Portal came out quite a while ago... 2007, I believe, as a sort of mini game included in the Orange Box. Not too long after, and after rave reviews and all sorts of mods coming from the faithful Valve community, they released the entire game, plus new challenge maps, as an Xbox 360 Arcade game, to give us console gamers a part of the content that's been available only to those snobby PC gamers!
In this review I will cover both the new content, and the original Portal.
Gameplay: 10.0
Portal is a puzzle game set in a shooter environment. It's not only a puzzle game in the sense that you need to figure out how to solve the challenges it presents, but it offers the challenge of solving those puzzles efficiently, while bending your comprehension of physics and your own ability to find creative and crafty ways to solve the same puzzle.
The premise behind Portal is that you're some sort of lab rat stuck in a maze, learning how to get out and then eventually abusing those rules to your advantage. You start the game off learning the concept of the Portals - you go in one Portal and come out the other. As the game progresses, you're given the ability to place Portals in strategic places to use things like momentum and Portaling tricks to get through the game. It's much more complex than you'd initially think, though. Your passing through the Portals conserves momentum, which can result in you falling infinitely, throwing yourself or objects across great distances or just finding ridiculous ways to test your skills by making seemingly impossible shots and showing off for the people watching you.
Portal is one of the extremely few games where the learning experience isn't just about figuring out how to play it, but challenging your own ideas along the way. I absolutely loved the experience of having no idea how to play, then understanding how to play, then solving remedial puzzles, then solving harder puzzles, then finding ways to shave off seconds of time, use of Portals or simply not taking many steps through each challenge map.
You should definitely start off the game by playing through the story mode as it shows you how to play the game. And if you've never played it, the concept is definitely mind-bending. It takes a little while to understand the concepts they are teaching you, but once you understand them and can speedily execute them, it is very rewarding.
After you finish the story, you are given challenges on each one of their maps. Some of the maps are different test chambers (rooms) from the story mode, but Still Alive comes with 14 bonus maps that introduce new concepts and really change the dynamic of the challenges you've seen before.
Each map has a challenge for the least time, the least portals and the least steps used while you traveled from the beginning to the end. Each of those categories have different ranks (bronze, silver and gold) that you can achieve.. the goal being to obviously work your way toward a gold ranking on every challenge on every map. The process of shaving your times/portals/steps down is very rewarding, too. You'll usually solve the puzzle the only way that you know, or the most obvious way, get a good time, and then see silver, thinking "what? There's no way that's possible". Then you will find a crafty solution, cutting out a step or two that you used to initially solve it, get a silver time and feel great! Then the gold time is displayed, and again, you think "WHAT? That's impossible!" You'll search and execute several different methods until you find one that either sounds silly or makes perfect sense (and you just never thought of trying it), get a gold medal and you'll feel like you're the greatest guy (or gal) who ever picked up a controller.
I've showed it to both experienced and novice gamers, and everyone that I've seen play it can't put the controller down. It's very fun.
Presentation: 8.5
Portal is set in a sort of sterile, non-stimulating lab environment. It makes sense, but you can tell they did cut some corners on graphic production and some audio features. You can tell the game was experimental and Valve didn't want to put a ton into it and have people not understand it, so it's a small risk to develop, but it really paid off. Expect Portal 2 to have vast changes to it's scenery and graphical presentation.
Theatrics: 9.5
Portal, while not really having a real story, has very entertaining dialogue coming from it's instruction-giving, wise-cracking computer (GlaDos), and the automated machine gun turrets that beg to not be shot or wonder where you went when they couldn't see you anymore. My computers actually have an altered sound bank consisting of nothing but dialogue from the Portal turrets!
They also did a good job of throwing other tidbits into the game giving evidence that something is wrong with the computer and setting a good, curious environment.
Plus, you can't possibly be a gamer and never have heard of their song they made up for the game. It was supposed to be a quirky game intended to entertain both with gameplay concepts and dialogue, and they did exactly what they set out to do.
Controls: 8.5
Portal's controls are unfortunately it's low point. Whether it was problems with the Half-Life 2 engine (and the fact that Portal is barely more than a Half-Life 2 mod) or that they just didn't invest a lot of time into the game, intentionally, fearing people weren't ready for it, who knows?
The biggest problem is both your characters ability to remain stable on rather unstable objects, sometimes throwing you around, or points where you need to abuse the physics engine in order to complete a challenge and it not behaving very consistently.
There are also some really finicky points in the challenge maps (especially least steps) where you want to do something like crouch, jump or stand still and the game doesn't seem to register your actions properly, or exaggerates something, throwing you off when precision in the challenge modes are key.
Considering how fun the game is, the control problems are easy to overlook.
Replay Value: 10.0
Portal's story will probably take you 2 hours to complete. If you invest time in the challenges and get all gold medals on all of the challenges, you will likely spend 25-30 hours, and never have a dull moment. Considering Still Alive is $15, you can't beat that value.
Fun: 10.0
Portal is still one of the most fun, innovative games of our time, and Portal 2 is something I've been anticipating for a long time considering the amount of different directions they could take with the idea (ahem.. co-op!!). Like I had mentioned, everyone that I showed the game to was instantly mesmerized and would tell their friends about it, even if they were completely unable to explain the concept to somebody that has never heard of it. Even if you have no idea how it works, pick up the controller and run with it. I'll be amazed if you don't find it fun.
My Overall Rating: 9.7
Appeal and Recommendations
Anybody liking shooter games or any form of puzzle games has to check this out. I play games basically every day and make a big deal out of them, and I loved it. People that play games maybe once a month or less picked up this game and couldn't put it down. Great for anybody that likes any game of any sort.
