Portal is a single-player first-person action/puzzle video game developed by Valve Corporation. The game was released in a bundle package called The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on October 9, 2007, and for the PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007. The Windows version of the game is also available for download separately through Valve's content delivery system Steam and was released as a standalone retail product on April 9, 2008. A stand-alone version called "Still Alive" was released on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade system on October 22, 2008; this version includes an additional fourteen puzzles.
The game consists primarily of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device ("ASHPD", also dubbed the "portal gun"), a unit that can create inter-spatial portals between flat planes. The player character is challenged by an AI named "GLaDOS" to complete each puzzle in the "Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center" using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The unusual physics allowed by the portal gun are the emphasis of this game and are an extension of a similar portal concept in Narbacular Drop ; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology that worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal .
Portal has been acclaimed as one of the most original games in 2007, despite being comparatively short in length. The game has received praise for its unique gameplay and darkly humorous story, created with the assistance of Erik Wolpaw and Chet Faliszek of "Old Man Murray" fame. It has also received acclaim for the character of GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain in the English version, and the final credits song "Still Alive" written by Jonathan Coulton for the game. The game's popularity has led to official merchandise from Valve including plush Companion Cubes, and fan creations such as recreations of the cake and replicas of the "portal gun."
Gameplay
A representation of how momentum is conserved through portals. By jumping into the blue portal, the character is launched out of the orange portal and onto the platform on the right.A more advanced portal technique. The character builds up speed using two blue portals, to reach an otherwise unreachable area. The second blue portal is carefully created mid-air, after exiting the orange portal for the first time.In Portal , the player controls the protagonist, Chell, from a first person perspective as she is challenged to navigate through a series of rooms using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device ("portal gun" or "ASHPD"). The portal gun can create two distinct portal ends, orange and blue. The portals create a visual and physical connection between two different locations in three-dimensional space. Neither end is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through one portal will exit through the other. An important aspect of the game's physics is "momentum redirection." As moving objects pass through portals, they come through the exit portal at the same direction as the exit portal is facing. This makes it possible to jump through the portal and emerge moving in a different direction across the room. For example, a common maneuver is to jump down to a portal on the floor and emerge through a wall, flying over a gap or another obstacle (see illustration). This allows the player to launch objects or Chell herself over great distances, both vertically and horizontally, referred to as "flinging" by Valve. As GLaDOS puts it, "In layman's terms: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out." If portal ends are not on parallel planes, the character passing through is reoriented to be upright with respect to gravity after leaving a portal end.
Chell and all other objects in the game that can fit into the portal ends will pass through the portal. However, a portal shot cannot pass through an open portal; it will simply fail or create a new portal in an offset position. If a portal of the same color as an existing one is created, the previous portal is destroyed. Moving objects, glass, special wall surfaces, liquids, or areas that are too small will not accommodate portals. Chell is sometimes provided with cubes that she can pick up and use to climb on, or to hold down large buttons that open doors or activate mechanisms. Particle fields exist at the end of and within some test chambers that, when passed through, close any open portals and disintegrate any object carried through. The fields also block attempts to fire portals through them.
Although Chell is equipped with mechanized heel springs to prevent damage from falling, she can be killed by various other hazards in the test chambers, such as turret guns, bouncing balls of energy, and electrified toxic liquid. She can also be killed by objects falling through portals, and by a series of "crushers" that appear in certain levels. Unlike most action games, there is no visible amount of health; Chell dies if she is dealt a certain amount of damage in a short time period, but returns to full health fairly quickly.
The portal gun allows several possible approaches to completing the various test chambers. In their initial preview of Portal , GameSpot noted that many solutions exist for completing each puzzle, and that the gameplay "gets even crazier, and the diagrams shown in the trailer showed some incredibly crazy things that you can attempt." Two additional modes are unlocked upon the completion of the game that challenge the player to work out alternative methods of solving each test chamber. Challenge maps are unlocked near the halfway point and Advanced Chambers are unlocked when the game is completed. In Challenge mode, levels are revisited with the added goal of completing the test chamber either with as little time, with the least number of portals, or with the fewest footsteps possible. In Advanced mode, certain levels are made more complex with the addition of more obstacles and hazards.
The PC and Xbox 360 version of the game also features a number of Achievements the player can earn by completing tasks. Achievements range from normal gameplay requirements, such as obtaining the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, to various tricks, such as using portals to jump a particular distance.
As with other Source engine games since Half-Life 2 , Portal can be played with commentary enabled; special icons will appear in the game which the player can activate to hear how certain parts of the game were developed.
Synopsis
Characters
The game features two characters: the player-controlled silent protagonist named Chell, and GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), a computer artificial intelligence that monitors and directs the player. In the English version GLaDOS is voiced by Ellen McLain. The only background information presented about Chell is given by GLaDOS; the credibility of these facts, such as Chell being adopted, an orphan, and having no friends, is questionable at best as GLaDOS is a liar by her own admission.
Setting
Portal takes place in the "Enrichment Center" for "Aperture Laboratories," also known as "Aperture Science," the research corporation responsible for the creation of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (or "portal gun"). Information about the company is revealed during the game and via the real-world website.
According to the Aperture Science website, the company was founded in 1953 by Cave Johnson for the sole purpose of making shower curtains for the U.S. military. However, after becoming mentally unstable from mercury poisoning in 1978, Johnson created a "three tier" research and development plan to make his organization successful. The first two tiers, the "Heimlich Counter-Maneuver" (a maneuver designed to ensure choking) and the "Take-A-Wish Foundation" (a program to give the wishes of dying children to unrelated, entirely healthy adults), were commercial failures and led to an investigation of the company by the U.S. Senate. However, when the investigative committee heard of the success of the third tier, a "man-sized ad-hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain," they recessed permanently and gave Aperture Science an open-ended contract to continue their research. The development of GLaDOS, an "artificially intelligent research assistant and disk operating system," began in 1986 in response to Black Mesa's work on similar portal technology. A presentation seen during gameplay reveals that GLaDOS was also included in a proposed bid for de-icing fuel lines, incorporated as a "fully functional disk-operation system" which is "arguably alive," unlike Black Mesa's proposal which "inhibits ice, nothing more." Roughly thirteen years later, work on GLaDOS was completed and the untested AI was activated during the company's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day. The record ends at that point on a positive note.
The portions of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center that Chell explores suggest that it is part of
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