Dominik Diamonds Are Forever: The Orange Box, Part 3: Portal

Portal is an absolutely cracking game. I know another internet goon like me espousing the brilliance of this game must be getting redundant for some, but it really has to be said. Portal is up there with The Wire, Breaking Bad and Mr Muscle Window Cleaner in the “everyone universally bangs on about how bloody brilliant it is” category. But it is bloody brilliant. It really, really, REALLY is!

Portal is a game that challenges and enthrals in equal measure. Once I started playing it, I really couldn’t stop myself. I’d finish a puzzle and say “Well, that was fun, time for me to go feed/clothe/wash myself now before I become even more a shuffling wreck than I already am”. But then I’d walk into the next room “just to have a quick look at the next puzzle” and I’d ultimately then complete another three in a row. I just couldn’t help myself. It was like when I had a box of 12 Krispy Kreme donuts and ended up eating half the box because I still had coffee remaining and I just couldn’t stop dipping them.

To try and explain Portal won’t be entirely easy but I’ll give it a go. Basically, it’s a first person puzzler. You play an unnamed female character that wakes up in a strange testing centre. You quickly acquire a gun that can create Portals in the walls of the complex. You then have to use said Portal gun to try and escape the complex itself. Sometimes you won’t be able to access certain areas before you have pressed a button or moved a block onto a switch to ensure the escape door remains open. In situations like these, you will need more than just the Portal Gun itself to make it to safety.

I’ve personally never been hugely fond of games that included puzzles. The original Tomb Raider games on the Playstation would sometimes drive me to despair with some of their fiendish and downright annoying conundrums. However, Portal never frustrated me in that way. I mean, it did frustrate me, but in a way that made me want to solve the puzzle. It didn’t contain the agonising frustration that made me want to use Tomb Raider 2 as a £40 coaster.

The difficulty curve of the game was set up just right for me. It eased me in gradually and by the time the puzzles started getting harder, I felt prepared to tackle them. Considering that I’m hardly what you’d call “good” at video games, I can only conclude that Portal has been weighted perfectly in regards to difficulty. The game doesn’t outstay its welcome either. It clocks in at around 3 hours and is paced to complement the run time exceptionally well.

As far as negatives go, I don’t really have any. The game is perfect for what it needs to be. If it was released on it’s own for £40, it would not be worth the money as there just isn’t enough game to justify that price. As part of The Orange Box though, it’s a veritable steal. I almost feel guilty playing it, as if I’ve unfairly got one over on the people at Valve.

If you don’t like puzzlers, I’m still quite certain you will enjoy this. I really can’t find a complaint with it. It exceeds everything it should have been and happily embraces everything it can be.

Portal is just amazing and if you don’t like it, you can go fist a Yak

Rating – 10

Play it, love it, praise it and have a pint of sunshine while you’re at it.

Up next, we finish The Orange Box by reviewing "Team Fortress"