Portal: Reivew
Part two of my review of The Orange Box starts with Portal (My review of Team Fortress 2 is here).
Portal is the first game out of Valve that isn't a true first-person shooter. While still having a lot more in common with the FPS genre, this title is a spacial puzzle game using the Source engine.
The spacial puzzles involve transporting yourself from one part of the test room to another. Throughout the title, you are given one tool to accomplish this task: A portal gun or tool. This tool can shoot out a blue and an orange portal. Walk into the blue portal, exit out the orange one. More importantly, the portals preserve inertia which is key to solve a good portion of the puzzles.
This history of this title starts out at DigiPen in Washington state. A group of students there developed a title called Narbacular Drop as a thesis. The story goes that the team showed the piece to Valve staff who hired them almost instantly. Portal is the natural successor to Narbacular Drop, but only in the idea of portals. The game is builds a closer relationship with the general Half Life story arc. While it's not required for the user to be familiar with Half Life in order to understand the complete story arc, there are direct connections between the two that simply add to Half Life, rather than the other way around.
The game play is very unique and rewarding in almost all parts of the game. A lot of care was taken in level design to teach and reiterate concepts of the game in order to build the user up the knowledge of working with puzzles. Almost reaching a point where they just about dumb it town slightly too much, but snaps back to challenging but not stupid impossible. While there's death involved in the game, respaning is very forgiving. Besides restarting from a particular point in the room, there are no other penalties to death besides not accomplishing the task. In addition, falling from great heights to a solid floor won't kill you (unless you touch the obvious poisoned floor). This is done via a plot device where the protagonist has a leg apparatus that absorbs all shock.
The length of the game is rather short, but with the larger picture making the size OK. Besides being bundled with the Orange Box, Portal is leanding it self out for others to create levels using the SDK. While not released yet, I'm certain we'll see some very interesting projects from this, thus making Portal having more value in the long-run.
The plot and characters in the game really add a quality to the game which make it more than a puzzle game. As I mentioned, there are obvious references to the Half Life world towards the end, but these references are minor to the game itself. The protagonist you play is nameless and virtually unknown besides some deductive reasoning with the story of Half Life 2. What's interesting is a plot device that is completely driven by the user: The physical appearance of the protagonist. In the start of the game, the protagonist wakes in a glass room inside a room. You can not see yourself, and a computer voice known as GLaDOS. Eventually you are given full access of the portal gun. At any point in the game, the player can arrange portals to act as a mirror:
But the show stopper is GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) who is voiced by Ellen McLain (with heavy post-processing). This computer voice is very distinctive from the game's trailer and continues to make the game all that more enjoyable. The obvious antagonist of the title, her roll is to facilitate the 'tests' in which the protagonist goes though, taunting her on with the promise of cake at the end of the test. However, there are some obvious slips in her statements such as "After the test is done, you will be missed." and "You will be baked; Then there will be cake." GLaDOS is cherry in her statements, even when stating fatal hazards of a given situation.
I also need to mention the gun turrets as characters. These turrets provide the same functionality and behavior as the Half Life 2 turrets, but are redesigned with a sort of Apple made feel and a voice chip that is 'pleasant' in their dialogue. Soft voices that state their current mode "Searching" "Target Found" and when you eventually destroy them "I don't blame you."
As you progress in the game, you'll find various caches where others have attempted to survive the tests and places squabbles on the wall such as "The cake is a lie" and other ominous sayings with the nature of the situation. Thus I introduce the third character, the unknown author(s) of statements of previous test subjects. Never seen or heard from, the only remnants of them are the writings on walls. While adding suspicion to the situation, this character is used more as a plot device to point players in the right direction to progress in the level, rather than providing concrete plot content. I have to say I was expecting more in this light.
Beyond the game content itself, this is an opportunity for Valve to branch out of the FPS genre of games and thus expand their market for not only their own games but for the Steam platform itself. This is the one game out of the Valve catalogue where people who don't like FPS games would play. However, it gets lost in the sea of FPS games. I'd be interested to see how Valve starts to create titles in the future with this in mind.
Recommend the game? Certainly! I wouldn't give it to my mother as some of the puzzles require a lot of quick reaction, but for the general reading list on this LJ, I recommend.
