The Orange Box: Portal (PC)

Through a door brightly...
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Plenty of games know how to start, but very few know how to finish. Even the utterly brilliant BioShock runs out of steam and spends an hour limping to its uninspired conclusion. Portal is the exception to the rule. In fact, the game seems to have been built backwards, with the real hook at the end, and the credits are arguably the most memorable part of the experience.

You get about three hours of clever puzzles wrapped up in about one hour of awesome storytelling. But its length -- or lack thereof -- is a strength rather than a weakness. Portal is just as long as it needs to be. It's compact and muscular, a lean, sinister arch and refreshing story about the dialogue between two characters in a very contained environment. It's just you as another silent protagonist trying to find an exit and your host, the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, trying to foil you. Your relationship consists almost solely of conversation. You will never once shoot at each other. 'My Dinner with GLaDOS.'

The game's central premise comes from a project called Narbacular Drop, created by three students from the DigiPen Institute of Technology who were hired by Valve. Their game suggested a gun that doesn't kill, but instead admits. The gimmick -- and oh, what promise this gimmick holds for the future! -- is that your gun can shoot out two doors, each connected to the other extra-dimensionally. Step into one door and suddenly you've stepped out of the other, wherever you placed it. You can peer through your doors, drop things into them, fall into them to jump out the other side, and so on.

Portal gradually teaches you the literal ins and outs of these doorways. The game is built as a series of puzzles. Each one progressively reveals a new trick to get you past a new obstacle, in the process unfolding in your head new ways of thinking about these doors. It's as if Valve peered into your brain and carefully tailored Portal to tickle awake that 'a-ha!' moment at just the right place between too easy and too challenging.

It's a short game, but there are bonus levels you can play once you've finished. These are basically the original puzzles, remixed for increased difficulty. There are also challenges to finish each level with a minimum number of portals, or walking only a certain distance. If you're really into the puzzle-solving aspect, these will add considerable longevity to the game. For everyone else, they'll be brain-torturing exercises in frustration, bewilderment and madness. Conduct a sanity check before you proceed.

But the puzzles are only half of what's going on. This could have been a tech demo for Half-Life 3, or a Peggle-style collection of desultory challenges. But instead, Valve uses Portal to tell the story of a test subject who wakes up in a place called Aperture Science Inc. She (you only know her gender by glimpsing yourself through portals) is guided through a series of trails by the facility's Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, more familiarly known as GLaDOS. It's a straightforward enough setup at first, colored with touches of humor and hints of being yet another rogue Artificial Intelligence (AI) story.

But GLadDOS is no mere plot device. Instead of the stereotypical rogue AI, she is reimagined as an insecure and spoiled child who really wants you to love her. She doesn't need Hal's logical loophole or SHODAN's homicidal cunning. Her insecurity is driven by fear, longing and ultimately the suggestion of loneliness. This is expressed through a combination of text and subtext, presented brilliantly in the collaboration between writer Erik Wolpaw and voice actress Ellen McLean. Jonathan Coulter's song over the credit sequence, 'Still Alive,' rounds out GLaDOS as one of videogaming's most memorable characters.