I finished “Portal” yesterday and have to echo some of the excellent reviews it’s gotten.
Right off the bat, it comes as part of Valve’s “Orange Box” collection which also includes Half Life 2, HL2: Episodes One and Two, and Team Fortress 2 for the price of a single game, so you can’t really complain about value (and if you’ve already purchased HL2 and Episode One, you can “gift” your extra copies to a friend over Steam).
Portal’s essentially a first-person puzzle game where, rather than your standard FPS guns, you’re given a device that allows you to place portals in walls, ceilings or floors. You can create two portals at a time and going in one immediately brings you out the other. Early levels start simply with using portals to get from one place to another, but as you progress solutions start to involve things like using your momentum from jumping off a ledge into a portal on the floor to send you shooting sideways (and over a barrier) out of a portal in a wall. By the end there’s a sort of giddy thrill from doing things that are just wrong in three dimensions.
The game only takes a few hours to complete but I think that works to its advantage. There are extra “challenge” maps included if you want more puzzling, but the main game is kept trim and never feels like its being padded out.
The puzzles themselves are well done and not something I’ve seen in a game before, but what really elevates the game above most others is the detail that went into the setting and, in particular, the antagonist GLaDOS. Without giving too much away, GLaDOS’s computerized voice leads you through each level, with a bizarre mix of humour and (more so as the game progresses) menace. Never before has being invited to a party in your honour sounded so deadly.
If you’re even passingly interested in first-person shooters the Orange Box is a must-have. HL2 and its follow-on episodes raise the bar for standard FPS faire, Team Fortress 2 is an amazing multiplayer experience, and Portal is a classic out of left field.
The Cake is a Lie.
