From the people who bought you Half Life and Counter Strike
comes Portal. A first person shooter/puzzler. Running on a similar engine to Half Life 2,
Portal sees you take control of an unnamed female character instead of Half
Life’s hero (Gordon Freeman) in a bid to escape a laboratory which seems completely
deserted all apart from the friendly computer system.
You wake from your slumber to find yourself in a sealed
chamber, you can’t recall how or why you got there but something doesn’t quite
feel right. The computer (called GlaDOS)
releases you from the chamber and you proceed ahead, it feels like you’re being
watched as you follow a seemingly predetermined path, but why?
As you progress you become the proud owner of a Portal Gun
which has the cool feature of being able to create a worm hole between two
points in space. Want to get across that
dangerous looking chasm? Simply shoot an
exit portal across to the other side and then an entrance portal next to you,
then simply walk through it and hey presto, you’re there.
Later on you are presented with much more challenging rooms
to negotiate, it could be using momentum and accurate Portal positioning to
reach higher up levels or out of reach items, if you walk through a Portal
slowly you’ll come through the exit side slowly, but if you fall at speed into
a Portal you’ll fly out of the exit a nifty rate. Then you could be guiding lethal balls of
electricity around the place, in and out of Portals so that you can restore
power to another part of the level. Maybe
you’ll have to destroy some sentry gun robots, but with no weapon you’ll have
to improvise. See that storage cube, if
it fell through a Portal onto the head of said robot, maybe it would knock it
over? It could be any of those, all at
the same time or something completely different, you really don’t know what to
expect from one level to the next.
To start with the computer gives you advice on how to get
through each room/level, but as time goes on she/it leaves you to your own
devices, watching you via the security cameras analyzing your progress. Do anything wrong and you’ll be told off, do
it correctly and you’ll be congratulated, why it’s getting you to complete
these more and more elaborate and dangerous tasks is still unknown, but it sure
is fun.
The actual puzzle solving in Portal feels very old school
reminding me of classic games such as Lemmings and Breakout, but the 3D first
person perspective and Worm-holing make it feel so modern and up to date.
What I haven’t mentioned so far is the atmosphere and
narrative. It’s so hard to tell you how the
isolation and spookiness of being in these laboratory environments comes across
in game, the cameras and watch room windows all suggest people are watching you
constantly, but they aren’t showing themselves.
Why are they leaving this computer to talk to me you keep thinking to yourself? The regular chatter both friendly and not so
friendly from the computer really does tell the story as you play and it’s becomes
so engrossing. Even though your
character does not reply you’ll find yourself talking back at GlaDOS, as if it
was there in your living room with you.
The game itself is fairly short, it took me about six hours
to complete first time through, but subsequent play troughs can include specially
recorded developer commentary or an increased difficulty/time limit. This is stunning entry into Valve’s already
great line up and really has reintroduced puzzle games back into the 21st
Century.
Graphically this game is very impressive, the locations are
detailed and do vary as you get towards the end. Whilst there aren’t hordes of enemies running
towards you with guns or views of sunny forests or lakes, you can’t but
appreciate the attention to detail and neat touches. The technical achievements of the Portal worm
holing is amazing, being able to see the environment and relative positioning
of it through a Portal as well as being able to travel and carry items through
is brilliant and has to be seen to be believed.
Portal is available on Steam or is bundled in The Orange Box, a compilation of
brilliant games from Valve. I highly
recommend Portal itself as well as The Orange Box if you’ve never purchased any
of Valve’s games before.