Remember when Valve was once the Daniel Day-Lewis of the video game industry? They didn’t churn out games annually like other triple-A developers, but the titles they did release once in a blue moon became some of the best of their generations. Nowadays, Valve is more like the Apple of gaming, a giant gaming conglomerate known for digitizing video game commerce. Steam has become Valve’s most significant priority for quite some time now, leaving them no time or incentive to put any effort towards developing video games anymore. Since Valve has shifted its focus and priorities, many gamers have been clamoring for their triumphant return in the realm of developing video games. It’s a shame that such an esteemed developer has decided to ascend to broader horizons, from a gamer’s perspective at least. Above all else, the core principle that made Valve the juggernaut game developer was their strides in innovation. Half-Life may not have invented the 3D first-person shooter, but the seamless cutscenes and 3D ragdoll physics changed the genre forever. Its sequel expanded on these aspects to significant effect and arguably still stands as the greatest FPS of all time. Portal carries this same point of innovation but far beyond the realm of the FPS genre. The FPS, 3D platformer, and puzzle genres are three wildly different video games with polar audiences. Valve presents Portal with this pitch: why not make a game that includes all of them?
I claimed that the 3D platformer died in 2005. I wrote about this heavily in my review of Psychonauts, which I claimed was the creative peak of the genre that could efficiently lay the long-winded genre to rest. Since it came out, I’ve been familiar with Portal and never spoke of it in the same breathe as Psychonauts or any other 3D platformer. The game didn’t include any of the genre's tropes that I had come to affiliate it with, such as collectibles, varied worlds, or even a double jump mechanic. Portal, by comparison, is more minimal and restrained than the often vibrant 3D platformer game. I forgot that the core fundamental of the 3D platformer was jumping on platforms in a 3D space which makes up a significant amount of Portal’s gameplay. It’s interwoven so subtly with everything else in the game that even a 3D platformer connoisseur like myself couldn’t see it. This revelation unlocks a whole new layer of admiration I now have for Portal.
The aspect of Portal that threw me off initially was the fact that Chell, the silent protagonist, has the jumping ability of a dead jellyfish. If Portal is a 3D platformer title, Chell is the least aerodynamic protagonist possible. Nonetheless, she must find a way to get onto a series of platforms, similar to any platformer protagonist before her. This conundrum entails the puzzle ingredient to Portal’s eclectic gameplay recipe. In a traditional 3D platformer, the platforms or geographical land is used as terrain to get to the goal. In Portal, finding a way to get onto the platform IS the goal. Doors that lead to the next area are in hard-to-reach places and or locked by buttons that require a permanent weight on them to open. The player will also utilize energy balls, moving platforms, and velocity to place Chell on the desired course. The various numbered rooms that Chell completes one by one get progressively more challenging and integrate more of these devices. The difficulty curve of Portal is perfect, starting with the simplest solving of physics to multifaceted puzzles as the game progresses.
How does Chell achieve success with any of the various perplexities she faces? Why, with Valve’s successor to the Gravity Gun, the Magnus apparatus and namesake of the game: the portal gun. The first-person view naturally elicits the feeling of a first-person shooter, as Valve never developed a game that wasn’t in this perspective. However, Chell would be hard-pressed to make it through the halls of Aperture Science with bullets. Instead, Chell shoots differently colored portals that connect and serve as entrances and exits regardless of color. The player will start using the blue portal gun as the next few puzzle rooms will supply orange portals to work with accordingly. After that, the player will receive the orange half of the portal gun and alternate between the two colors. Offering the orange portal gun to the player should make things easier, but the lack of apparent trajectory makes things more complicated, and the player has to take some time to adjust. One might ask: wouldn’t have two portals that connect simply allow the player to shoot where the goal is from their location? Fortunately, Valve thought ahead of this predicament. The portals can only stick from a specific type of wall material, which the player will come to discern as the game progresses. The more solid-looking chrome walls will make the portals dissipate in a blast of color. Each puzzle in Portal has a precise method of solving it, and the player cannot cheese their way around it. Valve takes pride in their physics engine, and they’ll be damned if the player finds a way to exploit it for their gain.
