What I'm Playing: Portal

In a continuation of what I've been playing, we arrive at Portal. I saw this game on the steam holiday sale for $5 and jumped on the bandwagon. While the game overall is good, I am glad I didn't spend anymore money on it.

The game does a good job of getting players slowly adjusted to the game mechanics, introducing them one at a time. The puzzles were overall pretty easy to complete, requiring only minimal retries with no need of searching for outside help. I liked the fact that even the jumps that required placing a new portal in mid-jump were decently easy to pull off. Nothing gets me madder than having to do a jump twenty times in a row to get it just right.

The storyline, while minimal, was just intriguing enough to keep me interested. The frosted glass windows high above left me feeling like someone was always above watching, even though in reality there wasn't. Glados provided comical voice overs, as I really enjoyed the ones involving the companion cube and it talking to you.

The light combat, with the turrets in the android training course, was just dangerous enough to keep you on your toes. The easiest way to beat them being portal in behind and kick them over was a little disappointing. This is counter balanced by the ability to get them to kill each other which was a fun way to do it.

The game only lasted about three hours for me, another two added on by playing through again with developer commentary on. This is the main reason for me not wanting to spend more than five bucks on the game. Hopefully Portal 2 will include a longer game and possibly some multiplayer co-op.