Portal: Still Alive...Won't break your heart, or kill you.
Portal, a first-person puzzle game designed by Valve, as originally designed to be a fun side game, packed together with Half-Life 2, the episodes of the same series, and Team Fortress 2. To the surprise of everyone, both developers and players alike, Portal took centre stage as one of the most innovative puzzle games ever to reach any console. So much so that it warranted Valve to create another version of the game; Portal: Still Alive, with more content than the original, on the Xbox Live Arcade.
Portal: Still Alive has a simple story. You are a test subject named Chell, in the Aperture Science testing facility. You awaken from a sleeping pod, and are greeted by the main antognist, and sometimes helpful guide, GLaDOS, the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, as she tells you what is expected of you as a subject. GLaDOS herself is both hilarious and sinister, and throughout the game we hear some excellent lines from her. The main tests you have to complete involve the new Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, which you must use to complete various challenges which get increasingly harder as the game progresses. Upon completion, your success will be rewarded with cake! Or so it would seem. Behind the façade of humour and the promises of cake, Chell begins to discover secrets that shed light on the more sinister side of science.
The mechanics of this game, like Half-Life, and the traditional style of Valve, are physics related. Using the portal gun, you much complete each test chamber, using the portal gun in some creative and innovative ways. The Portal Gun itself uses two different portals, one blue, and one orange, which the player can travel between. This allows for an interesting way to solve puzzles throughout each chamber, as the player will have to figure out new ways of reaching greater heights, traversing huge chasms and bend physics, to suit each of the tests. Some great uses of physics can be found in the game, such as jumping from a great height into on portal, only to come out at high velocity from another portal, allowing form longer distance jumps. These mechanics are extremely fun, and really make the player think about the endless possibilities they could create using the portals.
The levels themselves have an interesting design, combining the pristine shine of the Aperture Science facility with several areas behind the walls, which are gritty and dark. The use of puzzles in the game are interesting too, with puzzles ranging from jump using a portal from ‘a’ to ‘b’, which soon evolve into: use portal to jump from ‘a’ to ‘b’, then to ‘c’, then use the same portals to bounce an orb or energy off of a wall, take out a turret, and power a generator to open a door. These levels are designed well, and can leave the player stumped until the reach the ‘Eureka!’ moment, allowing them to traverse the level, and giving them a sense of accomplishment that cannot really be found in games these days.
As the levels and chambers continue to get harder and harder, the player is expected to think more and more about each move they make, sometimes even thinking three steps ahead. One wrong move could kill you, or force you back to a certain point in the level. This design really engages the players mind, and grants an experience that is both fun and challenging.
The characterization is fairly diverse in the game itself, not so much from the silent protagonist Chell, as GLaDOS, who delivers some of the most entertaining dialogue in existence. The tone she takes is machine like, but the excellent voice-acting, coupled with some great dialogue, really show that GLaDOS is as caring and nurturing as she is cold and calculating. Several images and items in the game also add a nice touch to the setting and tone of the game, such as the Companion Cube, a cube used to activate switches and climb on, but with a little heart in the centre. This really shows that the developers had their usual sense of humour in place when making this game. The turrets are also voiced, and are fun to listen to. They are, admittedly, very cute, and their voices are sweet and caring. The irony being that when they catch sight of you, they fill you full of bullets. It’s these touches that really make the game feel like nothing that has ever existed before. They allow the player to feel like there is a greater world involved in the facility other than what they are seeing, and keeps them engaged and thinking about what exactly goes on behind the scenes of this seemingly lonely facility.
Graphically, this game still holds up to many modern games. It uses lighting and colour to great effect, with the contrast of the white facility to its dirty backgrounds, and its bustling test chambers to the seemingly lonely rooms overlooking them. In this game, the player really feels like a rat in a maze, and though the humorous tone may seek to make the player seem less alone, the graphics and the colour tones still make them feel a sense of loneliness. There is no backup, it’s just the player versus the machines. The graphics contribute to the overall tone of the game, something subtle but interesting.
Finally, we have the challenge maps, a series of chambers that can be played outside of the main game. Each chamber offers a new puzzle to play, with varying difficulties and more complex solutions. There are also Advanced levels, which take existing chambers from the main game and make them more difficult, adding different elements or more challenging rooms to get through. These are a fun extra in the game, and they give the player hours of extra content, which solidifies just how much value there is in a game like this, despite the main game taking only about three hours to complete. These maps add longevity to an already amazing game, and you’ll be thankful for them.
In the end, Portal: Still Alive is an excellent game, given a longer span with the use of challenge maps, this game really shows how such a simple concept can wield some interesting, innovative, surprising, and fun results. A must buy, and for only 1200 MS points, it is a real bargain.
Verdict:
5/5
Pros:
- Great graphics
- Excellent use of physics engine
- Fun use of level design
- Has a sense of humour
- Challenge maps grant the player more time with portals…and science!
Cons:
- Main game is only three hours long
- Some challenge maps can be irritating rather than fun
- Can be difficult to get the hang of initially
Despite its minor flaws, Portal: Still Alive shows us exactly how a puzzle game should be done. A great buy, and wholeheartedly recommended to anyone who wants a challenging, yet fun game. Also, the credits song is just awesome!
WTF? Moment: Photographs of people, with pictures of the companion cube over them…that’s just unpleasant to think about…