Puzzle games typically aren’t narrative-based. They usually get more complex in small increments until the player has been bested. On the other hand, Portal puts the player in a science-fiction excursion disguised as a nightmare. The game never utters the protagonist’s name, and the name I’ve been referring to her is non-canon. Her name is but a complicated number like a prisoner, along with Chell wearing an orange jumpsuit. The player wakes up with Chell in a pristine-looking room with a robotic but feminine voice speaking to her about conducting some experiments (the various puzzles). The player is given no context as to where they are or why they act like a lab rat for this facility. All they know is that the place is called the “enrichment center,” and the robotic voice is a product of a corporation called Aperture Science. The “enrichment center” setting where the puzzles are conducted is eerily cold and sterile. The lack of context and the closed-off nature of the setting recalls a similar sense of existential dread seen in Cube or the Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” that was an inspiration. They are two science-fiction stories that give little to no context to the “wheres” and “whys” to the setting or the characters. This type of story exudes a heavy sense of existential dread as the setting and ambiguity strip the characters of purpose and agency. The protagonist's identity would most likely be less clear if only the portal guns didn’t let the player see Chell. A reward of cake is given as motivation for the player, but looking through the center's deep crevices uncovers writing on the walls from previous subjects that repeatedly says “the cake is a lie.” It’s a creepy method of foreshadowing that gets under my skin.
While the protagonist of Portal lacks any character, the same cannot be said for Portal’s antagonist. The robotic voice that narrates the player’s progress through the center is a supercomputer called GLaDOS. She was a project developed by Aperture Science that became too powerful and usurped control over the entire facility. Her primary goal in testing these subjects seems not for research but her sadistic pleasure. She constantly berates the player in a condescending tone like a mechanical Nurse Ratched. She plays with the subject’s feelings of loneliness by offering a “companion cube” with a warm heart on its center, only to have the player dump it in an incinerator to progress. Her sardonic dialogue and passive, malevolent nature make her an entertaining villain. Once the player completes the tests, they go rogue and hunt down GLaDOS in a long section where the game will not hold their hands in the scope of a meticulously designed puzzle. It’s a long trek upward that utilizes the player’s ability to use both portals to progress. Once the player reaches GLaDOS’s chamber, they are treated to one of the most original final bosses in video game history, with a malfunctioning GLaDOS getting more and more discombobulated as the fight advances.
From what I stated about Portal’s aspects, one would expect this game to have blown me away. Sadly, something about Portal leaves me unsatisfied. Games of a shorter length do not deter me from playing them, but Portal’s pacing is the one aspect that slightly sours it. The two sections of the game feel uneven as a whole. Working the player outside the confines of the organized tests makes those tests feel like an extended tutorial, which is more than half of the game. The developers should’ve either offered a game with more tests or shortened their amount before setting the player loose on GLaDOS. As it is, the pacing makes the game feel unfinished. The extraordinary aspects of genre-blending, mechanics, and existential atmosphere make Portal a marvel. However, the “complete” product here feels more like a beta test and doesn’t unlock Portal’s full potential.
...
Portal's credits song, "Still Alive," was an internet hit in the late 2000s after this game came out. The song was such a ubiquitous hit online that people knew the song before they knew the game. After playing it again and watching the credits, it sounds like the Broadcast song that Broadcast never wrote. Listen to "C'mon Let's Go" and tell me that it doesn't sound like "Still Alive."
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
I claimed that the 3D platformer died in 2005. I wrote about this heavily in my review of Psychonauts, which I claimed was the creative peak of the genre that could efficiently lay the long-winded genre to rest. Since it came out, I’ve been familiar with Portal and never spoke of it in the same breathe as Psychonauts or any other 3D platformer. The game didn’t include any of the genre's tropes that I had come to affiliate it with, such as collectibles, varied worlds, or even a double jump mechanic. Portal, by comparison, is more minimal and restrained than the often vibrant 3D platformer game. I forgot that the core fundamental of the 3D platformer was jumping on platforms in a 3D space which makes up a significant amount of Portal’s gameplay. It’s interwoven so subtly with everything else in the game that even a 3D platformer connoisseur like myself couldn’t see it. This revelation unlocks a whole new layer of admiration I now have for Portal.
The aspect of Portal that threw me off initially was the fact that Chell, the silent protagonist, has the jumping ability of a dead jellyfish. If Portal is a 3D platformer title, Chell is the least aerodynamic protagonist possible. Nonetheless, she must find a way to get onto a series of platforms, similar to any platformer protagonist before her. This conundrum entails the puzzle ingredient to Portal’s eclectic gameplay recipe. In a traditional 3D platformer, the platforms or geographical land is used as terrain to get to the goal. In Portal, finding a way to get onto the platform IS the goal. Doors that lead to the next area are in hard-to-reach places and or locked by buttons that require a permanent weight on them to open. The player will also utilize energy balls, moving platforms, and velocity to place Chell on the desired course. The various numbered rooms that Chell completes one by one get progressively more challenging and integrate more of these devices. The difficulty curve of Portal is perfect, starting with the simplest solving of physics to multifaceted puzzles as the game progresses.
