Portal
Review
Open up portals to solve puzzles and earn snide remarks
by T3HDX
reviewed on PC
Puzzles and portals
Although Portal has such a thin story driving it, it makes it up with solid gameplay. The main point of the game is to test your creativity and smarts to solve puzzles and eventually to progress to the next area. There are several basic types of puzzles in Portal. First, the balls of energy puzzles, where you must redirect them with the aid of your portal guns to power up a switch, which usually opens a door. Second, there are puzzles where you have to propel yourself onto a higher platform, which can be a little tricky at the start, but once you get the hang of how to do it, it gets a lot easier. Finally, there are cube challenges, where you have to navigate a cube to a certain button switch, allowing you to open a door. It's simple in it's outlook, but the difficulty increases quickly. If it weren't for the mind bending difficulty at times, this game would pose no challenge, and with the optional extras after completing the game, things just get harder and harder.
There are two portal guns, a blue and an orange, that you need to use in the game. Basically, you shoot one to create a portal that you can enter through and the other to create a portal that you will exit through – allowing you to move quickly from one spot to another. It's fairly simple, but this can be used for very complex manoeuvres from escaping bad situations to passing impassable objects like fences, to redirecting balls of energy to power the next switch etc. It works pretty smoothly and consistently. There's nothing much to complain about with the interface bar the annoyance of the clipping and not always being able to judge where you'll end up.
Familiar visuals
The source engine comes up again to deliver a game with pretty much the same visuals as all the previous games running on that engine in the last couple of years. There are only a few minor updates to the engine, especially with the graphics settings on the PC version, giving you slightly better visual quality and textures, along with the welcome bonus of antialiasing.
Replayability
The game only comes with a single player mode, which is a bit of a shame because they could have included head to head races on the challenges. There isn't much reason to really play it again unless you want to see how quickly you could complete all of the challenges. With a lifespan of about 3 hours in the first play, trying it again to see how fast you can go does hold some appeal. Thankfully, in addition to the main storyline, there are game modes unlocked when you complete the game. These are Advanced Chambers and Challenge Maps. Along with this, there will no doubt be user-created content such as new maps and probably even modifications to the game, bringing a whole new level of life into this title.
Overall
The solid gameplay and main story, as well as the bonus modes, ensure that you get a thoroughly enjoyable gaming experience. These even overcome the fact that the game is as short as it is. The game certainly brings out bragging rights with the timed challenges, and you'll be quoting the funny lines of GlaDOS for weeks. As part of the Orange Box or on its own, Portal is very much worth picking up.
8.0
fun score
No Pros and Cons at this time
