Portal
Finished Valve Software’s Portal earlier this week, and was impressed by the little game. Very impressed.
Initially the first-person puzzle game seems like the weakest link in the cornucopia that is the Orange Box, but towards the last few rooms this was the game that kept me going until the way too wee hours of the morning. The mother game of the collection, Half-Life 2, never had such an advanced hold.
The basics of the game are more or less easily explained, but not easily understood. After all, a game that plays fast and loose with concepts such as teleportation and gravity takes a few moments to swallow. The main story takes less than ten hours to play through, but after that the game moves into challenge mode, and significantly alters the parameters of the missions.
And the sudden appearance of Mike Patton towards the very end was very much appreciated as well. As is the song “Still Alive” with which the game ends, it is easily found in Youtube for those lacking faith in their puzzlesolving skills.
Heavily recommended, available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
And Valve certainly is not about to kill the golden goose, quite the opposite, they are looking into serious expansions and not merely new levels. Which is good, but it also means that the developer is going to take the same “no scheduled release date” policy as with the rest of their products. So, it’ll be a while or seven before the game actually materializes (possibly with the forthcoming Episode 3 of Half-Life 2, possibly not).
Leave a comment