In this review I will cover both the new content, and the original Portal.
Gameplay: 10.0
Portal is a puzzle game set in a shooter environment. It's not only a puzzle game in the sense that you need to figure out how to solve the challenges it presents, but it offers the challenge of solving those puzzles efficiently, while bending your comprehension of physics and your own ability to find creative and crafty ways to solve the same puzzle.
The premise behind Portal is that you're some sort of lab rat stuck in a maze, learning how to get out and then eventually abusing those rules to your advantage. You start the game off learning the concept of the Portals - you go in one Portal and come out the other. As the game progresses, you're given the ability to place Portals in strategic places to use things like momentum and Portaling tricks to get through the game. It's much more complex than you'd initially think, though. Your passing through the Portals conserves momentum, which can result in you falling infinitely, throwing yourself or objects across great distances or just finding ridiculous ways to test your skills by making seemingly impossible shots and showing off for the people watching you.
Portal is one of the extremely few games where the learning experience isn't just about figuring out how to play it, but challenging your own ideas along the way. I absolutely loved the experience of having no idea how to play, then understanding how to play, then solving remedial puzzles, then solving harder puzzles, then finding ways to shave off seconds of time, use of Portals or simply not taking many steps through each challenge map.
You should definitely start off the game by playing through the story mode as it shows you how to play the game. And if you've never played it, the concept is definitely mind-bending. It takes a little while to understand the concepts they are teaching you, but once you understand them and can speedily execute them, it is very rewarding.
After you finish the story, you are given challenges on each one of their maps. Some of the maps are different test chambers (rooms) from the story mode, but Still Alive comes with 14 bonus maps that introduce new concepts and really change the dynamic of the challenges you've seen before.
Each map has a challenge for the least time, the least portals and the least steps used while you traveled from the beginning to the end. Each of those categories have different ranks (bronze, silver and gold) that you can achieve.. the goal being to obviously work your way toward a gold ranking on every challenge on every map. The process of shaving your times/portals/steps down is very rewarding, too. You'll usually solve the puzzle the only way that you know, or the most obvious way, get a good time, and then see silver, thinking "what? There's no way that's possible". Then you will find a crafty solution, cutting out a step or two that you used to initially solve it, get a silver time and feel great! Then the gold time is displayed, and again, you think "WHAT? That's impossible!" You'll search and execute several different methods until you find one that either sounds silly or makes perfect sense (and you just never thought of trying it), get a gold medal and you'll feel like you're the greatest guy (or gal) who ever picked up a controller.
I've showed it to both experienced and novice gamers, and everyone that I've seen play it can't put the controller down. It's very fun.
Presentation: 8.5
Portal is set in a sort of sterile, non-stimulating lab environment. It makes sense, but you can tell they did cut some corners on graphic production and some audio features. You can tell the game was experimental and Valve didn't want to put a ton into it and have people not understand it, so it's a small risk to develop, but it really paid off. Expect Portal 2 to have vast changes to it's scenery and graphical presentation.
Theatrics: 9.5
Portal, while not really having a real story, has very entertaining dialogue coming from it's instruction-giving, wise-cracking computer (GlaDos), and the automated machine gun turrets that beg to not be shot or wonder where you went when they couldn't see you anymore. My computers actually have an altered sound bank consisting of nothing but dialogue from the Portal turrets!
They also did a good job of throwing other tidbits into the game giving evidence that something is wrong with the computer and setting a good, curious environment.
Plus, you can't possibly be a gamer and never have heard of their song they made up for the game. It was supposed to be a quirky game intended to entertain both with gameplay concepts and dialogue, and they did exactly what they set out to do.
Controls: 8.5
Portal's controls are unfortunately it's low point. Whether it was problems with the Half-Life 2 engine (and the fact that Portal is barely more than a Half-Life 2 mod) or that they just didn't invest a lot of time into the game, intentionally, fearing people weren't ready for it, who knows?
The biggest problem is both your characters ability to remain stable on rather unstable objects, sometimes throwing you around, or points where you need to abuse the physics engine in order to complete a challenge and it not behaving very consistently.
There are also some really finicky points in the challenge maps (especially least steps) where you want to do something like crouch, jump or stand still and the game doesn't seem to register your actions properly, or exaggerates something, throwing you off when precision in the challenge modes are key.
Considering how fun the game is, the control problems are easy to overlook.
Replay Value: 10.0
Portal's story will probably take you 2 hours to complete. If you invest time in the challenges and get all gold medals on all of the challenges, you will likely spend 25-30 hours, and never have a dull moment. Considering Still Alive is $15, you can't beat that value.
Fun: 10.0
Portal is still one of the most fun, innovative games of our time, and Portal 2 is something I've been anticipating for a long time considering the amount of different directions they could take with the idea (ahem.. co-op!!). Like I had mentioned, everyone that I showed the game to was instantly mesmerized and would tell their friends about it, even if they were completely unable to explain the concept to somebody that has never heard of it. Even if you have no idea how it works, pick up the controller and run with it. I'll be amazed if you don't find it fun.
My Overall Rating: 9.7
Appeal and Recommendations
Anybody liking shooter games or any form of puzzle games has to check this out. I play games basically every day and make a big deal out of them, and I loved it. People that play games maybe once a month or less picked up this game and couldn't put it down. Great for anybody that likes any game of any sort.
Thanks for sharing such a good article with us. This is very helpful for me.
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