[Review] Portal

[Warlock-]

 

When students from DigiPen showed off their project Narbacular Drop to a room full of Valve personell, they probably did not expect that they would not be hired, but given a budget to expand that idea into something as special as we see with Portal. It's quirky, clever, polished, and presented with a spark of a subtly evil mood that it's hard to enjoy the quick romp through Aperture Laboratories. The problem is that it is so quick. Players wanting to get their money's worth.

 

The main problem with the game is that it's so short. While what's there can be satisfying, we shot through the first 15 levels of the game in about 30 minutes with the last four taking up a bit over an hour. We really wish those first 15 missions had been squished into a couple of quick missions to teach the basics and then had the following 17 missions really up the ante. We know they can do it after playing some of their sadistic advanced versions of six of the levels from the game that (in most cases) are much more difficult than the originals. We would have liked to have seen more of that throughout the game rather than the very long string of basic tutorial type levels. The story is best left unspoiled (mostly because saying anything might give what little there is) but it is like a short story from a novelist. It's a piece of a bigger puzzle and one that while tiny is certainly entertaining as it goes. There are little clues here and there hinting at what you, an older Asian woman, are doing in Aperture Labs and even more clues on how this relates to the Half-Life universe.

Any and all information you'll receive in the experience comes from the computerized voice that you've likely heard in the trailers and previews. It's that voice that gives the game such personality. Some of the lines and jokes it cracks are synthetically deadpan and all the funnier for it. By the time you puzzle your way through all 19 challenges, you'll miss the strange disembodied companion you've had for the last couple of hours. It's not just the one computer voice that's so fun. The sound design, while minimal, is great. Turrets say stuff like "I do not hate you" after you drop them on their heads while the same muzak plays any time you wander past a clock radio. There's also something uniquely and strangely satisfying about the thoomp of the portal gun. You're not shooting at anyone or necessarily shooting a gun that requires the powerful sound, but this particular gun sound is pleasant and almost comforting in its quality.

While the main game is short, Portal does not only finish with one of the best credits songs ever created. After the story is done new challenge levels are unlocked. These extras are six levels that you've already played. The difference is that they have new challenges associated with them. You'll have to see if you can complete the puzzles in a certain amount of time, a minimum number of footsteps, or using only a certain number of portals. These challenges are really interesting because they make puzzles that were somewhat simple to figure out in a different way. You'll learn that the obvious way is definitely not the shortest and you'll bust your brain and become obsessive trying to figure out the best possible method. Finally, those same six challenges come in "advanced" mode which means they have been re-worked to be more difficult. And they are much, much more difficult. Not necessarily for being able to figure out the problems (though there are some brain benders) but for the increased need for timing and coordination that was not necessarily an issue without the changes to the level. There's a lot more dying and a lot more frustration, but also a sense of satisfaction when they're complete.

The idea behind Portal ends being being more brilliant than Portal itself. Regardless, we definitely had a lot of fun with what is there and appreciate the level of polish and thought that went into the presentation. We're definitely interested to see where Half-Life 2: Episode Three goes now that we've seen what the portal gun is capable of and how everything in Half-Life and this new character really fit together. We definitely recommend getting this with the Orange Box package rather than on its own.

You're probably here to read about Portal, Valve's first-person puzzle game about opening rifts in space to cross uncrossable obstacle courses. It's designed around one simple but mind-expanding idea: you can shoot a hole in any wall, and then another one somewhere else, and if you walk into one you'll come out of the other. Fire them side by side and you'll walk straight back into the room you just left. Fire them on the floor and ceiling and you'll fall through the same room at terminal velocity forever. The game grips you by the wrist and leads you briskly past the befuddling basics of these rifts, straight to the good stuff. Within a few short levels you are using orthogonal portals to translate your gravitational potential into lateral velocity and flinging yourself exhilaratingly over turrets and lethal slime. By cleverly lead your eye to the correct - yet patently impossible - solution, it swiftly teaches you to dazzling roster of lunatic tricks.

Portal is a magnificent puzzle game. The titillating wrongness of every solution and the wonky thinking required to get there make you feel like a space-folding genius, and yet you'll almost never get stuck. Soon you've learned so many ways to pervert the forces and spaces in any room that you can throw yourself through them, like a futuristic Prince of Persia with abilities more unlikely and wondrous by far.

 

The Verdict

For 20 dollars, it may be a little pricey for what & # Array; s there, but we certainly will not tell anybody not to buy Portal. We recommend picking this one up with the full Orange Box because it & # Array; s hard to say no to another peek into this awesome universe and it does fit together with Episode Two.

 

 

 

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