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

“…Surgery on both his asshole and his middle finger…”

  Oh Valve.

I’ve spent many moons defending and supporting your previous endeavors. I’ve been saying for years that, as a game, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 were better than Halo. While I hated Counter-Strike with a passion equalled only by my hatred of villains with emo theme music, the game’s popularity was and is undeniable. When you unveiled Steam, it had scores of detractors, but I stood by it, and now it’s one of the only well-received examples of digital distribution. So when you shocked us by splitting Aftermath into three “episodes”, I supported you, despite my reservations. I thought, if there was one company that could do episodic gaming right, one company to keep their word that they would make it work, it would be Valve.

I guess that makes me a fucking moron.

OK, fine, so it may seem unreasonable to be mad at Valve for pushing back a release date. That’s like asking Blizzard to give a release date any time earlier than a week before their game comes out. But it’s not unreasonable. Not at all. Not when you’ve promised your fans that “episodes” will come at set times. Not when your argument was that, by adopting this development format, it will shorten the gap between releases. Not when, after over a year, you’re giving us two 5-or-so hour games and the multiplayer equivalent of a weekend carnival–and you can bet that’s how long the novelty will last.

Whatever. I’m going back to Sam & Max. They may be fucked up, but at least they’re fucking timely.

Peace.