"This was a Triumph"

This game, part of Valve's highly anticipated Orange Box, was interesting when it was first unveiled. First started as a group project at DigiPen, this unique game had you using portals to move though levels, using yourself and your own inginutiy to move though the puzzles. This idea was adopted by bigger and better people who put the ideas into overdrive and made quite possibly the best puzzle game of all time.

You awake in a small glass room, only a bed, television and random toilet to keep you company. After a moment, a voice starts talking to you; a female, robotic voice informs you that you are taking place in a science test for Aperture Science and the associated Enrichment Center. Suddenly, a strange, circular object appears in your room and, stepping though it, moves you outside of your cage and in front of a similar, but differently colored, thing. Guided by the voice of GLaDius, the character of Chell must continue to be the lab rat of this strange science group, with the only promised rewards being minimal at first, but, in an environment such as this, become the sole drive: cake, and grief counseling.

The premise of the game is rather unique amidst all of the World War 2 games, lame First-Person-Shooter and cookie-cutter Japanese Role Playing Games, and all of the various elements mix together to make an amazing experience. GLaDius provides some of the funnies dialogue I've ever heard come out of a television, and the ending to the game can only be called brilliant. You'll be hooked within minutes and learn to fall in love with GLaDius.

The graphics of Portal, while not amazing, get the job done, and, really, that's all that is needed. The rooms, while similar right down to the end, are all greatly rendered and somehow don't impose the threat of having it look all the same. The rare rooms that you find during your course help show another light to the game and it's setting though their sheer contrast and look alone. The special portal effects are all carefully done to ensure physical perfection for when you want to look at the world though another lens.

The music, again, while not capable of winning an Emmy or the gaming equivalent of one, help to further enhance your time in the Enrichment Center. The sounds of silence blended together with the omnipotent computer overlord voice are nice, and the occasional track that you do hear will help you become even more immersed into the world. Sound effects are realistic, from the destructive plasma-esque balls of energy to the clunk of a cube hitting the floor after a ride though the air. Finally, the voice actors are amazing, all two of them.

Finally though, in a puzzle game, the part that will make it a smash it or utter failure is the gameplay. Portal does not disappoint in the slightest. While you do not have any control of the portals at the start, you will eventually pick up the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Devise that will allow you to create two portals, each one linking to the opposite, which will allow you to solve the devious contraptions created to test your mind and reflexes.

Puzzles will start out as rather simple, with each level further acquainting you with the various elements of the game, but end up becoming mind-meltingly difficult towards the end of the game. Which is awesome in every way. When you finally do figure out how to get that energy pellet to this room in the allotted time, you feel like a god, feel like you you're doing something amazing. Then, you hit the next challenge that will further push you.

The physics of the game are excellent; well, they would have to be, as the main component to finishing the game, other than the portals themselves, is your own body. The otherworldly gates have a strange effect on momentum – the fact that they do not affect it whatsoever – meaning that when you jump off of a cliff and enter a portal, you will fly out at the same speed at which you entered. While it sounds easy in text, performing the task in real-fake life is difficult, requiring that you sometimes shoot several portals in the course of one jump to get where you are going.

Other elements of puzzle making are welcome additions that make everything far more enjoyable. Weighted cubes will be provided at various points in the game for the sole purpose of holding a button down. Which isn't always easy, seeing as how a button may be on the other side of a field that annihilates anything that goes though it, or approximately five miles and seventeen portals away from the nearest convenient source of weight.

Another trick is the energy pellet, a ball of concentrated, death-dealing plasma that you must guide into a corresponding receiver in order to unlock a door. Oh, and did the Enrichment Center forget to note that said balls have the side effect of “Flesh Rending?” Trying to move these orbs to and fro is a challenge in ever sense, as various timings and portal trickeries must be used to move them to the right spot AND ensure that you don't die in the process.

Even after that, there are still yet other ways to end ones live in this horrid world. Military droids that fire off volleys of machinegun fire whenever you enter their scope will sometimes block your path, and just basic fun with portals won't always work, nor will just running by and hoping that you don't die. Other times, the floor will be covered in a liquid toxin that kills anything that touches it – definitely something that Chell won't live though. And at all other times, you just have to make sure that things you don't get blown up or impaled by a falling cube.

GLaDius is perhaps one of the most interesting characters in a puzzle game in the fact that she is a complete nut job. Her comments though the entire game will sometimes help you, sometimes annoy you, sometimes nag at you, but will always leave a pain in your side from laughing too hard. Over the game, you kind of get to know her and enjoy her sometimes obvious statements and always hilarious remarks. Between GLaDius, the Weighted Companion Cube – who we remind you cannot talk and isn't trying to stab you – and the cute-but-deadly turrets, you have more company than you will ever need.

And the ending…oh…my…[insert deity name here]! This game has, quite frankly, one of the most interesting, funny, and adrenaline filled endings in a game…realizations, a labyrinth of pipe and steam, a boss fight, a lot of rhubarb, an awesome ending song, and a final note mix in to make something that will leave you just saying…”…wow…”

Overall, Portal is just amazing. This game, in my humble but overstated opinion, tops all other puzzle games to day, and can even go as far to be one of the better games in history. The gameplay is beyond excellent, the character is amazing, the music and graphics are well suited, and the game doesn't require a moster-uber computer to play. The only really bad thing about all of this is that it's kind of short. 4 hours for the normal person, perhaps 6 for the perfectionist. That is the only thing holding me back from giving this a ten out of ten, as a ten means the game is perfect, and perfect means no problems. But, alas, this is as close to perfection as we are ever going to get.

…I really want a WCC plushy… *hugs WCC*

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/21/07