A necessary post about the fantastic game from Valve, Portal. To start off on a bad note, it’s disappointingly short, and pretty easy. The game and the advanced levels were completed a matter of hours after I received the Orange box through the post last week.

Now for the good; the different, interesting but yet simple, game style make the game so incredibly playable.

It’s fun and rewarding to spend a few minutes using the portal gun to try to jump over something and then realising a way of using momentum more effectively and flying to the goal. Momentum being conserved through portals, making them a fantastic ways to propel yourself. I wont say the game is physically realistic, I mean, there is a ‘portal gun’ voiding any realism on first glance, however, there is some loyalty to physics in motion and aspects of weight in the physics engine. Combining this with the abstract Portal device makes a wonderful mix that is very fun to play, making you think differently about the possibilities of moving yourself around and achieving the solution.

The puzzle elements never got to the point of frustration either, and the touches of humour lighten the mood and blanket the fact that there are you are almost alone in the ‘Apature Science’ laboratory.

Furthermore, the end credits and song ‘Still Alive’, was a nice surprise. I wish all games should have these complementary songs. I don’t want to reveal any more of the plot, I’ll just say it’s definitely worth playing. For anyone wondering how it plays, here’s a gameplay video.

With the price tag of ~£10, I could not completely recommended portal as a separate purchase, as you will be disappointed by it’s length. However, in the Orange box, which includes Half life 2, Episode 1, episode 2, Team fortress 2, and Portal, for £24.99, you can’t go wrong. Considering how Team Fortress 2 can be one of the most fun games to play online at present, with it’s quirky cartoon style graphics. With all the current incarnations of Half Life 2 thrown in, this is an amazing deal.

Some screen shots, nothing too special, but I managed to get a security camera stuck in a portal, it was hooked on. So when I shot another portal, it went with it. The final screen shot depicts part of one of the advanced levels, and how poor aiming can still achieve the goal, just after a lot of ricochets.

Now some portal linksy:

Weebl - Cube

“Still Alive” played on a piano, and also a Piano, modded into Garry’s mod playing Still Alive. Impressive.

Jonathan Coulton’s blog - Portal the Skinny, the story of the Portal song “Still Alive”. Includes lyrics and chords.

Portal gun in HL2. Actually, it’s the HL2 maps in Portal, which isn’t at all as impressive, but still pretty interesting, however buggy it may be.

Edit:
I just saw the escapist’s Zero punctuation review of the Orange Box, and I have to say, it sums it up perfectly. Here it is:

Tags: gaming, portal