Quarter Up

With the advent of Steam becoming available to Mac users, Portal is now free!  A no-brainer for most people as free is the correct price for most games; Portal is well worth the money that people paid to own this great game prior.  After some coercion from Damon to pick this game up and play it, I am happy to say that Portal is the first 5 star game to be reviewed on QuarterUp.

Released in 2007, Portal is a first-person puzzle game designed by the Valve Corporation.  After some digging around, I found that Portal is in essence the spiritual successor to an indie game called Narbacular Drop.  The plot is fairly simple; you control a young woman named Chell as she awakens from a "stasis bed" in the Enrichment center of a company called Aperture Sciences.  Those who are familiar with Half-Life may have heard of this company before. I unfortunately, was not a huge fan of Half-Life so many in game Easter eggs were lost on me.  Through in game dialog from an autonomous AI named Glados (Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operated System and voiced by Ellen McLain) you are guided through various rooms using a gun that creates portals.  There is no health meter in the game, but should Chell receive enough damage in a short period of time she will die.  Chell does however recover very quickly on her own, so dying isn't too much of an issue.  

The Portal Gun is your only tool for making it through the various levels as well as your ability to jump and pick up objects such as blocks.  As the game continues on you gain access to the ability to create two portals, a blue one and orange portal to enter in and out of .  Portals created are not only used for yourself to travel, but can also be used to direct object where you need them to go and jumping to higher platforms. This leaves you with almost infinite possibilities and also a very strange feeling the first time you see yourself through a portal.  I could feel my brain melting in one area where I could see infinite versions of myself.

Portal takes things a step further with the ability to conserve momentum as you go through portals.  In other words, if you put a portal on the ground and another portal on the wall above you, as you jump into the portal on the ground, you will use the momentum gained to fly out of the portal on the wall. This makes it possible to reach places you are unable to jump to on your own.  But to make that easier to understand "fast thing goes in, fast thing comes out" as Glados puts it.  This ability makes some rooms very fun to figure out as you take no damage from falling; Chell has some form of tech attached to her legs that protect her.  Nothing beats jumping through portals and creating them midair to build up ludicrous amounts of speed.

**Spoiler** 
With the promise of cake (no I'm not kidding) the story continues through Glados's narration and taunting of you as you progress further into the testing areas.  After the first 10 or so levels you begin to feel a more sinister event is taking place. You find evidence that you are not the only one to have gone through this test, the others obviously didn't make it out.  The observatory areas are consistently empty and Glados begins to slowly show her true intentions.  She has murdered everyone in the testing facility and intends to do the same to you.  Eventually you also figure out there is no cake...the cake is a lie.
**End Spoiler**

If I had to say something negative about this game, it would be only that the game is too short.  Portal only took me roughly 2 hours to beat, but in that short time there is more story and character development than most games that take 10-25 hours.  Valve left me wanting more, which of course they do give to you in the way of challenge maps and a Developer Commentary mode.  Outside of that, Portal offers an excellent gaming experience at the right price. Now with Valve's announcement of Portal 2, I'm actually excited to see what new ideas will be implemented in the future...also they can answer that nagging question; will Chell ever get her cake?


5/5