Half-life 2 was, and still is famed internationally for its ground-breaking, physics based gameplay that allowed the player to freely manipulate any item you saw, with realistic gravitational consequences when you drop or throw them. The overall cohesiveness of visuals, audio and gameplay created a realistic, yet fantasy atmosphere that you simply couldn't avoid. Now it is over three years since Valve had this glory, and after recruiting a small team of university students with a creative idea, can this boundary be pushed yet again?
The story is quite simple on the skin; you are a candidate for an experiment in the cold, sterile rooms of Aperture Science, and you must do as a robotic voice called Glados tells you. However if you start to peel away at this, you'll start to find certain areas where you're not supposed to go in the test chambers, which have been inhabited by other test subjects, filled with scratchings on the walls and the like. The plot is a very good representation of the inhumanity in using humans as experiment subjects, but the twist that comes after you finish the tests, I won't spoil; but it kicks in at the perfect time, just as the overall sterility and grey atmosphere of the test chambers were starting to drag on a bit, and it will give you such a great sense of revenge.
That is if this experience ever gets boring; I'll talk about game play later, but the general aesthetics that create this game's atmosphere are startling detailed. Granted they are no supreme technical feat like Call of Duty 4, but they don't need to be. The developers have meticulously added each detail to every level, and deliberately left the test chambers themselves looking very clean with sterile whites and greys. It's when you start to find yourself behind the scenes of these test chambers that you see the real detail of this dystopia, and the audio work, especially with the AI voice complements this perfectly. It's a very weird, psychologically daunting atmosphere to comprehend, and for this, I admire the bravery and confidence in their attention to detail.
In terms of amount of content you receive in portal alone, there is only a single player campaign which would last you about 3-4 hours at a push. There are a few challenges unlocked after you complete the story mode, such as a harder mode that drastically changes the maps. You can sure tell this is more a game of quality than quantity, but you can't help but feel a bit down when you just smashed the campaign in one afternoon's blitz. The experience is short lived and it accents the fact, if anything, that Portal is perfect sequel ‘material.’
Probably most significant to this original idea succeeding is the gameplay, which I can fortunately say gives your traditional thought of FPS puzzles an extreme overhaul.
I know the whole portal idea was explored in Prey, but nowhere near to the equivalent detail found in Portal. The responsiveness of your character is tight and finely tuned, which you will need for some of the more reaction speed based puzzles. Throughout the levels, up to the final test, you will be learning new gameplay tactics with the portal gun, such as the super jump and the freefalling mechanic (one of the achievements is to fall 30,000 feet). It makes every level feel new and different from the previous test, even though it is just a series of rooms, very similarly styled. The puzzles are satisfyingly difficult, and some will require an amount of trial and error. However, the ingenuity of the gameplay will keep the trial and error stages addictive as you try and explore certain paths through test chambers.
I would be more than happy to receive portal itself, but the fact that it comes in a box of five games is just amazing value for money. It may be an extremely short experience, but the game play shines through as a new evolution in the way FPS puzzles are implemented. If this was made into a fully fledged game next time, it would be so much closer to perfection. One of the best assets in the orange box.
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