The infuriating thing about writing about Portal like this is that telling you why it is such a masterpiece and how it exceeded my expectations many times over might very well deprive you some small part of the experience I have just enjoyed. I should note that I often avoid exposing myself to too much information regarding a game I am interested in prior to playing, and as such I only knew Portal had become a hugely and nearly unanimously well received puzzle game with an innovative new mechanic. And for a little while, it appeared that was all it was, and I had to wonder how a short (I think it took me four hours) puzzle game had gotten quite so much praise, even if it was well executed.
So before you read any more, go play Portal, all of it. You’ll thank me.
Good, wasn’t it?
The portal mechanic is beautify simple, and the game does a great job of letting the player learn the applications of the portal gun. The player, in the course of the training section of the game, will be made to experiment with all possible applications of the portal gun, such as setting both portals on the floor or one on a ceiling and another on a wall, to make them understand the physics of passing through. By passing through the portal, you will carry on whatever momentum you had whilst immediately having gravity shift relative direction. I’m not sure that really covers it but I think it’s partially because it’s hard to explain that the game makes you use the gun in all these ways to come to understand it for yourself. It also has a very cool graphical effect, you can look through a portal to the destination side, and line them up to look at yourself or look into infinity. It amazes me that you can so seamlessly move through the portals, looking at the area on the other side as you go in, there is not so much has a flicker I could detect from it being rendered through the portal to you actually being on the other side.
To return to the subject of player training, it is something the game excels at. The first portion of the game, in the Enrichment Centre proper, gradually forces the player not only to use each necessary skill, but often to accociate them with objects. You quickly learn that a big red floor button usally needs a box placed on it if you can’t remain on it yourself, and protruding sections of wall come to be associated with the fling manuveur. Also whilt training, each room opens with a sign indicating the kinds of skills that will be required, with other signs showing as needed. For example, a trickly later puzzle has a massive hall with a physical barrier ahead, with a field over it so you can’t just make a portal to the other side. But a two-step diagram on the floor here illustrates the fling move, making you look up at the panel often used for them. Even after escaping from the training centre, the user gets some breathing space to learn what new surfaces the gun can be used on, and learn things like how it can be shot through chain link fences.
I can think of only two places where I felt stuck. One called for me to press a small button through a portal without passing all the way through (which would cause me to fall to death) which is not something I had ever seen any kind of clue or prior training for. Further, on doing so I found I had to do so with excellent timing and very quickly replace the portals to redirect a bouncing energy ball into the door that the button opens very briefly. I suppose it was as good a place as any to learn to use the button, it wasn’t truely time critical, but it took me a while to even notice the button, placed as it was facing the wall you had to cast a portal onto to press it. Could have used something to draw the eye.
The other time called for me to redirect a rocket from another room into a glass tube to make a box fall out. I could find no prompts to do this, had no prior indication it was even possible to break the tubes, or that I could get a box by doing so. To my shame, I went to GameFAQs on that one. I think part of the problem is that on leaving many sections of the game you pass through a field that disintegrates items you should not have and resets the portals, so I got used to forgetting what had gone on more than a room or two ago (In this case the rocket launching robot).
What makes the game great beside the portal mechanic is the atmosphere and black humour. Without seeing a single other person, you find clues to the existence of other test subjects like yourself, like their hiding places and the scrawled hints and directions (often made to mimick the centre’s own directional signs, speaking of the escapee’s state of mind) but at the same time, you feel very alone, it looks like these other subjects are long gone, and this is compounded by the observation areas that can be seen through distorted windows, clearly devoid of life. This sense of isolation, coupled with having only the GladDOS AI and her security cameras for company gives a sense of paranoia about why this test is being conducted by a computer apparently of her own will. Looking at Chell, her slightly messy hair and orange jumpsuit makes her look as much like a prisoner as a test subject.
This brings us to GlaDOS, the real star of the game, hilarious, but a bit frightening. It becomes apparent very quickly that she isn’t “quite right”, with her warning of overexposure to a button and telling the player outragious and obvious lies. Initially things can be passed off as ‘eccentricity’ or a weird sense of humour, but as the game goes on she seems to start trying to torture the player to no apparent end, trying to personify the famous Companion Cube before making you destroy it. Even then, it could all be part of the test, until she attempts to feed you to a furnace, when there can be no doubt she, in as far as it is possible for a computer to be, is insane. After the escape her, she starts to sound desperate, still making increasing insane cake-based promises and making childish threats and pleas. She is one of the best written characters I have come across in a video game, and a great example of how well a character can be realised without learning any of their background prior to the events of the game. Special mention must go to the little sentry turrets. Their sweet, polite dialogue and almost cute appearance makes you feel a little sorry for them, especially when GlaDOS admonishes you for sending them to “android hell”.
Music is used sparingly, usually to add tension to already time-sensitive events. One favourite use of mine is when the music starts as it becomes apparent that GlaDOS means to kill you. As well as adding tension, it made me feel a sense of finality, like this was the end of the game and ll I could do was wait for whatever happened. This made it more satisfying when I saw the way to escape, gave it a certain extra feeling of triumph.
Praise should also be given for the attention to detail, both in ensuring a player can’t get trapped or stuck without a key item, and can not make life to easy for themselves. The game detects the loss of a storage cube and drops a new one, there are the fields that block and reset the portal gun to restrict where portals are made and from where. It impressed me that they created a specific death sound bite for the turret robots when you disintegrate on by taking it through the field. There also plenty of visual details, like the cut phone chord in GlaDOS’s chamber, and the automated slide show about Black Mesa, which gave me a really cool feeling of realisation that Portal takes place in the Half Life continuity.
Graphically the game carries a great sense of aesthetic, starting in the clean, sterile Enrichment Centre and progressing into the dark, dingy maintenance areas that are brilliantly made to look like places you just aren’t meant to see. The contrast is hammered home shortly after to escape the training section, when the first set of stairs you try to go up immediately falls apart from disrepair.
So that’s Portal. It’s only a few hours long, but that’s more a case of it not overstaying it’s welcome, I don’t think you would want to feel at the mercy of GlaDOS for too long, and being a puzzle game for the most part means the appeal might wear off if it went too long and started to repeat similar puzzles. If you didn’t play it when I told you too I hope you will go do so, everyone should if you ask me, if only to enjoy the superbly silly ending.
Oh and I got Team Fortress 2 and the HL2 Episodes in there too. That’s nice. I have played a little TF2 so far, I’m sure I will have more to say on it later. But after Portal alone the Orange Box has proven excellent value so far.
