First person puzzlers

Logan mentioned L.A. Gamespace's Experimental Game Pack 01 in the latest The Tek, and I really recommend checking it out. If you're a fan of Portal, you'll find a lot to love in Depth. I don't want to give away too much about it if you haven't played it yet, but I can say that the main gameplay mechanic had that same "wow" factor as the first time you walk through a portal you've created yourself. 

Aside from Portal and Depth, there are a few other First Person Puzzlers (is that a genre now?) that are worth checking out.

The Ball is definitely on the action side of First Person Puzzle games. Using a gigantic stone ball that you can push and pull towards you, you get to face off against a number of mummies, giant lizards, and even a zombified gorilla. The puzzles presented by the Ball are great, and you start to develop a strange attachment to it, just like Portal's Companion Cube. It's $9.99 on Steam, GOG and Green Man, and comes highly recommended for mummy-smashing action.

QUBE is another first person puzzle game, where the main gameplay mechanic is your ability to manipulate different cubes to get to your goal. Honestly I haven't put as much time into it as I have the others, but that's mostly because of I frustrating glitch I had with the Steam cloud losing my progress. Check it out, again $9.99 pretty much everywhere. There's a demo too, so you can be a cheapskate.

What do you guys think of First Person Puzzle games as an emerging genre? Are there any that I've missed?

I read through the post and don't know of any game to mention.

Some MMORPGs, however, have a puzzle element to them -- from something simple as a jump puzzle, to my favorite, instance based on puzzles. The MMOs I'm thinking of are Guild Wars 2 (which has jump puzzles from what I hear, I've never played) and LotRO (which I have). LotRO has a instance cluster that was dedicated to riddles and puzzles (three if I remember correctly).

Now, I kinda just remembered, most MMOs are third person, so yeah...

That's true. I haven't played many MMOs but I'm looking forward to Wildstar. Hopefully there are a few puzzle-type elements to that too.

Id definitely say its a niche genre that was made Popular by the Portal hype, you missed Quantum Conundrum and Antichhamber btw. Some more puzzle based full titles or more organic utilisation of puzzles in other games would be awesome, for most devs ``puzzles´´ seem to mean showing the player a switch or crank in a cutscene and then having them use it to open a door.....

Thanks! I knew there were a few more that I hadn't played. And yeah, it's frustrating when a game gets to the "puzzle" part. It's time to slow down and figure stuff out. What do these switches do?

 

For me figuring out the puzzles in Portal 2 co-op were my favourite part. Just being on the floor looking around, trying to figure out where I'm going to have to land after flying out of a wall portal is great. The worst is trying to explain to your co-op partner what to do and where to throw your portals.

Thanks! I knew there were a few more that I hadn't played. And yeah, it's frustrating when a game gets to the "puzzle" part. It's time to slow down and figure stuff out. What do these switches do?

 

For me figuring out the puzzles in Portal 2 co-op were my favourite part. Just being on the floor looking around, trying to figure out where I'm going to have to land after flying out of a wall portal is great. The worst is trying to explain to your co-op partner what to do and where to throw your portals.