"In other words, Portal is fun but nothing more, but Passage is a memorable, touching experience and emotionally moving. Nick says memorable experience + emotionally moving > fun, so therefore, Passage > Portal. "

And I'd say he's wrong. At the end of the day, a game's value qua game is dependent on how fun it is (with a broad definition of fun). You could argue that Passage is better art than Portal, but I doubt anyone would say it's more fun.  He says that people will remember Passage longer than Portal. I doubt it (if only because not many people will ever hear of Passage), but I'll assume for the sake of argument that it's true. Even so, I'm willing to bet that in 35 years people would rather play Portal than Passage.

N'Gai: Why link to PlayThisThing instead of Grand Text Auto? And why the aggressive headline when he says he loves Portal, he just loves Passage more? And that the GTA article has nothing about indie vs. corporate games, much less corp games sucking?

Nick specifically says that Portal "is neat, and its design accomplishments and high polish are real." Passage is better because it has a more evident and thought-out effect on the people who play it.

In other words, Portal is fun but nothing more, but Passage is a memorable, touching experience and emotionally moving. Nick says memorable experience + emotionally moving > fun, so therefore, Passage > Portal.

But never, not once, does he say Portal, or corporate games, suck. If he attacks anything, it's the hype Portal received, specifically people saying that Portal was itself emotionally moving and had a message. It's far more an indictment of the response to Portal than of Portal or corporate games.