Rating of
4.5/5
This Game Goes Outside the Box...By Using a Portal
dbarry_22 - wrote on 07/22/12
While Portal may have been just an add-on for the Orange Box Collection, this experiment opened up a new gateway to a fabulous kind of game.
This game is a perfect example that simple can be better. There's not much to it, you start the game as a test subject in a facility where the only contact you have with the outside world is a humorous computer program running the test. Early on you encounter these portals. One is orange, one is blue. You go in one side and out the other. By using these portals to your advantage, you pass 19 tests put in front of you with the promise of cake at the end.
You learn more ways to take advantage of these portals as the game progresses and it's done in a simple straightforward way. First, you only have the ability to go through portals, then you get a gun that shoots only blue portals, and then eventually you can shoot both portals and take complete control of the area around you. By the time you get to the end of the tests, you learn that the computer really isn't your friend and the game becomes more of a story than just a series of puzzles.
The game makes you think outside the box and gives you a few laughs along the way. Valve truly hit a homer with this one. The game lasts less than 5 hours and that's perfectly alright. You can probably find this on Steam at any time for $5 or less and it's totally worth it. Oh, and the song in the ending credits is quite memorable.
4.5/5
