Portal 2 is up for grabs on Steam at 75% off - thats five bucks for a $20 game. Or get the original as well - two games for just $6.25. If you havent played Portal yet, if you havent even sat down next to someone who was playing Portal and watched for a while, watch me try to stumble my way through explaining what Portal is. Value decided to make a FPS game where you didnt interact with anyone else because people were difficult (and costly) to animate. And youd be mute, so no dialogue necessary. But that was boring, so they added a computer voice to provide instructions, motivation, character, and interesting flavor text to the plot. And then that computer BECAME the plot. Thats probably not quite how it happened. But GLaDOS, the computer running the testing facility you find yourself in, is certainly the highlight of the game. The other highlight being a nonstop tutorial that takes up at least half the game (to the point where, when I hit the midpoint, I thought the game was over with a bizarre twist ending), the point of the tutorial being to get you Thinking with Portals. Imagine being able to put a door on your wall that you could walk through and instantly end up in Fiji. Easy concept, but lets go smaller scale and let yourself walk through your bedroom wall and out the corner-wise wall, or into your bathroom wall and out your kitchen ceiling... thats when things start to get weird. Especially how gravity and momentum interact across the barrier. It takes a good half of the game to get incrementally better at using these mechanics to where youre solving complex, multi-layered puzzles... while cute little robot turrets shoot at you, and you try desperately to avoid misjudging your angles and landing in quick-dissolving acid. The tutorial style is engaging and well designed, though, as pointed out by Extra Credits in their Design Club episode. And while youre learning how to make use of portals, youre also getting to know GLaDOS... and I cant really say more about that without spoilers, but GLaDOS is one of the more memorable characters in modern gaming. So if you havent played Portal yet, and your computer meets the necessary specs, go check it out. Its only $2.50 for the first one, or $5.00 for the second, and even less if you buy them together. Enjoy!
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 09:19:34 +0000
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