I was promised cake; good games come in small packages
Ok, so I have to admit that I’m rather behind on the game with this one. Everyone else played Valves lil tech demo turned cult game a long time ago. It wasn’t until only recently that I spotted it on XBox Live and decided to download it for a test play.
It only took me a little while before I decided to shell out the Microsoft Points to buy the full game.
At it’s base, Portal is a curious little thing. It’s probably best explained as a First Person Puzzler. You wake up in a small chamber, and quickly find that you are a test subject, testing out a brand new portal device. Quickly learning all the things you you need to know, you embark on more and more complicated tests that involve opening portals from point A to point B and using them to rather unique advantage.
It’s a rather hard game to explain, other than to say it’s rather cool, even if rather short.
I’m sure no one else is old enough to even remember this, but it’s almost rather impossibly this-way-is-up and dizzyingly weird layouts had me recalling an old c64 game called Deactivators. The Goblin King from Labyrinth has nothing over the orientations in this game.
Other than the addictive use of the portal device and the not tooo hard puzzles you need to solve with it, the true beauty of the game is it’s atmosphere, I think. Where you start as a happy person delighted with a rather cool toy, that turns into an even cooler toy once you can open two portals, and a whole new world of possibilities, you quickly find yourself thinking differently. There’s shades of Cube here, and something far more sinister. You really start to feel like the lab rat you are, jumping through hoops.
The only real companion you have in this strange and lonely surrounds is the computer voice who guides you on, known as GladOS. Keep going, she tells you, and for all your hard efforts you’ll be rewarded cake.
What happens in the end is something I couldn’t spoil, it’s well worth experiencing for yourself. I’m surprised for such a short game that it could cause such feelings of attachment, when really the only other character than yourself in it is a disembodied AI.
Will there be more? Who knows. I almost feel like there shouldn’t. It’s short, yes, but its a cool and quick ride. I’m yet to play through the challenge levels, and I’m only half way through playing it again with the commentary on (rather cool idea that). We see hints of the Half Life world, just slight glimpses. It even ends in a place where there could be more. But I rather like it ending where it does.
So, why not give it a try yourself, and get your just reward of cake?
