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Is Portal Any Good?

The Cake is a Lie
Portal - A Very Late Video Game Review by Nathan Brooks

Most people my age don't really care for PC gaming. Every argument is "Which is better, XBox One or PS4?" (imagine I said that in a really dumb voice). Usually I complain about how much they neglect Nintendo, who are and probably forever will be my favourite video game company. However, PC gaming also deserves more recognition that it's getting from my age group, especially for Valve. Valve are basically the leading PC game producing company and they're pretty good at it as well. They're most well known for their Half-Life series of games, which I've never played, but have heard are very good. They're also very well know for the Portal series of video games. After recently completing the two games, I decided I wanted to do a two-part mini series on them. So here's part one.

Story
If you stripped this story down to it's bare bones you can barely even call it a story. It's very basic. However, we don't get just the bare bones, we get the meat, and it's some pretty great meat.

The story is played out entirely by one person; GlaDOS, an AI that runs a test facility, called Aperture Science, in which you are a test subject. She speaks to you as you make it through different test chambers and the best thing about her is that every comment she makes is filled with sarcasm. This makes the story, despite being extremely simple, very funny.

Obviously, as I've said before, it's pretty basic but very entertaining nonetheless. 
7.5/10


Gameplay
Original games are hard to come by these days, almost everything is either a First Person Shooter or a First Person Shooter. What I'm trying to say is everything is just a flipping First Person Shooter nowadays. Even Portal is kind of an FPS, but not in the usual sense.

Now your thinking with portals.
You do have a gun, but it's a Portal Gun. It doesn't shoot bullets, it shoots portals and you need to use these portals to complete puzzles, not kill people. You can shoot to different coloured portals, a blue and an orange one, and if you go through a blue one, you come out of an orange one and vice versa.

On its own, this gameplay design is very clever, but combined with the level design, it's just genius. Every single level and every single mechanic is designed by some of the cleverest people on Earth. It has just the right difficulty, so that nothing's too easy, but nothing feels like a chore to solve. Plus, once you do solve a puzzle, it's very satisfying.

When you're not laughing at GlaDOS's lines you'll probably find yourselves congratulating the game designers at Valve for just being so unbelievably clever.
10/10

Presentation
The graphics in this game aren't very shiny, I mean it did come out in 2007. However the game is successful in creating a very eerie atmosphere. The design is very simple and empty, which goes in this game's favour as that's exactly how it wants you to feel. It's a weird game, therefore it's supposed to make you feel unsettled. It doesn't have the fanciest graphics on the planet, but it does use what it has to full effect. And you know what they say, less is more. 

Speaking of less is more, there are two pieces of music in this game. Two. However, that's the point. If there was music the entire time, it would ruin the atmosphere entirely. It's an empty, minimalistic and scary atmosphere that's made even better by having almost no music. When there is music, however, it's still great. One of the two pieces of music is a song played in the end credits called 'Still Alive'. It's sung by GlaDOS, so as you'd expect, it's hilarious. Weird, obviously, but extremely funny.

So the graphics aren't amazing and there's barely any music, but Portal still manages to use that in a positive way, and that's pretty clever.
9/10

Lasting Appeal
This game is really short. You could complete it in about 2-3 hours. Obviously there are some challenge maps, as well as some developer commentary and achievements to unlock, so it's not all bad. It is still very short.
6.5/10

Overall
I like weird, but I only like clever weird. Thankfully, Portal is clever weird. The gameplay is ingenious, the story is funny, but a little empty and the atmosphere is really unsettling. The only problem I have with Portal is the fact that it's really short. But there's always Portal 2.

"Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science
computer-aided research enrichment centre."
Overall: 8.2/10

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