"Hello. And again, welcome to the Aperture science computer enrichment center..."
-warning: there are spoilers in this review-
Do you know what its like to have your head repeatedly dunked into a toilet? How about being dragged choking and sputtering across the room and thrown immediatly into the holocaust?
Well, if you were to take all of those emotions and shove them into opposite world you would have Portal, arguably one of Valve's best video games to date.
^ Portal's teaser trailer gives you a brief taste of the wit and humor involved in the treachorous puzzle solver
The game itself centers around your character, an android in an orange jump suit. During the course of the game, you dont' find out much about this android's backstory, but you do find out your just a robot made to solve little puzzles in the Apeture science facilities, so backstory isn't really needed.
Most male gamers will notice that the specific android they're playing though is a woman. Yes thats right! your no longer the testosterone drunk Master Chief and his magical suit of protective armor nor are you the dumb beardy mute Gordon Freeman. Your chromosomes in this game are XX. Get over it.
An interesting note on Portal is how, for once in gaming history, there are no female support characters. Instead, the female cast of the game actually take the reins as both the protagonist and (secret) antagonist. This interesting little quirk with portal further enhances the unique feel of the game in contrast to the other FPS games out there that star testosterone-man and his trusty sidekick info-woman.Another interesting note is how the game doesn't have ridiculously large breasts that fulfill every lonely fanboy's dream. While this may not seem very much to people who aren't familiar with video games recently, this is a huge moral leap in the right direction for the video game industry, where oversized watermelons glued onto female chests is slowly becoming the disturbing norm.
What truly sets this game apart from other FPS games is the creative uses of the "Portal gun". A fun little device that fires a blue portal using the left mouse button and firing an orange portal using the right one. These two portals are linked in the sameway the entrance and exit to a tunnel would be and allow the player to travel from one point to another using the two portals to contruct mini-pathways to certain points. For lack of a better term, you point the gun at a wall and fire a blue one, then you point it at another point on the wall and fire an orange one. If you jump into the blue one, you appear out of the orange one and vice versa.
Through this mechanism, the game calls upon you to go through 19 test chambers with your portal gun solving small puzzles while GlaDos, a computer AI, will give you brief messages to help you along each test chamber.
Its here that the dark wit and humor everyone has come to know and love really shines. For every room you go through it feels as though GlaDos has a smart crack to tell you. The usage of talking turrets also further immerses you into the world of Portal.
Puzzles range from "its a sphinx" hard (Oedipus riddle), to "2+2 = cake" easy.
-warning: there are spoilers in this review-
Do you know what its like to have your head repeatedly dunked into a toilet? How about being dragged choking and sputtering across the room and thrown immediatly into the holocaust?
Well, if you were to take all of those emotions and shove them into opposite world you would have Portal, arguably one of Valve's best video games to date.
^ Portal's teaser trailer gives you a brief taste of the wit and humor involved in the treachorous puzzle solver
The game itself centers around your character, an android in an orange jump suit. During the course of the game, you dont' find out much about this android's backstory, but you do find out your just a robot made to solve little puzzles in the Apeture science facilities, so backstory isn't really needed.
Most male gamers will notice that the specific android they're playing though is a woman. Yes thats right! your no longer the testosterone drunk Master Chief and his magical suit of protective armor nor are you the dumb beardy mute Gordon Freeman. Your chromosomes in this game are XX. Get over it.
An interesting note on Portal is how, for once in gaming history, there are no female support characters. Instead, the female cast of the game actually take the reins as both the protagonist and (secret) antagonist. This interesting little quirk with portal further enhances the unique feel of the game in contrast to the other FPS games out there that star testosterone-man and his trusty sidekick info-woman.Another interesting note is how the game doesn't have ridiculously large breasts that fulfill every lonely fanboy's dream. While this may not seem very much to people who aren't familiar with video games recently, this is a huge moral leap in the right direction for the video game industry, where oversized watermelons glued onto female chests is slowly becoming the disturbing norm.
What truly sets this game apart from other FPS games is the creative uses of the "Portal gun". A fun little device that fires a blue portal using the left mouse button and firing an orange portal using the right one. These two portals are linked in the sameway the entrance and exit to a tunnel would be and allow the player to travel from one point to another using the two portals to contruct mini-pathways to certain points. For lack of a better term, you point the gun at a wall and fire a blue one, then you point it at another point on the wall and fire an orange one. If you jump into the blue one, you appear out of the orange one and vice versa.
Through this mechanism, the game calls upon you to go through 19 test chambers with your portal gun solving small puzzles while GlaDos, a computer AI, will give you brief messages to help you along each test chamber.
Its here that the dark wit and humor everyone has come to know and love really shines. For every room you go through it feels as though GlaDos has a smart crack to tell you. The usage of talking turrets also further immerses you into the world of Portal.
Puzzles range from "its a sphinx" hard (Oedipus riddle), to "2+2 = cake" easy.
Well thats all for the review this time. I'll probably redo this one becuase its so horribly incomplete but I'm running late for an appointment. Next blog will be on dead space though, and I'll have some actual time to sit down and really review it. Mark my words though, after dead space I'm going to revisit Portal and make this review worthwhile.
2 comments:
I was tempted to buy this game. And I almost did, until I looked at my wallet and found out I only have five bucks. Well for one fact, I agree with you about making females in games with large breasts. I mean sure, put a female in the game I don't mind, in fact it'll give the game more variety and less sexism, but a lot of the games I played have big breasts for females and it just annoys me now.
But I tried it at my friend's house and it is amazing, with your portal gun haha you teleport around and it made me dizzy as well. Oh well, it was a fun game!
I love Portal. It's only about 2 hours long on average (although with my super-advanced intellect I completed the main game in just under an hour) but it's a perfect length. This game was designed for the orange box as an extra but what valve created was one of the most innovitive and entertaining games I've played in the past few years. Bring on the cake!
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