Thursday, October 18, 2007

Portal

I wanted to finish Portal before I wrote it up (I'm on #19 now, playing it for 10-15 minutes at a time), but I'm getting so much e-mail about it that I'm going to broach the subject now.

Here's the easy part: if you haven't bought The Orange Box yet, it's mandatory. There is absolutely no way that you can skip this game (along with the other goodies in TOB).

Portal is mind-bending in the coolest ways imaginable. It's a funky concept, and it's a bit of a sterile implementation (nicely covered up by some absolutely outstanding humor), but in terms of creativity, it really is off the charts. It doesn't even belong on the chart.

Portal also excels at creating moments where you feel like a ten-year old, because there are so many times when you go "Wow!" as you discover what you need to do to solve a particular area.

I'm not going to describe anything in the game, to avoid any possible spoilers, but I will describe a portal. Portals are a way to connect two different points in space--in other words, if you walk through an entrance portal, you will exit at the point where you've placed the exit portal.

That sounds like a simple concept, but seeing it work is, like I said, unbelievably cool.

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