[Review] Portal - Two Portals, Two People, Our take on bending reality

Written by: Jersie & Bootyous Maximus August 10, 2019

Do you think anyone has a crush on her? She'll certainly crush you

Recently, one of my friends (and a writer here) and I have taken up a bit of a co-op technique for going through shorter games. No, not playing the typical multiplayer style, but rather playing games we’ve never played over discord calls. This allows us to have company, while getting feedback from each other on the game. Sometimes even helping each other through certain parts (although it’s usually him helping me 😂) (how cute😊)

This time, we played through Portal.

I will be referencing my 10 game commandments, alongside Bootyous’s review style today.

1. Gameplay

2. Story

3. Characters/World

4. Graphics

5. Sound

6. Optimization and bugs

7. Price Value

8. Replay value

9. Memorability

10. Of course, enjoyment and fun!

Back in 2005, DigiPen showed off some student creations on career day. Coincidentally, some representatives from Valve came to DigiPen to see what the students had to offer. One of these games is Narbacular Drop, which went on to become recognized.

Narbacular Drop is a 3D puzzle game starring Princess “No-Knees.” She must use 2 interconnected portals that can be placed basically anywhere to navigate through a sentient dungeon named Wally (Hmmm...never heard this before🤔).

Unknown to everybody, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell was in the audience observing alongside everybody else. After the presentation, Newell offered to hire the entire development team (named Nuclear Monkey Software) right there on the spot and allowed them to create something using the concepts from Narbacular Drop and Valve’s own engine. The resulting product from this...is the game we’re looking at today.

Narbacular Drop

Story

As far as the story shown in Portal, I do find it a bit interesting that many things are implied than outright stated...at least in the beginning. You go through a series of puzzles while GLaDOS is constantly shooting snooty remarks and quips at you which is very entertaining to say the very least. Honestly, if I was in the character’s shoes, I’d be laughing instead of doing the actual puzzles. When you a certain point, you begin to notice that the “Overseer” begins to say things with an ulterior motive. By the 18th puzzle, it becomes pretty obvious what this whole thing was about.

Yeah, you know, I love how the world and characters of this game are so wonderfully subtle, it makes you really want to know everything this game has to show you. And oh gosh, the “characters.” Despite the best interactions being with inanimate objects, I have not had such memorable connections with video game characters in a long while, and golly it is refreshing. In fact I think I’ll buy my own companion cube and turrent soon..The world, is also very fitting, having that painfully sterile air to it, but for being a test subject, it makes sense.

If it seems like I’m spoiling the story rotten, I apologize, but there really isn’t that much to spoil. This story is pretty basic...or you could argue that this game has no story and that all those things in the background serve as a means to give us more puzzles (although I’m 99% sure that isn’t the case). In this case, you have to read into the game to understand what is truly going on. This is one of those games where everything you want to know is told via subtext. Each room, line and area outside of the testing rooms has something to add and depending on whether or not you piece it together yourself, you can find this incredibly brilliant or outright lazy. I’m kinda in the middle on this topic, but it’s honestly...whatever. The plot’s there, it serves its purpose and it gave me a bit of a surprise, I’m not gonna lie about that.

If you’re playing Portal, you’re most likely playing it for the dialogue and puzzles. On the topic of dialogue, as I mentioned earlier, the dialogue provided by GLaDOS is really entertaining and easily the best part about the game. There were several points where I straight up laughed out loud because how GLaDOS subtly look down upon you. It’s pure gold and certainly gave me a bit of incentive when going through the many puzzles this game offers. Oh...on the topic of puzzles…

Gameplay

The toilet thanks you for using it

I’ll have to say, funny enough, since this is one of the most renowned aspects of the game, the actual gameplay itself for me, was not my favorite. But, I’m not a big fan of puzzle games, so that’s another reason. Most normal-intelligence people will certainly find enjoyment in Portal. The game guides you through fairly gently, but eventually has quite challenging puzzles. Related to the gameplay, I have my own biggest reason for not fully enjoying this game, but I will get to that later.

You control this character that’s supposedly named Chell going from one room to the next while solving one of the many puzzles this game provides to you. Once you get past a few puzzles, you finally grab your portal gun, but it can only create 1 portal when you first get it. Soon after, you’ll grab the attachment that allows you to create 2 portals which allows you to get creative with the puzzle solving. As a person that doesn’t play many puzzle games, this was refreshing in its own way and a nice change of pace from the several RPGs that I’m juggling.

The puzzles themselves begin simple enough and easy to understand (well...I found it easy and simple to understand). But right around the 12 or 13 mark, that’s when things begin to spice up. I remember spending quite a bit of time on the companion cube room since there were 2 doors, and the switch for the first door was right in front of said door. It was really satisfying when I finally solved that puzzle and...it certainly left an impression.

Though I find the puzzles themselves a joy to get through, most (if not all) of the solutions have only 1 answer. Throughout most of the game, I was asking, “What is the solution,” instead of, “How do I solve this?” To expand a bit...when I say “what” in this context, I’m implying that there’s only 1 solution, but when I say “how”, I’m implying that there are multiple ways of approaching and solving this problem. It’s not even close to being a deal-breaker, but it’s something that just bugs me personally.

