Portal
(from the Orange Box for the Xbox 360)
There's a room,
and you need
to get out of said room without dying or running out of time. Repeat
with trickier puzzles and bigger rooms. Fun. Portal is a 1st
person pure puzzler, something we don't see a lot of in the nextgen
system, but the inovation doesn't end there - the game is actually
intentionally funny.
There's a
computer voice that is speaking to you throughout the game. At first
the computer is your mentor (albeit an annoying one), guiding you
through the early stages, but when the voice suggests that you sit
quietly on a moving platform that's about to go over a flaming
woman-sized barbecue pit, your relationship changes somewhat. Not since
"mission Impossible" on the Commodore 64 has there been a better
invisible enemy voice that taunts you throughout the game. This is by far the best writing I've seen in a video game in a long
long time, and the voice acting is actually good. (The trick here, I
think, is to hire experienced voice actors, not hollywood stars - go figure.)
The guts of the
game lies in an innovative tool, your only "gun". The right trigger
creates an orange "portal" on the wall / floor / ceiling and the left
trigger creates a blue one. go through the orange hole, come out the
blue and vica versa. Shoot a portal on the floor and one directly above
on the ceiling, and you can fall forever. This simple idea leads to
some great problem solving. Remember the zero gravity simulated
battles in Enders Game? Portal asks you to to think about space in a
similar way. It actually takes advantage of the fact that this is all
happening in a impossible world inside your computer. Come to think of
it, why isn't Ender's Game a video game yet? I'd play it.
There are no
people in Portal, but there are talking gun turrets that announce
their feelings of extistential angst with a frankness the would make
Douglas Adams blush. There are serveral ways to get around these
turrets. You can create a portal on the wall behind a
turret, step through and knock it over, but that becomes messy and
inelegant after a while. Why not create a portal above the turret and
drop a block on it, or even slicker another turret?
Portal is short,
which is sad, but it feels like there is more to come, (at least the catchy closing song leads you to believe there's more) The last few
levels are tough but I was really hoping for some crazy over the top
problems to solve. You can play it again with comments turned on,
something I've never seen before in a video game, and it makes a 2nd
play though worthwhile if only to hear programmers trying to sound
interesting. Portal is made by the same team that brought us Halflife
and it is bundled with HL2, two long HL2 expansions and Fortress 2, a
team battle game. HL2 is pretty fun and the expansions are even better,
but how many times can one woman tearfully reunite with her father?
"Oh no, something really bad is happening I better send
my cute daughter and some guy she just hooked up
with out to thier certain deaths, (again)."
I hope they keep
the portal team small, pay them double and lock them in a room until
they make Portal 2.0, a 30 hour brain numbing cake denying romp. (With
optional 2 player co-op please and a Wieghted Companion Cube for everyone).
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