Portacular

So, my room mate just recently got his hands on the Orange Box, which allowed me to finally play the game I'd been hearing so much about, Portal. After playing through it I must say that I am thoroughly impressed. Though I suppose that's not very big of a statement as EVERYONE and their grandmother were heralding the game as groundbreaking. I admit I was late to the party, as often seems to be the case with some games (such as Jade Empire, but more on that in a later post.) So, where to begin on my review?


SPOILERS WARNING!
What really impressed me about Portal was it's masterful use of thematic elements. The wall scrawlings, little snippits of info from GLaDoS the abandoned observation rooms, and even the little clip boards in those empty rooms. All presented a great amount of minutia that the play could use to draw the bigger picture. The story is short and simple with a single twist, get through the tests--GLaDoS is trying to kill you--Escape and avenge your companion cube if you get the chance. However, its the presence of all this optional information presented to the player thematically, that truly gives the story depth. For those interested in this information and explore it, they're all to likely to come to amazing revelations about the back story, such as I did several times. For example, I kept wondering about the author of the wall scrawlings, and what she was like. Then in the final battle with GLaDoS, the A.I. mentions that she has your brainscan on file, so she can reproduce you should you die. Of course, she strikes it from her database during this conflict, but that means that the author of the wall scrawlings was likely not another person at all. That all other inhabitants of Aperture have long since died. That GLaDoS has been repeatedly cloning your and running you through the tests to give her purpose (also why the test chambers are so pristine to everywhere else). Yet, like you, your former selves have tried to escape. You're just the first to succeed. Then again...or are you?

It's just little tid-bits like that that make the themes of Portal so amazing. Of course there's the revolutionary concepts of a fast paced first person shooter where you solve puzzles without firing a single leathal weapon. This has been most heralded by everyone in the video game media. As it deserves. It really was as innovative as the gravity gun was in Half-Life 2. However, I just feel that the real achievement of this game was in it's setting and themes. They were just perfect. It was just so creepy walking through that empty facility with all those tid-bits I saw, wondering if I was really human (as one of the clip boards shows a failed test subject that was anything but) and around any corner could be a gun-android forced to try and kill me by an insane A.I. overlord.

On top of this, the game was also had quite a bit of symbolism in it. Whether Valve intended it or not, the entire final confrontation with GLaDoS, and her song during the credits just made me think that it's also a sort of allegory for the mother of a broken home. Though, I suppose, if she'd been cloning you, giving life to you repeatedly, she might start to see herself as a mother, hence some of her dialogs. Still, if you look at the game progression it makes sense. She leads you through the test rooms giving you all you need to know to progress, just like childhood. She "tests" how you'll do with the real world by seeing how you handle the fire pit. Then when she see's you running through the facility on your own, she panics and tries everything she can to coax you back into the womb, if you will. Then you're brought to the final chamber where your will clashes with her. You lay down the way things are going to be from now on (admittedly by shutting her down), and in the end, once you're free from her influence, she not only accepts it, but feels happy for you because you're "all grown up." Valve could have intended it to look that way, but even if they didn't, I was impressed to see that sort of theme in a video game.

I would touch upon how superb the game mechanics were, but as SO many people before me have already analyzed this part of the game endlessly, putting it up on the latest pedestal, I will refrain. All I will say is that I was impressed at how there were multiple ways one could solve these intricate puzzles. As, watching my room mate play through it, I refrained from telling him how I did the puzzles only to watch him do them in completely different ways. (Was also a bit frustrating, I'll admit.)

I'll also say that, I never got onto the bandwagon with Half-Life. I've played it here and there. The mechanics and gameplay are great, but I find the story frustrating. The actual story arc of the game is fine, but the back story is quite confusing to me. It's not that I don't understand it, it's that certain elements don't make sense yet remain unexplained, not as mysterious things you want to find our as the story progresses, but more like elements that approach contradiction. My main beef being the G Man, but that's for another time. The point I'm getting at is that even if I wasn't a Half-Life fan before, I'm definitely a Portal fan now. Valve can be expecting me to be in line for Portal 2 and following that continuity closely. (And yes I'm aware both Half-Life and Portal are in the same universe. After all, who in video games hasn't heard of Black Mesa yet?)

All in all I'd give Portal five companion cubes out of five.