How does Chell achieve success with any of the various perplexities she faces? Why, with Valve’s successor to the Gravity Gun, the Magnus apparatus and namesake of the game: the portal gun. The first-person view naturally elicits the feeling of a first-person shooter, as Valve never developed a game that wasn’t in this perspective. However, Chell would be hard-pressed to make it through the halls of Aperture Science with bullets. Instead, Chell shoots differently colored portals that connect and serve as entrances and exits regardless of color. The player will start using the blue portal gun as the next few puzzle rooms will supply orange portals to work with accordingly. After that, the player will receive the orange half of the portal gun and alternate between the two colors. Offering the orange portal gun to the player should make things easier, but the lack of apparent trajectory makes things more complicated, and the player has to take some time to adjust. One might ask: wouldn’t have two portals that connect simply allow the player to shoot where the goal is from their location? Fortunately, Valve thought ahead of this predicament. The portals can only stick from a specific type of wall material, which the player will come to discern as the game progresses. The more solid-looking chrome walls will make the portals dissipate in a blast of color. Each puzzle in Portal has a precise method of solving it, and the player cannot cheese their way around it. Valve takes pride in their physics engine, and they’ll be damned if the player finds a way to exploit it for their gain.
Puzzle games typically aren’t narrative-based. They usually get more complex in small increments until the player has been bested. On the other hand, Portal puts the player in a science-fiction excursion disguised as a nightmare. The game never utters the protagonist’s name, and the name I’ve been referring to her is non-canon. Her name is but a complicated number like a prisoner, along with Chell wearing an orange jumpsuit. The player wakes up with Chell in a pristine-looking room with a robotic but feminine voice speaking to her about conducting some experiments (the various puzzles). The player is given no context as to where they are or why they act like a lab rat for this facility. All they know is that the place is called the “enrichment center,” and the robotic voice is a product of a corporation called Aperture Science. The “enrichment center” setting where the puzzles are conducted is eerily cold and sterile. The lack of context and the closed-off nature of the setting recalls a similar sense of existential dread seen in Cube or the Twilight Zone episode “Five Characters in Search of an Exit” that was an inspiration. They are two science-fiction stories that give little to no context to the “wheres” and “whys” to the setting or the characters. This type of story exudes a heavy sense of existential dread as the setting and ambiguity strip the characters of purpose and agency. The protagonist's identity would most likely be less clear if only the portal guns didn’t let the player see Chell. A reward of cake is given as motivation for the player, but looking through the center's deep crevices uncovers writing on the walls from previous subjects that repeatedly says “the cake is a lie.” It’s a creepy method of foreshadowing that gets under my skin.
While the protagonist of Portal lacks any character, the same cannot be said for Portal’s antagonist. The robotic voice that narrates the player’s progress through the center is a supercomputer called GLaDOS. She was a project developed by Aperture Science that became too powerful and usurped control over the entire facility. Her primary goal in testing these subjects seems not for research but her sadistic pleasure. She constantly berates the player in a condescending tone like a mechanical Nurse Ratched. She plays with the subject’s feelings of loneliness by offering a “companion cube” with a warm heart on its center, only to have the player dump it in an incinerator to progress. Her sardonic dialogue and passive, malevolent nature make her an entertaining villain. Once the player completes the tests, they go rogue and hunt down GLaDOS in a long section where the game will not hold their hands in the scope of a meticulously designed puzzle. It’s a long trek upward that utilizes the player’s ability to use both portals to progress. Once the player reaches GLaDOS’s chamber, they are treated to one of the most original final bosses in video game history, with a malfunctioning GLaDOS getting more and more discombobulated as the fight advances.
From what I stated about Portal’s aspects, one would expect this game to have blown me away. Sadly, something about Portal leaves me unsatisfied. Games of a shorter length do not deter me from playing them, but Portal’s pacing is the one aspect that slightly sours it. The two sections of the game feel uneven as a whole. Working the player outside the confines of the organized tests makes those tests feel like an extended tutorial, which is more than half of the game. The developers should’ve either offered a game with more tests or shortened their amount before setting the player loose on GLaDOS. As it is, the pacing makes the game feel unfinished. The extraordinary aspects of genre-blending, mechanics, and existential atmosphere make Portal a marvel. However, the “complete” product here feels more like a beta test and doesn’t unlock Portal’s full potential.
...
Portal's credits song, "Still Alive," was an internet hit in the late 2000s after this game came out. The song was such a ubiquitous hit online that people knew the song before they knew the game. After playing it again and watching the credits, it sounds like the Broadcast song that Broadcast never wrote. Listen to "C'mon Let's Go" and tell me that it doesn't sound like "Still Alive."
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com