A revelation
- Written by patpe
- October 18th, 2007 at 01:54
- 7 comments
- AWESOME, Games, Opinion Exhibition
The last 3 days has been some of the best in all my gaming life.
This is my opinion.
Ok, so last time I was all psyched over it. It fulfilled my expectations. It truly did and they have provided me with the most satisfying gaming experience in a long time. To me they did what Nintendo could not do with the Wii. They took gaming to another level. Valve gave us Portal.
The whole concept of giving the player control of space (not total but a great deal anyway) in the game is brilliant. But besides the concept of Portal there is the all-around design. The learning curve is excellent, the storyline surprised, the level design is really great and the character design is brilliant. I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you who haven’t already played it (shame on you!) but GLaDOS rocked me.
The only bad thing about it is that it’s way to short. I ran through it pretty fast and the advanced levels put up a bit of a challenge but didn’t take to long to finish either. The remaining thing to do is to unlock all achievements (kudos for adapting the achievement system from Microsoft) and that means beating the challenge levels. Basically it’s a few selected levels that you have to complete under certain circumstances. You either have to do it using as few portals as possible, or you have to take as few steps as possible or finally, doing it as fast as possible. This actually is quite tricky. I haven’t explored these modes so deep yet, I got stuck playing through the main game 3 times just exploring and playing around with different ways of beating each level.
And oh, let’s not forget the greatest treat Valve put into it. After finishing each level you unlock the possibility to play it again, but this time with developer commentaries. The levels get filled with little speech bubbles which you activate to hear some commentaries on the level. These include everything from programmers choosing between different physic models and the designers explaining the colors and textures of the walls. It is a great complement and really entertaining to listen to. The only thing I have to complain about during this mode is that the in game sounds can drown out the commentaries and thus forcing you to restart them to be able to savor everything.
All in all I’m overly satisfied. The pricing for the game and the fact that it comes with the Orange box makes me look the other way when the minor flaws I’ve mentioned appears. Right now I’m just praying that there will be some sort of sequel or full length game featuring the genius Valve has brought upon us with Portal.
score_5
Oh… and by the way, I finished Half Life 2. =)
7 comments on "A revelation"
The Mad Hatter writes
I’ve never played Portal and I don’t find the concept that appealing…..
but that developer commentary thing sounds pretty damn neat, more games should add stuff like that as a bonus. I always end up checking the dev commentary on special editions of mighty movies.
Hike writes
Well, the thing with the developer comments in the Valve-games (both episodes 1& 2, aswell TF2 and Portals have them) is that I feel they go beyond that most other game commentaries do. When other mostly talk about what inspireded certain aspect of the game, or how “the broader game-play” has changed over the course of the development, Vavle goes into the more subtle things. They talk how game testers reacted to certain things in the game and how they had to change it to get the desired effect (and mostly you go “I realy did react that way the first time I experienced this!”). And if you’re just a wee bit interested in game design, it’s a total blast to listen to imho.
I agree that the game was short (well, both ep.2 and Portal was), but I was equaly thrilled just to be able to play the game(s) agian just to hear the comments.
As I think I said in another post; I can’t see the reason why you wouldn’t buy the Orange Box, especialy if you don’t own HL2 and ep.1 already, ‘cus there probebly ain’t gonna be a sweeter deal anywhere for a very long time.
All in all; I would consider not getting the Orange Box a slap in the face to every gamer
GIR writes
The Orange box is the deal of the century, no doubt about it.
The Mad Hatter writes
I’ve got a good reason not to do it.
HL2 sucks.
At least the awfully annoying long and frequent loading times made me lose interest in it after zombie town.
GIR writes
Ok, that may be true. But the loading times aren’t to bad in Portal, mainly because there isn’t all that much to load. And you can buy Portal separately.
Shit, I’m starting to feel like a salesman or something, but the fact is I truly love Portal. 
Mr AFK writes
MOAR fun than Halo3 social-multiplayer? I demand an answer nao!
GIR writes
Since I haven’t played Halo 3, nor have I played it in social-multiplayer, I can’t answer that. Anyone?
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