Portal

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Portal
Developer(s)	Valve
Release date(s)	October 10, 2007
Genre(s)	First-person shooter, Puzzle video game
Mode(s)	Single-player
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac OS X
Rating(s)	ESRB: T (Teen) CERO: B OFLC: M (Mature) PEGI: 12 USK:12
Distribution	Electronic Arts (retail), Steam
System req	Minimum: 1.7 GHz processor, 512 MB RAM, DirectX 8 compatible video card, Windows 2000/XP/Vista Recommended: Pentium 4 processor (3.0 GHz or better), 1 GB RAM, DirectX 9 compatible video card, Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Input	Keyboard and mouse, Xbox 360 Controller, Sixaxis Controller, DualShock 3 Controller
Engine	Source
Series	Portal
Writer(s)	Erik Wolpaw Chet Faliszek Marc Laidlaw
Composer(s)	Kelly Bailey Jonathan Coulton ("Still Alive") Mike Morasky (additional music)
Previous game	Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Next game	Portal 2

 

 

"Now you're thinking with portals."

―GLaDOS during the Portal trailer

 

Portal is a single-player first-person shooter/puzzle game developed by Valve. The game was released in a bundle package known as The Orange Box for PC and Xbox 360 on October 9, 2007, and for the PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007. The Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X versions of the game are also available for download separately through Valve's online delivery platform Steam and was released as a standalone retail product on April 9, 2008. The game consists of a series of puzzles which must be solved by teleporting the player's character and other simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. The goal of each chamber is to reach an exit point, represented by a circular elevator. The "portal gun" and the unusual physics it creates are the emphasis of this game.

Plot

The plot of Portal is revealed to the player via audio messages from GLaDOS, and side rooms found in the later levels. The game begins with protagonist Chell waking up from a stasis bed in a small, rectangular glass room known as the 'relaxation vault.' Upon waking up, Chell receives instructions and warnings from GLaDOS about the upcoming test chamber experience. This part of the game involves distinct test chambers that the player must to complete to go on to the next test chamber. Chell is promised cake and grief counselling by GLaDOS as her reward for completing all of the test chambers.

Chell proceeds into the Enrichment Center, interacting only with GLaDOS over the course of the game. GLaDOS' actions and speech suggest insincerity and callous disregard for Chell's safety and well-being. The test chambers become increasingly dangerous and difficult, as Chell proceeds by following the main charter. GLaDOS, at one point, directs Chell through a live-fire course designed for military androids as a result of "mandatory scheduled maintenance" in the regular test chamber. In another chamber, GLaDOS boasts about the Weighted Companion Cube, a waist-high crate with a single large pink heart on each face, for helping Chell to complete the chamber. However, GLaDOS then declares at the end of the test chamber that it "unfortunately must be euthanized" in an "emergency intelligence incinerator" before Chell can continue to the next test chamber. Over the course of the tests, certain areas are spotted in which portions of the wall are broken or removed, leading outside of the test proper. Unlike the interior of the test chambers, which are sterile and pristine, the hidden areas are worn and dirty, and covered in graffiti, including statements such as "the cake is a lie," hinting at GLaDOS's malevolent intentions.

After Chell completes the final test chamber, GLaDOS congratulates her. Chell begins heading into a pit of fire as GLaDOS assures her that "all Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4,000 degrees." However, Chell escapes with the use of the hand held portal device and makes her way through the maintenance areas within the Enrichment Center. GLaDOS becomes panicked, insisting that she was only pretending to kill Chell as part of testing, and tries to convince her come back to where she was. GLaDOS asks Chell to assume the "party escort submission position", lying face-first on the ground, so that a "party escort robot" could take her to her reward. Ignoring GLaDOS' pleas, Chell continues forward. Throughout this section, GLaDOS still continually sends messages to Chell, asking her to come back again, and it becomes clear that she has become corrupt (or rather, was all along) and may have killed everyone else in the center.

Chell makes her way through the maintenance areas and empty office spaces behind the chambers into the piping areas, sometimes following graffiti messages which point in the right direction. GLaDOS attempts to dissuade Chell with threats of physical harm and misleading statements claiming that she is going the wrong way as Chell makes her way deeper into the maintenance areas. Eventually, Chell reaches a large chamber in which GLaDOS' hardware hangs overhead. GLaDOS, angered at Chell's refusal to listen, threatens to kill Chell, saying she has 'a surprise' for her. While 'deploying' the surprise, however, a personality core falls off of GLaDOS, which Chell drops into an incinerator. GLaDOS reveals that Chell has just destroyed her morality core, which the Aperture Science employees allegedly installed after GLaDOS flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin, and goes on to state that now there is nothing to prevent her from doing so once again. A six-minute countdown starts as Chell incinerates more cores, while GLaDOS attempts to discourage her both verbally with a series of taunts and increasingly juvenile insults, as well as physically by firing rockets at Chell with the Rocket Sentry. After she has destroyed the final core, a portal malfunction tears the room apart and pulls everything to the surface. Chell wakes up, lying outside the facility's gates amid the wreckage of GLaDOS. An update to the PC versions of Portal shows Chell being dragged away from the scene by an unseen entity speaking in a robotic voice, thanking her for assuming the party escort submission position.

