I remember the first Portal game in the Xbox 360's Orange box set quite well. There was a weekend in October 2007 that I had off of work and was extremely sick for, and a coworker picked up the Orange Box for me to keep me occupied through the illness.
Even the sickness couldn't keep me from spending all my waking hours glued to the Xbox. Sure Half Life is a great game with a good story, and Team Fortress is a fun multiplayer shoot em up, but Portal... Portal was the real gem in the set.
The gameplay is simple:
There are no weapons, no bombs or crazy explosive devices. Just a simple portal gun. This "gun"(the handheld quantum tunneling device) creates 2 portals. One orange, one blue- an entrance and an exit, an in and an out, in either direction. With the ability to make these on any surface painted in a special white paint, it makes for an infinitely changing, simple and yet challenging experience.
Here's a simple text based visual I made to give an idea of how things work:
You are a woman named Chell, armed with a handheld quantum tunneling device, solving puzzles for science. By science I mean "trying to escape with your life from a science facility run by an AI obsessed with testing your skills with the Portal gun."
Anyway the story starts as you wake in a holding chamber in an Aperture Science research facility. The controlling AI, GLaDOS, informs you that you will be tested through various specially designed chambers in the facility. Your victory of passing these tests are supposedly going to be rewarded with cake and the promise of grief counciling. As you are guided by GLaDOS the testing area's become increasingly deadly being loaded with military training gun turrets, and hidden messages about the cake being a lie.
At the last testing chamber GLaDOS attempts to drop you into a giant pit of fire and kill you, but you escape and GLaDOS tries to trick you into giving up. After finding a way out you get into the back areas of the science facility while evading the attempts on your life. Making your way to GLaDOS herself you defeat her and there is an explosion that leaves you on the ground and the screen fades to black.
Someone told me they later added a segment of a robot dragging off your unconcious body.
The credits roll and GLaDOS sings the still alive song, explaining that she remains alive and will be back to continue scientific testing.
After the credits, a room appears and a bunch of AI personality cores light up and put out a candle on a cake.
Wonderful. I love this game. The references to Black Mesa from Half Life are brilliant, the gameplay is great, and the dialog is amazing.
More videogames could learn from this. Keep it simple and effective.
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