Game Genre: Puzzle-Platform
Developed by: Valve
Published by: Valve, EA, Headup Games, Stabyourself
Released in: October 10, 2007
Platforms: MC Windows, OS X, Linux, Playstation3, Xbox360
Played in: MC Windows
Written by: Yiğit DORUK
Date: 11/01/2020
I'm writing this review while "Still Alive" playing in the background, what a great game, what a great ending song!
2007 was an interesting and also amazing year for the game industry; we had Bioshock, CoD4: MW, Halo 3, Assassin's Creed, GoW 2, Mass Effect, Super Mario Galaxy, ... and the list goes on. All of those games had a significant effect on modern games, each of them introduced brilliant and unique visions to our industry and helped our industry to become what is today. 2007 was also an important year for Valve, they have released the Half-Life 2 back in 2004 and released the "Episode One" installment in 2006 as well as Garry's Mod. Fans have been waiting for "Episode Two" for a year, and Gabe Newell announced a long-waited game with fans at Electronic Arts Conference, by introducing "The Orange Box". In this box, they also have announced: "Team Fortress 2" which has also been waiting for a long time. But in this package, they also had a "different" game that shocked the gamers and the press. Portal was a game which is looks and plays different than other games in that generation, it had a concept that couldn't be seen in any other game yet. In this game, you were altering the three-dimensional world by using a device that opens portals. I am not sure whether or not people were aware of the significant impact of this upcoming game which was started as a "student project", Portal was a game that defined what it means to be a "Valve Game" and sets the bar higher than ever before, just like they did with Half-Life series. While the idea of "being able to create portals at will" is already intriguing, the people behind this game perfectly executed this simple idea by using: fluid, responsive and supportive control system that enables players to experiment with the game world easily, creating an enjoyable narrative that keeps you entertained from beginning to the end, stylized and clear visuals that empowers the user experience, and well-designed audio and music.
First "Teaser Trailer" for Portal
First "Teaser Trailer" for Portal
Narbacular Drop, the student project which turned into one of the greatest puzzle game ever created!
As I mentioned before, Portal was first started as a final project of 5 university students. When Gabe Newell saw the first prototype of their project, he proposed students to work in Valve and use the Source Engine to make this prototype into a finished product. I am explaining this background information because most of the topics that I will discuss have a relationship with the situation and the vision of this small team in the development process. Because they are a small team, they could not make every aspect of the game complicated and perfect. They only had an amazing core mechanic, and they had to build their game around this simple "portal" idea. They do not have the budget, and yet time to create fancy animations or branched story. Because of that, the controls in this game is not complicated by any means, they used the basic but fluid control scheme of Source Engine, just like in Half-Life. Player character can only move, crouch, and jump, that's it! No additional moves like double jump, wall jump, or hovering in the air; just simple first-person controls. But with the power of the Source Engine, players could interact with most of the objects in the environment. They could pick up cubes, mugs, crates, radios, and even enemy turrets! While this pick-up mechanic is often used by players to mess around with the environment, players can actually use those props to solve puzzles and create interesting gameplay scenarios. For example, you can protect yourself from enemy bullets by holding another enemy turret in front of you, you can move a crate to make alternative paths to solve the puzzles, or you can just put a radio on a pressure-button instead of a cube, just for fun. This creates a unique dynamic, which we will encounter a lot in other topics, that "even the outcome of a puzzle stays the same, the ways that you can approach that puzzle always differs". You can always experiment with the puzzles as much as you can, and you can always find different solutions for overcoming each encounter/problem. There is a beauty in how those simple mechanics creates complex and fun dynamics in this brilliant game.
"Pit brother against brother!"
That'd be painful...
Here's my friend: RADIO!
"Do not destroy vital testing apparatus."