Review: Portal (spoilers)
Dec. 27th, 2007 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalSummary: Trapped inside the massive Aperture Science testing facility, our heroine Chell must outwit her passive/aggressive test monitor, GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) armed only with her wits and a gun that can rip open holes in space.
“We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one."
First, let me get this out of the way: This is the best damned game of the year. The game mechanic of the portal gun is innovative, topping the static “portals” and variable gravity of last year’s Prey. The humor is acid black, conveyed by GLaDOS’s deadpan delivery of various “warnings” (usually incomplete or massively late) of the hazards Chell must face. More importantly the puzzles, while in some cases requiring infuriatingly quick reflexes (especially Test Chamber 18) are solvable with the tools you’re given and the skills you acquire during the game’s early stages.
Clocking in at around three or four hours of gameplay, it also doesn’t wear out its welcome, which is important given that much of its appeal relies on humor, conveyed via GLaDOS and the disturbed scribbles on the walls from a previous escaped test subject (not to mention a hilarious PowerPoint presentation you can stumble across, showing the company-wide inferiority complex AS displays towards its rival, Black Mesa).
Gameplay itself revolves around the Portal Gun. Aim at a blank wall or other flat surface (including floors and ceilings) and fire using the mouse button and you open up a portal. Use the other mouse button to fire again open a second portal. The two spaces, no matter how far apart, are now connected, allowing you to walk through the portal as easily as a doorway.
"Spectacular, you appear to understand how a portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does not."
Like chess or go, the portal gun operates by simple rules that can lead to massively complex tactics. Menaced by a Buddy Turret? Fire a portal into the ceiling a drop a Weighted Storage Cube ™ on top of it. Or fire a portal behind it to sneak in and push it over. Or fire a portal below it, fire another above it, then watch it accelerate to terminal velocity before you fire again and send it smashing into a wall. Need to reach a high place that doesn’t have a surface you stick a portal? Fire into the ceiling, then open a portal in the floor to drop through, then fire again at the opposite wall to ‘fling’ yourself to where you need to go (the game ignores minor matters such as stopping after accelerating yourself like this. The in-game rationalization is that you’re wearing implanted “spring heels” that protect you from taking falling damage.)
"That thing you burnt up isn't important to me. Not any more. It's the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit; it makes shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero."
But that all pales when compared to GLaDOS. GLaDOS, who during the course of the game morphs from calm, if untrustworthy, test monitor, to a lonely little AI after you escape into the bowels of the facility, to a parody of every nightmare ex-girlfriend as she alternates between berating you and demanding you do what you tell her to. Though the final “fight” is really just a timed series of puzzles (complicated by you being shot at by an automated rocket launcher with very poor aim), it has real tension as you realize GLaDOS has gone completely bonkers.
Oh, and the fabled Weighted Companion Cube? With the little pink hearts? That you have to kill? Don’t get too worked up, it’s only around for one Test Chamber anyway.
“We hope your brief detention in the relaxation vault has been a pleasant one."
First, let me get this out of the way: This is the best damned game of the year. The game mechanic of the portal gun is innovative, topping the static “portals” and variable gravity of last year’s Prey. The humor is acid black, conveyed by GLaDOS’s deadpan delivery of various “warnings” (usually incomplete or massively late) of the hazards Chell must face. More importantly the puzzles, while in some cases requiring infuriatingly quick reflexes (especially Test Chamber 18) are solvable with the tools you’re given and the skills you acquire during the game’s early stages.
Clocking in at around three or four hours of gameplay, it also doesn’t wear out its welcome, which is important given that much of its appeal relies on humor, conveyed via GLaDOS and the disturbed scribbles on the walls from a previous escaped test subject (not to mention a hilarious PowerPoint presentation you can stumble across, showing the company-wide inferiority complex AS displays towards its rival, Black Mesa).
Gameplay itself revolves around the Portal Gun. Aim at a blank wall or other flat surface (including floors and ceilings) and fire using the mouse button and you open up a portal. Use the other mouse button to fire again open a second portal. The two spaces, no matter how far apart, are now connected, allowing you to walk through the portal as easily as a doorway.
"Spectacular, you appear to understand how a portal affects forward momentum, or to be more precise, how it does not."
Like chess or go, the portal gun operates by simple rules that can lead to massively complex tactics. Menaced by a Buddy Turret? Fire a portal into the ceiling a drop a Weighted Storage Cube ™ on top of it. Or fire a portal behind it to sneak in and push it over. Or fire a portal below it, fire another above it, then watch it accelerate to terminal velocity before you fire again and send it smashing into a wall. Need to reach a high place that doesn’t have a surface you stick a portal? Fire into the ceiling, then open a portal in the floor to drop through, then fire again at the opposite wall to ‘fling’ yourself to where you need to go (the game ignores minor matters such as stopping after accelerating yourself like this. The in-game rationalization is that you’re wearing implanted “spring heels” that protect you from taking falling damage.)
"That thing you burnt up isn't important to me. Not any more. It's the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit; it makes shoes for orphans. Nice job breaking it, hero."
But that all pales when compared to GLaDOS. GLaDOS, who during the course of the game morphs from calm, if untrustworthy, test monitor, to a lonely little AI after you escape into the bowels of the facility, to a parody of every nightmare ex-girlfriend as she alternates between berating you and demanding you do what you tell her to. Though the final “fight” is really just a timed series of puzzles (complicated by you being shot at by an automated rocket launcher with very poor aim), it has real tension as you realize GLaDOS has gone completely bonkers.
Oh, and the fabled Weighted Companion Cube? With the little pink hearts? That you have to kill? Don’t get too worked up, it’s only around for one Test Chamber anyway.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 07:23 pm (UTC)"Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record. Followed by death. Good luck!"
As for the rocket launcher, it in fact has very good aim, if you'd just lie down and stay still like you're asked to.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 07:59 pm (UTC)