Rarely is there a piece of entertainment released that catches people completely by surprise. Something that takes you in, plays kindly with your emotions and then takes a turn that changes everything and leaves the consumer in a confused state, only able to question what just happened to them. Such twists, be them in movies, books or games, require but one thing. Your ignorance. Given that, you’re likely to be given something you’ll never forget.
And people would love to take away that chance from you1.
I just played Portal last month for the first time. Truth be told, I already knew that “the cake is a lie” and that “something” happened. So when the big twist occurred in the game I couldn’t help but not be as shocked as the players who got to the game day one. Nonetheless, it was quite an interesting move. Until someone told me, I had no idea Portal was just billed as a simple puzzle game.
Simple may not be the correct word, but at its core the game is quite simple. In the game there are two types of portals. Blue and orange2. Enter the
blue portal and come out of the orange. Enter the orange and come out of the blue. What can go through the portals is not just limited to the player character, though. Energy bullets, boxes, even melodramatic gun turrets3 can be sent through. So simple, yet these kind of simple rules always allow for complex puzzles to be created. Since gravity matters, all sorts of extravagant jumps had to be made. Since you eventually had the ability to create both portals on most surfaces, accuracy was required to guide those energy bullets to their proper energy bullet receiving container. So Portal was definitely more than just a puzzle game, although the action bits were minimal at best.
I didn’t find any of the puzzles particularly challenging in the sense of figuring out what to do. Doing it, although, could often be quite the pickle. Being able to time my jumps or creation of the portals was not the norm in the later half of the game and I found myself having to try again and again. This, although, did not diminish my fun. What did, although, was the pacing of the game. Portal is short. I think it took me about four hours logged, and I’m not sure if that counts the time lost when replaying after death. But for a short game, it felt like it took too long to get going. It introduced the various gameplay mechanics bit by bit, which is great for learning, but for the first quarter, if not more, of the game my interest was diminishing puzzle after puzzle. Finally with the introduction of the aforementioned turrets did my interest start to pick up again. And truthfully, it was just in time. Whether or not this was a design choice by Valve is a mystery to me.
My last complaint is the end of the game. After going through this game solving puzzles the entire time to have a “boss fight” at the end felt like a bit of a cheat. Out of place. Sure, this boss fight was a bit like a puzzle in its own right, but still a bit too action based for my taste. It didn’t feel right. That’s not to say I have the answer to what would feel right. Ending the game after a puzzle like the ones prior to it may not have been as satisfying as destroying a boss, especially considering what the boss was in terms of the game world. So perhaps in terms of what Portal was going after, the end was proper. I just felt like something was a bit off about it.
So, they’re making Portal 2, I hear. This has a great chance of being fun, I’ll grant it that. But being anywhere near Portal in terms of taking the experience and giving a twist seems like a task only the brave or stupid would take. Valve will probably not manage to entertain people in the way they expect to be entertained after the first one. But then again, given that the first Portal used its twist to give exactly the opposite of what was expected, maybe that is entirely the point here.
