Yeah, yeah, I realize that I'm pretty much the only person that hadn't played this game yet. Would you believe the first time I heard about it was at a college where the girls still weren't allowed to wear pants and they had his and hers elevators? But yeah, that was the first time. The prof of the lecture I was sitting in on was complaining about "Still Alive" being stuck in his head.
In case you, like me, were raised under a rock, Portal is a 2007 puzzle/platformer/FPS game by Valve that spawned the popular internet joke, "The cake is a lie!" Also extremely popular has been the credits song, "Still Alive."
You are playing as Chell, a female protagonist who is actually *gasp* not overly sexualized. I know, right? It's like a freakin' miracle. But if you've played Half-Life 2, you'll realize that Valve is actually pretty decent about these kinds of things.
Chell is a test subject for Aperture Science, a rival of Half-Life's Black Mesa Corporation. Chell has to navigate the nineteen test chambers Aperture set up for their portal gun, a device that shoots out, well, portal gates. Using these gates and the game physics, the player has to figure how to navigate Chell through the levels without getting killed. Even the few instances of "combat" are puzzle-based. This all culminates in a showdown with GLaDOS, the rogue supercomputer that serves as your malfunctional guide for much of the game.
Portal is really short. And by short, I mean I beat it in about five hours. That's with Portal also being the first game I've ever played using just my mouse and keyboard instead of connecting a console controller. That meant I spent a lot of time getting a feel for the calibration of my mouse and tweaking it. I also spent a lot of time gazing around, since for some reason the installation couldn't recognize my graphics card. I guess it's time to redo my drivers.
But despite its short length, Portal is worth the dime. It's only $4.99 if you download it using the Steam client, and let's face it, Steam is free. Plus, there's plenty of replay value in trying to beat all the challenge modes and advanced levels. And it's good for fifteen achievements.