The final scene, after a long and speedy zoom through the bowels of the facility, shows a mix of shelves surrounding a brown cake with one candle, and the Weighted Companion Cube. The shelves contain dozens of other cores, some of which begin to light up before a robotic arm descends and extinguishes the candle on the cake. As the end credits play, GLaDOS (Ellen McLaine) sings a song called Still Alive, written by Jonathan Coulton.

Characters

• Chell
• GLaDOS
• Party Escort Bot
• Doug Rattmann (Wall scribblings only)
• Cave Johnson (As "CJOHNSON" scribbled on a wall)

Enemies

• GLaDOS
• Aperture Science Sentry Turret
• Rocket Sentry

Gameplay

A typical Portal level (Test Chamber 17) with both the player's blue and orange portals opened.

In Portal, the player controls Chell (as she is named in the game credits), a test subject in the Enrichment Center. Gameplay revolves around the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (also known as the "Portal Gun", or ASHPD, the acronym), a handheld device that can create an inter-spatial portal between flat planes, allowing instant travel and a visual and physical connection between any two different locations in 3D space. Portal ends are restricted to planar surfaces, but if the portal ends are on different planes, bizarre twists in geometry and gravity can occur, such as the player walking into the portal through a wall and "falling" up out of the floor several feet behind where she started. An important aspect is that objects retain their momentum as they pass through the portals: an object that falls some distance before entering a portal will continue moving at that same speed out of the other end. This allows the player to launch objects, including Chell, up to higher levels that lack appropriate portal surfaces. Only two portal ends may be open at a time, one orange and one blue in color. If a new portal end is created, it replaces the previous portal of the same color. Either color may be used as an entrance or exit portal. The portal gun is also used to pick up objects in a similar manner to the Zero Point Energy Field Manipulator (Half-Life 2), although it cannot propel objects or pull them from afar like the Gravity Gun can.

Guided by a supercomputer named GLaDOS (an acronym for Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, voiced by Ellen McLain), players use the portal gun to perform a variety of tests, such as creating portals to knock over turrets and moving to a previously unreachable area.

In their initial preview of Portal, GameSpot gave an example of a gameplay scenario: In other situations, the player may be under fire by a gun sentry. So all the player needs to do is shoot a portal open over the gun, then shoot a portal open beneath a crate, then watch the crate fall through the hole and crush the gun. It gets even crazier, and the diagrams shown in the trailer showed some incredibly crazy things that the player can attempt, like creating a series of Portals so that the player is constantly chasing herself.

Two additional modes are unlocked upon completion of the main game. In Challenge mode, the player has to get through a test in either as little time, with the least number of portals, or as few footsteps as possible. In Advanced mode, the hardest levels of the game are made even harder with the addition of more obstacles and hazards.

Development

Portal is Valve's professionally-developed spiritual successor to the freeware Narbacular Drop, the 2005 independent game released by students of the DigiPen; the original Drop team are now all employed at Valve. Certain elements, like the orange/blue system of identifying the two different portal ends a player can have open at a time (one connecting to the other), have been retained. The key difference in the signature portal mechanic between the two games is that in Narbacular Drop the player can place a portal on a wall visible through another portal, whereas in Portal, the HPD cannot fire a portal shot through a portal; however, the HPD can fire a portal shot while the player is standing in a portal.

Sequel and spin-offs

On March 5, 2010, Portal 2 was officially announced, after a series of cryptic clues were released in the form of an update to Portal. It was released on April 19, 2011.

Portal: Still Alive

Portal: Still Alive is an exclusive Xbox Live Arcade game released in October 2008, and features new levels and achievements. The additional content is drawn from levels from the map based on "Portal: The Flash Version" by We Create Stuff and contains no additional story-related levels. According to Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi, Valve had been in discussion with Microsoft to bring Portal to the Xbox Live Marketplace, but was limited by the amount bandwidth that Microsoft was willing to allow for such content.

Soundtrack

Critical reception

Portal received high critical acclaim upon release. As of December 31, 2007 on the review aggregator Game Rankings, the Windows version of the game had an average score of 90% based on 19 reviews. On Metacritic (as of February 2, 2009), the Windows version had an average score of 90 out of 100, based on 28 reviews, while users gave it a 9.6 out of 10 based on 1644 reviews.

Trivia

• The type of cake promised to the player is a Black Forest cake.

• The Portal team worked with Half-Life series writer Marc Laidlaw on fitting the game into the series' plot. Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek of the classic gaming commentary/comedy website Old Man Murray had been hired by Valve and put to work on the dialogue for Portal.

• Portal, like other recent Valve releases, includes a commentary feature.

• You can spawn the same nPCs, with the 'npc_create' console command, in Portal as in Half-Life 2: Episode One, because it uses Episode One as the basis for models. Note that no Episode One NPCs have sounds except the Citizen, who has a death sound.

• In the trailer for Portal there is a small clip of Vortal Combat which is from Half-Life 2: Episode Two

References

Combine OverWiki has more images related to Portal.

External links

Official

• The Orange Box official website
• Portal on Steam
• ApertureScience.com (viral advertising; alternate reality game)
• "Portal is Free" on YouTube

Press

• Portal at 1UP.com
• Portal at Wired (Magazine)