Review: Portal

Midnight last night was very exciting. Like many others who had waited so many needless months, I had my Half-Life 2: Orange Box preloaded and readily awaiting the clock to strike midnight. I promised myself that I wouldn’t touch Portal before playing through Episode 2. Quite in spite of myself, I couldn’t resist what I feared would essentially be Half-Life 2: Narbacular Drop. I was partly right in my assumption, but also very, very wrong.

At first glance there isn’t much going on here. You play a nameless test subject who is given an “Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device”, which can open both entrance (left mouse button) and exit (right mouse button) portals on certain surfaces. With it you are expected to run through a series of test chambers solving puzzles. The first few brain-teasers are fairly obvious—drop a crate onto a large red button, drop a crate onto a turret, drop a turret onto a large red button. As you move from one Skinner Box to the next, he challenges do get harder—involving horizontally moving platforms, multiple turrets/crates, and believe it or not, Newtonian physics—but none of them are all that bull-busting. The game doesn’t really feel challenging until the 15th chamber, and since there are only 19, you get the feeling the broke a nail scratching the surface.

The game is polished, graphically, even if there isn’t much to look at. There’s no HDR lighting here—which is kind of surprising since Valve has made that its baby since Episode One—but Portal does have a very deliberate style. The walls of these seemingly antiseptic test chambers are all a shade of sterile grey, as if to be completely uninteresting, numbing any ounce of curiosity. Also, while the tests may not be difficult, that’s not to say they aren’t excellently designed. Completing them gives that immediate sense of satisfaction that every puzzle game needs, and messing with portals has an inherently enjoyable quality. In fact it’s even encouraged by to the “achievements” that are now unlockable within the Steam Community.

While immediate gratification is enough to pull most people from chamber to chamber, it’s the game’s sound design and sense of humor that will keep you here long after you’ve warn your welcome. To put it simply, this game is hilarious. The only voice you hear throughout your challenges is the malevolent humming of a monotone robotic female—the kind of thing that would make HAL never want to love again. While I try to resist revealing all of the laugh-out-loud funny things that spew from this voice of guidance, just know that humor is what makes the whole game worth it. There is more personality in this one automaton than some of Bioshock’s human characters. The turrets also have their own voices, softer and higher-pitched, whispering “i don’t hate you” as they fall over and die.

The first run-through will last about 3-4 hours, with another hour’s worth of bonus challenges. While it’s a piddley morsel, the game’s humor and undeniable polish make it fun, and I really hope Valve releases some more test chambers in the months to come.

— Persepolian

No Kings or Gods, Just Men: Bioshock Demo Impressions

I have a horrible confession to make: I’m easily manipulated by hype. This can be problematic for someone who is an aspiring game journalist. Especially when all you have to go on are the promising words of game mags and blogs, it’s easy to be excited about something you haven’t played–say, for example, Bioshock. When Kyle and I heard about the demo on Xbox Live, I believe it was followed by a loud “squeee!” in stereo. I have another horrible confession: I never played the System Shock games. I can’t tell which of these indiscretions is worse, but the latter is the one I feel most ashamed of. As I watched the demo slowly download, I could feel myself hoping more and more that this could be what was promised, another “thinking-man’s” shooter that is long overdue.

“The told me, ‘Son, you are meant to do great things.’ They were right.”

The demo starts with a plane crash. Your (so far) unnamed character finds himself swimming up for air after an unexpected dunk in the mid-Atlantic. As soon as he comes up for air, you are given control to move and look around. Already you can see Irrational’s hard work on water effects begin to pay off. The burning wreckage is gloriously reflected onto the Ocean’s surface. In the distance you can see the tail-end of the plane sinking steadily down. To the right of it, you can see the slight glint of a beacon, a lighthouse where it shouldn’t be. You swim towards it, climb the stairs, and enter the door to a dark foyer. As the door suddenly closes behind you, the lights turn on to reveal an iron-carved face of a man, a red silk banner hanging from his neck that reads “No Kings or Gods. Just Men.” You continue on your path, descending a winding staircase, and entering a biosphere that will take you to a wondrous place.

From the moment the lights turn on in the lighthouse, Bioshock’s atmosphere is evident. When the city of Rapture is revealed to you for the first time, on the outside, underwater, it’s hard not to be in awe of it. From this perspective it looks gorgeous, a 50’s utopia of metropolitan commercialism. Neon-lit signs and advertisements act as street lamps for the towering buildings ahead. Suddenly a whale floats by, not remotely phased by its surroundings. Seriously, a god damn whale! But this is just the outside. The insides of this city, its guts, are even more gorgeous and pitch perfect. Everything has an exaggerated late 50’s art-deco look about it, except it’s not just a look; it’s a lifestyle. All of it is incredibly immersive, surrounding you till you choke on late-romantic music stylings.

But Bioshock is not all sights and sounds. Ken Levine has been saying for months that his game is an FPS first and foremost, and this demo presents a pretty convincing argument. As soon as you step out of the biosphere—which is destroyed by a disfigured women with hooks for hands—you begin to wonder, “Just what the fuck happened here?” Good question. The first weapon you pick up here is a wrench—no crowbar, but it’ll do. The first few enemies aren’t too tough, simply dodge and pummel until their faces are pulp. It’s when you get your first plasmid—genetic enhancements that give you abilities—that the action really gets going. The first plasmid you get is Electricity, which lets you go all Raiden on your enemies. Initially, the ability simply stuns your enemies, allowing you to wail on them with your wrench without fear of reprisal. Later on you can also use it to electrocute enemies standing in water—this is so useful—and open doors that have been short-circuited. You soon pick up a pistol, a machine-gun, and the Incinerate plasmid—you can imagine what that one does.

The action is pretty intense, which is helped by how damn atmospheric it all is. Your enemies are truly creepy, all disfigured and dressed in masquerade garb. They ramble on as they attack you, accusing you of doing things you haven’t done to people you’ve never met. Though one thing I couldn’t really gather from the demo is just how smart the AI really is. While some things seem genius—like throwing themselves into water when you light them on fire—they also don’t seem very tactical. Not that they should coordinate flanking positions, but they seem to always a) come out of nowhere in the magically appear sense and b) always know where you are. This might just be virtue of a 45 minute demo, but it does make me a little worried.

So far, Bioshock is not only living up to my hopes for it, but making me even more hopeful. It’s only two weeks away. Hopefully I can get one night of gaming in before heading off to PAX.

— Persepolian