Vital Stats

Genre: Puzzle
Players: 1
Online: Community-designed maps

Developer: Valve
Publisher: Electronic Arts
ESRB Rating: T
Release Date: 10/9/07

Platforms

• PC
• Playstation 3
• XBox 360

With the degree of buzz surrounding the release of Valve’s Orange Box, it seems almost redundant to introduce one of its components: Portal. Nevertheless, amidst the hubbub about 5 high-profile games for $50, it’s easy to overlook the fact that these games can be purchased separately. Each game merits independent evaluation.

Gameplay
Portal presents the puzzle pillar of Valve’s orange offering. The majority of the gameplay centers around the eponymous portals that grant passage through the 3d puzzle spaces. Teleportation puzzles have been around since text adventure games, but Valve has put a clever new spin on an ancient mechanic. Using the same first-person perspective as in Half-Life 2, you actually fire portals at surfaces—creating entry and exit points at will. To get some idea of what this means, imagine being able to place a door in the floor that opens into the ceiling above you. Jump in. If you can stomach looking down, you can watch the infinitely shrinking copies of yourself as they (you?) plummet through the portals at terminal velocity. That’s Portal in a nutshell.

Some surfaces can’t support portals, so these surfaces underlie the bulk of the puzzles you’ll encounter. That said, the puzzles don’t rely on a simple “pathfind around the roadblock” design philosophy. You’ll find yourself rethinking exit portals as entry portals, using perpendicular portals to change your direction of momentum, and a variety of other perspective shifting tasks. Where Portal really shines is in that moment of revelation when you realize that there’s a completely different way to look at the obstacle before you.

Accessibility
While the game might immediately appear to be aimed at more hardcore audiences (first person perspective, WASD controls, etc.), the game is remarkably accessible. The first several levels of the game are tutorial levels that gradually introduce the portal concepts and considerably soften the learning curve. Furthermore, the game autosaves after even trivial puzzle accomplishments, so the price of death is not particularly dear. The frequent autosaving also means that, while there is a test of skill to execute a physically complex plan, you need only successfully execute that plan once. This shifts the focus of the game from a more hardcore first-person experience and makes it more cerebral.

Further adding to the accessibility is that portals act like you’d expect: things go through them. It doesn’t matter what: you, environment objects, enemies, light, everything. Put one portal on a wall in front of you and the other behind you and you can check your hair. Portal takes a simple concept, thinks it through, and really makes it work.

While a gentle difficulty curve, liberal autosaves, and a total of nineteen levels in the game make for a brief (around 5 hours) play experience, the game is bereft of padding. If you’re standing still in Portal, then you’re either thinking or you just executed a terminally bad idea. Further adding to the game content are developer commentary, remixed levels that unlock after finishing the main game, and the prospect of downloadable levels developed by the Half-Life fan community in the future. The game may be short, but it’s not content lite.

Graphics and Sound
None of this would work without solid graphical technology to back it up, and Portal’s graphics fill the needs of its game design. Some puzzles require portal creation under duress, and the default graphical settings keep the framerate up. The price of this, however, can be tearing, which harms the usually pretty Half-Life 2 engine. On the other hand, most of Portal’s environments go for that cold lab/industrial look (narratively appropriate, but dull nonetheless), so there’s not a lot of classical beauty to ruin.

The graphics aren’t really the driving reward for advancement Portal, though—-it’s the sound. You’ll be guided through the game by a moderately broken intercom system. Like a 4-year-old SHODAN, the voice over the intercom teases, lies, wheedles, and glitches through the game’s nineteenish levels. Usually funny, rarely annoying, and always well voiced, your disembodied companion’s next ramblings are a little slice of cake after completing a challenge.

Portal is shorter than the average big-budget offering, but none of that time is padding. The fresh take on navigating through puzzles should beguile the hardcore while the extremely friendly autosave system makes the game surprisingly accessible. All in all, Portal is definitely worth the asking price for the avid gamer and worth your play time no matter who you are.

What It Costs: $20

What It’s Worth:

• To The Hardcore: $20 (but just buy the Orange Box)
• To The Genre Fan: $10 (clever, but not exactly Tetris)
• To The Casual: $15 (go on, try it. It won’t hurt)