If the whole game was just this one straight line of puzzles, then it would be a chore to play again. Luckily there are numerous maps that have completely different puzzles and is more for the advanced crowd that loves their puzzle games. I didn’t do that for this review since puzzle games aren’t really my forte to begin with.

Graphics/Sound

Physics? Yes please

Portal uses the GoldSrc engine, same as Half-life, so it uses many of the same assets, so the graphics are just as good as the engine, which was amazing for its time. (And I think still is) I don’t remember much of the music during the game itself, my brain was too busy getting racked around puzzles, but the ending song, Still Alive? Oooooh

Even after a couple of days after playing the game, IT’S STILL STUCK IN MY HEAD! AND I LOVE IT! I’m adding it to my mixtape-

Also just going to note, I did not find any bugs, so that’s great! And it of course ran a crispy 240 fps on my computer.

Visually, it’s pretty simple and easy on the eyes...although playing this game for a while can cause some form of physical pain (sorry Jersie😟) which is really weird to say because games with some technical fault (usually frame rate combined with psychedelic colors) are the ones that can cause headaches. Anyway, the game still looks good in every area except for the human model. In my opinion, the human model looks really jank compared to the more polished objects that surround the character. If you’ve played Team Fortress or Half-Life (or you’ve seen those games in action), then you’ll be right at home. Everything runs smoothly with the constant frame rate...although you might have to go into the options menu to optimize that. There really isn’t much else to say here; the graphics are good...very simple, but good.

As far as the soundtrack, it’s mostly ambiance which is primarily used to enhance the atmosphere. It works, but I kinda wish I had something that could enhance the atmosphere and be something good to listen to outside of the game (like Super Metroid and Metroid Prime). The only exception to this is the credits theme, which is really good stuff.

I’m not gonna say much else about this section. It speaks for itself, if I’m being honest.

Is the cake truly a lie?

Getting a lovely score of 90 on meta critic, shows this game is a bit memorable and innovative like most Valve titles. Including what you unravel in the world and experience, it is quite unique. As for replayability, the sequel does have Steam Workshop, but it does have bonus levels in the game, and if you got the Orange Box bundle that comes with Portal: Still Alive, which I believe has 14 new bonus stages. Now for the price. For some, spending $10 on a 5-hour experience may not seem that amazing, but Steam with its legendary sales and all, definitely includes their own titles which get discounted to a dollar. If you buy em’ for console physically at let’s say GameStop, they are definitely going to be that cheap as well.

Summary

Bootyous's Overall: 7.7

I don’t find the game to be bad; it’s just that the bits and pieces I had some issues with were executed much better in games that came out over 5 years ago

The story is simple and can be read deeper via subtext, but I feel that certain entries in the Metroid series does this better (or that could very well be my Metroid bias speaking). The execution itself is not even close to being bad. It’s just something I couldn’t get into.

GLaDOS is easily the best part about this game, but he can only carry this game so far

The puzzles are cool to go through, but in the end, there’s truly only one solution to most of them. You can get Portal on Steam, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3 if you want to give it a try.

Jersie's Overall: 8.9

Great value! Overall, I enjoyed every aspect of the game, except some parts of playing it. A bit weird huh? Well, I (and probably many others) sometimes experience nausea or lightheaded-ness playing certain games. It was very prevalent here for me. While it took a good 3 and a half hours for it to set in, it was not pretty. That was the only reason I couldn’t finish this in one sitting with Bootyous (props to you man for beating it in one go)

As Bootyous mentioned before about me, It really sucks that a glaring flaw in a game is experiencing physical suffering when it’s not really its fault. In conclusion, every aspect in the game may not be the best ever, but there is certainly good enough in every corner of the game for a gamer to enjoy. Highly recommend for puzzle-lovers, casual gamers, game history-lovers and even us backlog brawlers with so much to fight! 👍 (Also, you guys should try playing single-player games with your friends, it’s a blast!)

See ya’ll! Imma rest in my homemade pod, until GLaDOS comes to try and eat my soul again.

Jersie Rating specifics:

1. Gameplay - 8/10

2. Story - 8/10

3.Characters/World - 10/10

4. Graphics - 8/10

5. Sound - 9/10

6. Optimization and bugs - 10/10

7. Price Value - 10/10

8. Replay value - 10/10

9. Memorability - 10/10

10. Of course, enjoyment and fun! - 6/10

COMBINED SCORE: 8.3

PROS-

• Unique and Innovative puzzle gameplay

• Dark humor and cute inanimate objects

• Subtle story that leaves you wanting more

• Glorious Goldsrc engine

• Still Alive

• No bugs found

• Bonus levels

• Frequently cheap

CONS-

• Strict on method of puzzle solving

• Story does not go very in-depth

• Crusty character model

• Not much other music through the rest of the game

• Can potentially give certain gamers nausea/light-headed-ness

Jersie

Always acquiring new games, backlog brawling has  been a constant struggle. But this cat-loving, (almost) any game playing girl always gets back on her feet. Armed with her lemon water, 3rd party Xbox controller, and desktop punching bag, this teenage girl will make sure to utterly destroy her foes with thorough reviews!

Bootyous Maximus

Bootyous, jack-of-all-trades, blitzes through the battlefield with nothing but patience, a bag of potato chips, a can of Dr. Pepper and an extremely high metabolism.