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Recommendation: “Portal”

The PC game “Portal”, developed by Valve software in 2007, is in my humble opinion one of the most ingenious game ever created. The concept is simple, but a bit hard to wrap your head around. You have device that can shoot (over distance) a portal entrance and a portal exit, but only on certain surfaces, be it walls, roof or floors. Once both portals have been placed you can walk through the portals either way, and physics count (e.g. “speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes out”). You can only create two portal openings, and as you progress in the levels you need to figure out exactly how, where and when to place the portals in order to cross chasms, up or over obstacles, around automated turrets that fires at you, transport energy balls into their receivers and open doors by using certain cubes you can pick up in the game. It’s a game that requires thinking, and often challenges you to think completely outside the box.

The gameplay itself makes a great game, even though the game is a bit short. But there’s more. Throughout the game you are accompanied by a computerized voice which speak to you (and watch you) as a “Aperture Science” test subject in “The Enrichment Center”. The voice comes with witty comments and statements which really gives the game personality.

Throughout the levels you also encounter the “Weighted Companion Cube”, a cube with a heart, another bonus which adds to the game’s genius. You carry and use the cube while the computerized voice reminds you that it will never threaten to stab you, it cannot speak and in the event that it does speak, disregard its advice. In the end you are told that your beloved cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the tests and if it could speak it would tell you to go on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.

You are constantly being promised cake when you have completed all of the 19 levels. But once you reach there you are, apparently as every other test subjects, being terminated by transporting you into a pit of flames. But the game doesn’t end there. As you cleverly escape using portals, you navigate through the building to find the source: the computer that have been talking all along. While you find your way towards the computer voice, it inquires you to give up, come back for your cake, jokingly excuses for trying to kill you or lie to you and threatens to start cutting and eating the cake without you.

When you have reached the computer brain behind it all, you are engaged in an end boss fight while the voice constantly tries to discourage you with hilarious statements. Among others how unlikeable you are and that nobody would come to your party, or imitate how stupid you sound. I won’t reveal how the game ends, but after it’s finished you are played the infamous and witty song “I’m Alive”. You are also given the option of replaying some of the levels in advanced mode.

I recommend getting the game, it is included in Valve’s Orange box or can be bought singly through Steam. But if you are convinced it’s not worth buying, (you are totally missing out, fool!) there is a free online Flash-version of Portal. It contains no less than 40 challenging which features almost every feature the real game does. Personally I prefer the real thing. “Portal” and its “Weighted Companion Cube” will always have a special space in my heart.

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