimental, even if you could in theory ignore it.
If senses like satisfaction were fully voluntarily controllable then arguably there would be no need for games in the first place. I feel there's generally more satisfaction from overcoming a well-designed concrete obstacle rather than self-hindering that accomplishes nothing in particular and that could've just been avoided. At the end of the day all challenges in games are artificial and avoidable, but some separation (like having to go into settings, enable cheats, then open dev console to enable godmode, rather than just having a godmode keybind) is good for tricking the brain.
That said, the challenge of the Portal games (outside of challenge modes) is almost entirely in the puzzles rather than fast reflexes, so I don't think a slow-mode would really take away from anything challenge-wise. I'd guess it was just a bit awkward with dialog, and simpler to design puzzles around not requiring fast reactions rather than introduce a new control. In comparison, something like yellow paint giving away the solution definitely would be detrimental, even if you could in theory ignore it.