Not a good situation up ahead. Fire secondary weapon straight, turn, carefully edge forward, fire primary weapon at adjacent wall, wait, time it right, jump ... and once again ram into the corner and plummet into flaming oblivion. Damn you, you gods-cursed beta version of Windows Vista! When I finally meet you, I am going to disassemble you with a rocket launcher and drop your individual pieces into a volcano. You've killed my friends, and I'll breach time and space to kill you!

Portal is one of those games that never receive any real bad press. Even those people who claim it fell short of the massive praise heaped upon it admit that it is a well-designed piece of entertainment. I really can only think of two titles that have that sort of reputation, Portal and Okami, and I'll agree the games are similar in quality. I'll give you a few moments to relocate your lower jaw.

As noted by this month's topic, I greatly enjoyed Portal, and any news you may have heard to the contrary is incorrect. However, there were a few things that would not stop bugging me about the game, which clashed with the almost fanatical reviews given to me by friends. While none could ruin the game, Portal occasionally rubbed me the wrong way.



Looking at the box (retail version), Portal is described as a unique mix between a puzzle game and an FPS. Innovative, to be certain, but that means Valve had to balance very different skill requirements to prevent the game becoming too much of either. In the large majority of cases, Valve succeeded at this, creating maps like the latter half of Level 18. In this map, the player manipulates portals to gradually move up a series of platforms, all while constantly accelerating in different directions. This was not only a thrilling experience as the camera periodically flipped, but provided both a mental block (recalling which portal to use) and a physical challenge (hitting the small platforms at the apex of the jump).

That balance was also found in every puzzle involving flinging (using multiple portals to jump a long distance) and the final challenge, which added a minor but still important time constraint to the player's actions. It was, however, lost in some of the more dangerous sections, particularly the turret-dominated Level 16. I'm of the opinion that that level was the worst design Valve produced, in that the balance between reflexes and intelligence was terribly skewed towards the former. While the challenge was far from impossible, with at least three different ways to kill a turret, all of them required the same technique: dash out, hurriedly place a portal, and dodge back behind cover. If any of you managed to do that and NEVER take any fire, leave a comment saying you did, because I certainly couldn't.

I'll at least give Valve credit for their HP system, which I'll admit was pretty innovative. Effectively, it created two kinds of attacks, those that killed you in one shot and those that slowly wore down health. Since health regenerated at an exceptional rate, there wasn't really any chance of dying in Level 16. Nevertheless, I would have liked a no-damage route.



The second love/hate relationship I encountered with Portal was the minimalistic, emotion-driven story and back-story. Like the previously mentioned reflexes-intelligence balance, Valve did admirably with this sector of development, creating a miniature world that followed its own laws. This is the essence of true fantasy, the development of a self-contained logical system that holds no allegiance to any real-world system. While Portal certainly doesn't look like a fantasy in the tradition sense, it qualifies on that basis alone. Valve should be congratulated on that, creating a story that drives itself without need for constant hint-dropping, explanation, and justification.

Nevertheless, Portal seemed a little off-kilter at times, making sudden changes in direction with little to no warning to the player. The hidden portions of Aperture Science were filled with these apparently random information drops. I know exactly why Valve placed these: they prompt the player to generate a back-story without significant input from the game. But just the same, walking through the concrete-and-lead facility and coming across a hidden area with milk bottles and plywood sheathing was occasionally a "WTF?" moment. My favorite of these was the poem to the companion cube written in Level 17. This made me laugh, not because of its randomness, but because it reminded me of Valve's most recent release, L4D2, and the safe-house lament that acquired a few, um, comments. I could imagine other Aperture test subjects writing similar comments on the adjacent walls.

Again, this was almost certainly the point. Valve knew what it was doing with the minimalistic approach, and in the event they were in fact trying to disorient the player, they succeeded. Still, I was reminded of the infamous amnesia plot device, which seems to fail on a routine basis. It seemed half the time there was some sort of hidden meaning, and when I read the source commentary I saw I was right.

So, that's it. Nothing major, really, and I thought Portal was certainly a game worthy of the high praise it received. I might even replay it at some point. Still, nothing is perfect, and flaws can be found in the best-designed game. It's just me, but somehow I was expecting something else. Maybe Portal couldn't have been better, but it could have been different. That is the nature of us fickle gamers.