Game Review: Portal (The Orange Box)

This post contains some spoilers about Portal, which won't matter to anyone reading this except for maybe BC, and he's totally okay with it.

Portal is a puzzle game (for the Xbox 360, PC and Playstation 3) and it is an oddity in the genre for a number of reasons:

- It is a first person shooter. The game is played in first person perspective and full of running, jumping and shooting but there are no enemies.

- It is genuinely funny. Seriously, Portal made me laugh more than anything I've seen on TV in a long time.

- It is really fun. Enough said.

Just a reminder, kids: playing video games will make you a bloodthirsty, psychotic sex predator.

Portal places you in the role of a test subject being run through a series of puzzles hosted by the Aperture Science corporation. The tests are monitored by a supercomputer named GLaDOS, and GLaDOS is fucking hilarious. Seriously, Portal has more personality than many RPGs. You are equipped with a gun which is capable of firing an orange portal and a blue portal. Whatever goes into the orange portal comes out the blue portal and vice versa. So for example, if you were faced with a 10-foot pit you would shoot a portal onto the wall on the other side, then create another portal at your feet and *poof!* - you're across the pit. The puzzles are, of course, a lot more complex than this involving direction and momentum. As GLaDOS tells you "Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman's terms, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out."

As the puzzles become progressively more difficult, GLaDOS becomes increasingly psychotic. And while the puzzles are initially harmless, they start becoming dangerous as well. Around the 8th puzzle or so, the computr tells you "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." You also have to deal with laser turrets in later stages. Of course, throughout the game GLaDOS reassures you that the testing will be followed by grief counseling and cake.

I am Jack's crazy puzzles.

One of the puzzles consists of several rooms with buttons that have to be held down. At the beginning of this puzzle, the game gives you a large block with a little heart painted in the center of it (you know, so you'll get attached to it.) This block is your Weighted Companion Cube, and you have to take it with you throughout the stage and, at the end of the stage, you have to put it in the incinerator to proceed. But that's all ok says GLaDOS because "While it has been a faithful companion, your Companion Cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk - and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it, because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you." Eventually though, GLaDOS does try to kill you and tries to hide that fact when you escape with a "Oh!.....congratulations on completing this exercise where we pretended we were trying to murder you! You will now be escorted to the control room where there is a party waiting for you. Please assume the partygoing position by laying your gun on the floor, and lying flat on your back with your arms at your sides. A party representative will be along shortly to bring you to the party where you will be given cake. If you do not assume the partygoing position, you cannot attend the party."

You eventually escape the testing environment and have to track down GLaDOS somewhere in the building, while being taunted all along. "There was even going to be a party for you. A big party, that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend, the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him. All your other friends couldn't come either, because you don't have any other friends, because of how unlikable you are. It says so right here in your personnel file: "Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner, whose passing shall not be mourned." Shall NOT be mourned. That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official. It also says you were adopted, so that's funny, too." says GLaDOS.

The Weighted Companion Cube: gone but not forgotten.

And even as you're destroying GLaDOS, she's still going on: "You think you're doing some damage? Two plus two is... Ten. IN BASE FOUR! I'M FINE!" The ending credits leave some hope for a sequel in the form of a little song called Still Alive, wherein GLaDOS tells you that she is still alive and, after you're dead and buried she will be still alive. Portal was initially almost an afterthought within The Orange Box, which includes a huge amount of content (Half-Life 2, HL2 episodes 1 & 2, and Team Fortress 2 along with Portal.) Portal's only crime is that it's relatively short and can be finished within a few hours. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, as the game's length is long enough to be substantial but it doesn't wear out its welcome. Portal is one of the best games of 2007.