Notes on *Portal*

My faith in gaming has been rekindled.  I think the last time I felt this sort of joy pleasure fun happy was...I don't know, Beyond Good & Evil or Prince of Persia: Sands of Time but this has surpassed them in various ways.  Add it to the list of games that cause postcoinal depression.  It's tempting to do some kind of critical theory analysis of the thing but...I won't, it would spoil it and be pretentious of me.  Here's a link, play it yourself.

Comments

[Jeffool]

Just wanted to chime in and say I whole-heartedly agree. I haven't finished a game with this size smile in quite some time. And for the record, everyone should have their own Weighted Companion Cube.

Luckily this holds me over until Valve gets a plushie out.

[Nat]

I just started playing Portal and by just started, I mean I was up till 2am last night. Just finished the level with the cute "i see you" bots. The game is really cool and I can't wait till the pleth of user created levels comes pouring onto the net. Interesting enough, there was an 8v8v8v8 3rd person shooter game called Quaternia at the Sony Metreon in San Francisco that, while having underwhelming graphics, uses portals connecting 4 teams' home worlds in an interesting PvP setup I haven't seen or heard of since. Sniping people through portals is pretty sweet. Star Control 2 has the best ending credits.

[Joel Martinez]

Of note is the game Narbacular Drop:
http://www.nuclearmonkeysoftware.com/narbaculardrop.html

which was apparently the game that got the team hired by valve to work on Portal :-)

[Chris Busse]

Try the new DS Zelda. No, really. It will rekindle your love with Zelda again. At least it did for me.

[Chiguire]

I absolutely loved Portal. I think it's the constant laugh I had all over the game: the cynicism of GLADoS, the elements of the laboratory all sweating backstory... simply makes me want to know more of the game.

Now I have to resume Episode 2 to see what's it all about :-)

[Jeffool]

Here's a question for everyone... While I loved it as well, how much 'more' would be 'too much'? I enjoyed Katamari Damacy as much as the next guy, but had no interest in sequels.

At first though I'd love to have more Portal, in particular at least more high-end levels involving more continuous flinging over large areas requiring high precision... But there's always the chance the sequel doesn't work as well as the original did. I guess we just wait and see?

Maybe it's time to return to the 'map collections' that ruled the Doom days? You can't beat 666 wads for $10.