Portal is the first game out of Valve that isn't a true first-person shooter. While still having a lot more in common with the FPS genre, this title is a spacial puzzle game using the Source engine.
The spacial puzzles involve transporting yourself from one part of the test room to another. Throughout the title, you are given one tool to accomplish this task: A portal gun or tool. This tool can shoot out a blue and an orange portal. Walk into the blue portal, exit out the orange one. More importantly, the portals preserve inertia which is key to solve a good portion of the puzzles.
This history of this title starts out at DigiPen in Washington state. A group of students there developed a title called Narbacular Drop as a thesis. The story goes that the team showed the piece to Valve staff who hired them almost instantly. Portal is the natural successor to Narbacular Drop, but only in the idea of portals. The game is builds a closer relationship with the general Half Life story arc. While it's not required for the user to be familiar with Half Life in order to understand the complete story arc, there are direct connections between the two that simply add to Half Life, rather than the other way around.
The game play is very unique and rewarding in almost all parts of the game. A lot of care was taken in level design to teach and reiterate concepts of the game in order to build the user up the knowledge of working with puzzles. Almost reaching a point where they just about dumb it town slightly too much, but snaps back to challenging but not stupid impossible. While there's death involved in the game, respaning is very forgiving. Besides restarting from a particular point in the room, there are no other penalties to death besides not accomplishing the task. In addition, falling from great heights to a solid floor won't kill you (unless you touch the obvious poisoned floor). This is done via a plot device where the protagonist has a leg apparatus that absorbs all shock.
The length of the game is rather short, but with the larger picture making the size OK. Besides being bundled with the Orange Box, Portal is leanding it self out for others to create levels using the SDK. While not released yet, I'm certain we'll see some very interesting projects from this, thus making Portal having more value in the long-run.
The plot and characters in the game really add a quality to the game which make it more than a puzzle game. As I mentioned, there are obvious references to the Half Life world towards the end, but these references are minor to the game itself. The protagonist you play is nameless and virtually unknown besides some deductive reasoning with the story of Half Life 2. What's interesting is a plot device that is completely driven by the user: The physical appearance of the protagonist. In the start of the game, the protagonist wakes in a glass room inside a room. You can not see yourself, and a computer voice known as GLaDOS. Eventually you are given full access of the portal gun. At any point in the game, the player can arrange portals to act as a mirror:
But the show stopper is GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) who is voiced by Ellen McLain (with heavy post-processing). This computer voice is very distinctive from the game's trailer and continues to make the game all that more enjoyable. The obvious antagonist of the title, her roll is to facilitate the 'tests' in which the protagonist goes though, taunting her on with the promise of cake at the end of the test. However, there are some obvious slips in her statements such as "After the test is done, you will be missed." and "You will be baked; Then there will be cake." GLaDOS is cherry in her statements, even when stating fatal hazards of a given situation.
I also need to mention the gun turrets as characters. These turrets provide the same functionality and behavior as the Half Life 2 turrets, but are redesigned with a sort of Apple made feel and a voice chip that is 'pleasant' in their dialogue. Soft voices that state their current mode "Searching" "Target Found" and when you eventually destroy them "I don't blame you."
As you progress in the game, you'll find various caches where others have attempted to survive the tests and places squabbles on the wall such as "The cake is a lie" and other ominous sayings with the nature of the situation. Thus I introduce the third character, the unknown author(s) of statements of previous test subjects. Never seen or heard from, the only remnants of them are the writings on walls. While adding suspicion to the situation, this character is used more as a plot device to point players in the right direction to progress in the level, rather than providing concrete plot content. I have to say I was expecting more in this light.
Beyond the game content itself, this is an opportunity for Valve to branch out of the FPS genre of games and thus expand their market for not only their own games but for the Steam platform itself. This is the one game out of the Valve catalogue where people who don't like FPS games would play. However, it gets lost in the sea of FPS games. I'd be interested to see how Valve starts to create titles in the future with this in mind.
Recommend the game? Certainly! I wouldn't give it to my mother as some of the puzzles require a lot of quick reaction, but for the general reading list on this LJ, I recommend.