Posted 10/22/2007 at 10:30 AM By GamingShogun
The Good: The graphics are nice, gameplay is fun, and the atmosphere is...creepy.
The Bad: The game goes by way too quickly.
Summary: Portal is a very fun game that uses not only good gameplay but also suspense to great avail.
Full Review:
Portal is set sometime in the Half-Life universe at the Aperture Laboratories' Testing Facility. It seems that the company has developed a technology for creating portals between two points from a gun-style interface. Testing the unit falls on your shoulders. Administering the test is the GLaDOS Artificial Intelligence unit. This AI has a very dry wit and is one of the central areas of fun in the game. Testing takes place over 19 levels of varying degree of challenge. If you can make it to the end of your testing the GLaDOS AI has promised you a party and cake. Is all as it appears, however?
Using the portal gun is easy enough, simply press the left mouse button to fire the 'blue' portal or the right mouse button to fire the 'orange' portal. The colors are there simply to help you determine which you have already deployed as the portals are 2-way lanes of travel. Throughout the levels you will find various obstacles in the way of your goal and you will have to be creative in overcoming them. Solving the puzzles takes a bit of patience and lateral thinking but they are not so difficult as to promote brain hemorrhages.
Sound design is adequate however the score is great. It really sets the mood of potential danger around every corner wrapped in sardonic corporate culture wit. Partially due to this score, you really expect to see some sort of bad guy run around the corner at any moment with the intent of killing you. This game makes you play it paranoid. The voice acting of the GLaDOS AI is just incredible. Delivered with a dead-pan style, actress Ellen McLain shines doing this voice-over work.
Graphics are built using the Source engine and are very crisp and clean, doing a marvelous job of creating the sterile testing environment as well as the seedier sides of Aperture Laboratories.
So what is really going on at Aperture Laboratories? You will just have to find out. Portal is bundled with the Valve Orange Box as well as a solo product on Steam.
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