Portal Retrospective Review

Score: 5/5
Developed By: Valve
Available on: PC, Mac, PS3, 360

First off, if you’re somehow completely oblivious to the existence of the game Portal, you should stop reading now. Throw your keyboard at the wall, click wildly until you land at Steam and download it. It may sound superfluous, but it really is an important piece of media from the last few years. Developed in 2007, Portal casts you as Chell, a woman with a portal-shooting gun (hence the namesake), attempting to make your way through a series of test chambers. The game is mostly comprised of puzzle rooms requiring you to move boxes, flick switches, and use portals in every conceivable way. All the while a robotic voice explains your progress with sharp wit.

GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), the robotic voice, is now infamous all over the internet for that same humour. Delivered by voice actress Ellen Mclain, the subtle, clever lines give the character of GLaDOS real depth. Her humour is definitely on the darker side of things. Lines like “Cake, and grief counselling, will be available at the conclusion of the test” provide a snappy narrative backing for your adventure through the increasingly dark and unravelled building.

The game’s mechanics and narrative are quite deftly paced. As you start the game, you are without the portal gun. However the developers slowly introduce different techniques applicable for certain puzzles, one step at a time. You actually have to complete a fair few test chambers before you are able to shoot the two separate portals. Robin Walker, a developer at Valve, described it as Portal being “an extended player training exercise. We spend a huge portion of the game introducing a series of gameplay tools, then layering these tools into increasingly difficult puzzles.”

The story works in a similar way. GLaDOS is originally an uncomplicated robot explaining basic mechanics to you, but throughout the rest of the game she slowly becomes more and more complex and animated. The pacing with which GLaDOS becomes a real 3-dimensional character, whilst also revealing Aperture Science’s deep, dark secrets, is the real genius of the game. The puzzles may be confoundingly fun and intricate, but the darkly whimsical GLaDOS shines the brightest.

Some of the lines spoken in Portal are incredibly ingenious, especially in context. Comments like “Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death” are tasty humorous treats thrown at you constantly. Neat touches like adorable, yet deadly, turrets spouting feedback like “I don’t hate you” when you knock them over, flesh out Portal’s inherent comedy. The writing of this game really is one of the greatest pleasures in videogame history.

While Portal can be finished first-time-through in about four hours, every second of every minute is superbly satisfying and smile-inducing. Even at five years old, and after finishing it upwards of ten times, Portal still makes me laugh with ease. The lines are just so unassumingly hilarious, seemingly without effort. I would highly recommend Portal to anyone who likes anything, particularly if you have a good taste for dry and dark humour. So for science’s sake, you better get testing.