All Things considered, this game is so-so. Read on.

User Rating: 6.5 | Portal PC
By I_AM_G_O_D | Review Date:
Ok, I'll start with the good, because there isn't much. The game runs on the Half-Life 2 engine, so if you have played HL2, The graphics, sound, controls ect are basically the same. The game ran stable on my machine, with no performance issues, most settings were on high. Though it did crash on me once. No big deal. The user interface works as expected, and I had no problems with it. Valve has really nailed the way save games work better I think than most other games I have seen. In addition to the autosaves, you have several quicksave slots that run in chronicalogical order, so if, for example you were to hit your quicksave key by accident, as I did, instead of the quickload when I had fallen into a death trap, you can simply load the last quicksave before. Very smart. And last I must give big credit to the concept of portal. I cant really say I've ever played a game quite like it. And though it really annoyed me every second I played it, I dont regret it, it was worth the experience.

Now the bad. This game annoyed the living crap out of me. Constantly. The computer voice is popping in all the time, blah, blah, blah, and its a digitized voice, so its very raspy and annoying. But the worst part is that it tells you absolutely NOTHING worth hearing. Its all just garbage, distracting, and very annoying. The gameplay is extremely simple, and I put an emphisis on extremely. Of the roughly 20 levels, about 15 took less than 2 minutes to complete. The next 4 took about 4 minutes to complete, and the last level was a bit long taking about 15 to 20 minutes to complete. The whole game took me roughly 90 minutes to complete. This is suprisingly short for a Valve game. The game is based around a series of physics puzzles where you must manipulate your enviroment to get to the exit. Sounds pretty boring doesnt it? Well it is, very. You have a 'device' which opens a portal in a wall, floor, or ceiling. in which you can travel. The device can open two differnt portals at a time, and they lead to each other, so you can travel through them back and forth. When you open another portal, the other dissapears, this enables you to move about your enviroment in many different ways. However most of the game is, put that box on that button to open that door ect, ect, ect. Over and over throuhout the game, basically you do the same things. Each puzzle is a little harder than the next, but only the last two took any real thought as to what to do next. Most of the time it is quite obvious. Valve included some pictograms, I guess to give you some idea of what to expect. Some made sense, some absolutely did not. Like a guy bending to drink from a fountain with a slash though it. Like dont drink from a fountain. Well there isnt any. Maybe I misunderstood. In any case the pictograms dont help a single bit, and only seem to serve as a distraction.

There are no other characters in the game to interact with. The only dialog is from the annoying computer voice. You do get to see yourself though. Some chick with a ponytail walking around on her tipy toes barefoot, with some strange straps on the back of her legs. weird. Anyway, there is NO HUD, at all whatsoever, and although you can die, you can never be sure how much damage you have taken. You character never speaks, one thing that has annoyed me about the Half-Life games forever. The game also seems rather large for such a short game, being 5 gig installed. I am quite torn for rating this game. If it was based solely on concept, graphics and sound, I would give it a 9.5. On the other hand, if I based it on the bad elements alone, the extremely short gameplay, extremely annoying elements in the game, a total lack of storyline, and no interaction from any NPC characters, among other things. I would give it a 3.

But, all thing considered. I think it deserves a solid 6.5. The end is ramped up for a sequal, so maybe that will be better.

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