Portal Review

Valve, developer of some of the best games ever made for the PC, released its Orange Box today. The new titles included in the Orange Box are Halflife 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2. I had the package pre-ordered so I have been playing Team Fortress 2 for the past month, but the entire time I have been looking forward to both of the other titles.

Portal is the first title I played, and does not disappoint. Just like other Valve titles, Portal has been polished to a mirror sheen. They clearly have done everything in their power to make the game as appealing as possible. The game consists of 11 single player chapters, 6 chapters of "advanced chambers", and 6 chapters of "challenge maps". The 6 "advanced chambers" are simply chapters 5-10 of the original campaign tweaked for harder difficulty. The "challenge maps" are the "advanced chambers" but with time constraints, step constraints, and portal constraints. In all it took me 2 hours to beat all 11 chapters. I am sure it will take sufficiently longer to master the "advanced chambers" and "challenge maps". The game also includes commentary for every single player chapter, if you are interested in that sort of thing.

Portal is a single-player only game. The campaign is very refreshing both in gameplay and narrative. As I am sure all of you know, the new addition with Portal is the Portal gun. The portal gun allows you to create portals between two points that anything can go through. Crates, energy balls, momentum, you... all these things will go through the portal. The only thing that cannot go through is another round from the portal gun. The other limitation of the portal gun is where it can create a portal. It would seem that you can only create a portal on concrete looking textures.

The puzzles basically consist of doing a combination of a few basic goals: getting energy balls into energy receptacles, and pushing down a number of buttons simultaneously. Each level is separated by an elevator, and the final goal of every chapter is to get to the next elevator.

For a puzzle game it is not as difficult as it could have been. I found that the parts I got hung up on the most easily were sections where I was literally not "seeing" where I needed to go next. Meaning, I would be scanning the area, and miss a tiny little object suspended by the ceiling, or the sign of a portal-able wall through a revolving fan. All in all though, it should be fairly easy for an average gamer to cruise through the regular campaign.

The last thing I want to talk about is the narrative. If you guys are like me, I am sure you have watched a bunch of trailers for portal, and gotten all hyped up about it. The trailers make it seem like the game has a very unique feel, which it does, and a happy go lucky attitude. The happy go lucky attitude is only half true. Portal is eerie. As you play the game an AI computer instructs you on how different gameplay dynamics work, and also just gives commentary on your progress. The AI is creepy... really creepy. Given, it is also funny, but... MOSTLY creepy. Also, because all you have is the portal gun, which can only do damage indirectly, you tend to feel very vulnerable.

Portal is a great game and makes a fine bullet point for the Orange Box set. The individual selling price is $19.95. Whether or not that is worth it is up for debate. As I said, the core gameplay only lasts approximately 2 hours. I look forward to seeing how the new character introduced in Portal ties in with the rest of the Halflife story.