Portal is a puzzlegame that challenges the way you view the world. With pitch black humor as a sidedish.
Portal is a fresh breeze of originality in these times of sequels and mimicry. Even though it's sold along with Half Life 2 and its extra episodes and even has identical controls, it is by no means another Half Life game. Portal is a completely new concept that could even surpass Valve's own Magnum Opus if tweaked a little.
Graphics:
As Portal uses the Source engine, it looks exactly the same as Half Life 2 or Counter Strike: Source. For those unfortunate creatures that haven't yet played any of these games, I can describe the graphics being nice. Not over the top beautiful, but nice and solid. Just like the original Half Life was, when compared to other games of the time. Nothing has really changed in the past few years, when it comes to the visual candies.
Storyline:
From the get-go, the storyline in Portal feels rather empty. You are some girl, whose job seems to be the testing of the new Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, or Portalgun for short. Very quickly however, the real plot starts to emerge. GLaDOS is the voice of the game, an AI that monitors your performance during the many puzzles that you need to solve using the portalgun. GLaDOS is truly the star of the show, with her blatant lies and incomparable black humor. She is a lovely little angel of death that guides you through the testing areas. She promises cake after, but in the end, it becomes obvious that the "cake is a lie". She wants you dead, but with the portalgun, you are not so easy to take out. Now you are looking for the a way to escape the facility, with GLaDOS constantly monitoring and trying to take you out. At this point it becomes evident that this facility is unmanned. The only sign of life in this hellhole are the scriptures in some places, and they all say the same thing, "The cake is a lie". Yeah, that's kinda obvious already. So you navigate through the empty facility using the portalgun and finally end up, where every moron ends when trying to escape. Face to face with the big boss, which in this case is GLaDOS. Well, she doesn't really have a face, rather just nuts and bolts. Then an epic battle ensues and let me tell you that this is the best final boss I can ever remember. You with a portalgun versus her with harsh tongue only. She will nag and blame you, like every woman do, and your job is to toss her piece by piece to the incinerator. I just love this boss and the humor it has. Even after completing the game, the rest follow the same line of humor as the game, giving the best end-credits I have ever seen/heard.
Sound:
Portal has a very non-existent music. It's there, but so uninspiring and bland that you probably don't even notice it. There are points, where the music becomes fast paced to emphasize the direness of the situation, but never it becomes something to really take notice.
The voice acting on the other hand is...well...very unilateral. The main character does not speak (what a surprise), and besides her there are only one other character. And she talk, a lot. So the entire voice acting of this game is done by only one NPC. That's gotta be a record. So is the voice acting good? Yes, more or less. At first, she sounds like her lines are spoken by Microsoft Sam (or rather Microsoft Anna). However, once it becomes evident that she is infact an AI, it makes sense to sound like that. Oh buggers, I forgot about the bots (scrap the record). Those annoying little scraps sound very, very odd. They are like Marvin from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005 film). They are like kids playing hide-and-seek with you. Only with machineguns.
Gameplay:
Even though it uses another game's engine, Portal is a completely new kind of game. It's basically an FPS, but at the same time its a puzzle game. Actually it's more a puzzle game than actual shooter, since it doesn't introduce any guns that you can shoot the enemies with. The one and only "weapon" in this game is the portalgun. This gun can create portals between two points in a very mind freaking manner. First thing you notice when you use the gun is that you can actually see through the portal, unlike in most games, where teleports are just solid objects. Its very disturbing to fire an exit portal to the roof and then look at yourself from above. What is even more disturbing is how well the physics handle the changes in the direction of gravity. If you shoot a portal to the ground and then go through it, only to emerge from the exit portal which was placed on the wall, you get real sense of disorientation and confusion as gravity sends you to a direction you didn't expect to. Playing with the portals is so much fun that you will be begging for more complex structures to play in.
The game offers puzzles that will challenge you minds to the limit. At first, you will find the puzzles easy, but the puzzles quickly become harder and harder, forcing you to to fully grasp the idea of these new and innovative ways to alter physics. Falling through a hole on the ground to gain more exit speed to launch you across the hall or creating a portal so that a turret will shoot your obstacle through it are few of the ones that will challenge every braincell you have in order to continue. With Internet being the all knowing sage in your living room that you can turn to in every problem, the game never becomes impossible. But the joy and sense of accomplishment by figuring the puzzles on your own makes a huge portion of the fun. I can proudly say that I finished the entire game without consulting the sage. Yet, my ego can't boast yet, since I still have the bonus challenges to complete. That brings me to my next issue.
Portal is short. It has about 20 puzzle stages that I thought were just training levels. But after you get out of the loop, over half of the game is already done. For the entire duration of the game, I anxiously wanted to roam outdoors with the portalgun, but never got the chance. All you get is a factory type levels with big pipes and steam. This game was almost perfect, like a diamond in the rough. If the game would have been longer and had more variance in the level design, it could have been better than Half Life. Instead, it falls a little short. Now imagine Portal and Half Life 2 merging. Instead of the obsolete gravitygun, we would get the portalgun. Now that's a game I would play.