Iconic. Insane. Incredible. Insurmountable. That is what Portal is. When I was young, I watched my sister play bits and pieces of it. Now its my turn. >:)

Brief Description

You are Chell, a woman who randomly wakes up in Aperture Science Laboratories. A robotic voice, named GLaDOS, talks to you on the speaker system and instructs you to go through each room-- each with a different puzzle to solve to proceed. You, throughout the game obtain a portal gun, which allows you to place blue and orange ovals. They act as a door, once connected, to get you to places that you are unable to reach otherwise.

Pros
-I love the writing. The script is overall so charming and I love listening to the line delivery each time.
-The whole concept really is unique and lovable. A puzzle game where you are making your way out as a lab rat, in a quirky and charm and, weirdly at the same time, soul-less setting. I love it.
-The concept and execution of the "portal" in this game is so cool. To essentially teleport a player is an awesome concept and crazy thing to code, I'd imagine. It blew my 7-8 year old mind when I first heard about it.
-There's endgame content, like harder difficulty levels and time trials. I believe there is also a production narrative mode where one of the developers talks about the level designs one by one as you walk through the game. I opened it for a millisecond but need to check it out later.
-There is definitely lore linked to Valve's "Half Life" series. I just need to play Half Life-- but I appreciate the references!

Cons
-I did get a little bored at some points. Not sure if that is the inevitable after playing a puzzle game for 2 straight hours, but I wish it held my attention at the slow parts.

This game is great. Absolutely amazing for what it was when it came out. I really am excited to see the endgame content, see further into the development of it, and play it in RTX (? even though it has mixed reviews lol). Also makes me eager to play Portal 2-- I love it! :)

I generally don't give new games a chance. So I think they are in no rush. I think it is more important for me to play classic games that have already proven themselves first. Unless there are important games from companies I'm waiting for, like Elden Ring, I probably won't look into new games much. Even though I'm a huge Skyrim fan (150 hours and still playing) I've never looked at Starfield, for example. I probably won't play any game in recent history except GTA VI as soon as it's released. My priority is the games on my own list, and these are generally proven classic games.

One of them was Portal. Of course, the portal has gone beyond the game size. There is no need to play this game anymore to understand what Portal is. It is possible to see Portal references in any game. The portal has found a place for itself not only in games but also in popular culture for a long time. The two holes, one blue and the other orange, are so popular that even though most people are aware of these things, they may not have played the portal. As you can see, Portal is a very iconic game, it is more than just a game. So why is Portal so famous? What's the deal with this?

This game is all about creativity. Although it did not seem very revolutionary at that time, it was impossible to experience impossible physics events, as you can imagine. So portals to one another that can be used in real time are actually an incredibly good idea, so good that it's a shame we'll never be able to experience it. We can only imagine this, and perhaps we read about people experimenting on these dreams. This is exactly where this game comes into play. Valve, which already has the best game engine with the Source Engine, sets out to gamify this idea and comes out with such a great game. Source Engine is a game engine you may know from HL2. This engine is generally known for its highly realistic physics. The limits of what we could do in the HL2 game were limited to our weapons, and Valve really made a show of it with the Gravity Gun in that game. They wanted to do the same show in Portal, but this time the genre of the game changed.

Portal is a puzzle game. So the game does not have such an animated theme with weapons. Portal is a game where you advance by solving puzzles. I really liked how they incorporated these puzzles into the story of the game and I don't want to leave it without mentioning it. There is a weapon we use to open a portal in the portal game. It's actually more of a tool than a weapon. Because it cannot cause direct harm, but it can harm indirectly. We are the test subjects they will use to test these portals. In this place, which we probably came to voluntarily in exchange for money, we solve various puzzles with the Portal Gun and move forward. Of course, these puzzle sections become increasingly difficult, but they are all part of the experiment. As the experiment progresses, we come across sections with turrets that threaten our lives. At the end of the experiment, we are told that we will eat cake. Even though this is not the player's motivation, the character we play is very interested in this job, so we do not give up. When we come to the last part, we learn that the cake is a lie, but we continue the experiment. Finally, we have a boss fight with the friend who constantly talks to us and guides us, and our game ends.

The game is an extremely short game. I think we can say between 2-3 hours. The game basically has a mechanic, and we can add mechanics by interacting with the environment. There are energy balls in the game, for example, these energy balls are generally useless on their own, but it is possible to direct these energy balls and make them useful for us by using the Portal Gun. Likewise, we can neutralize the turrets by escaping from them through portals or, better yet, by opening portals under them, and these interactions are fun up to a point. In addition, the puzzles progress through physics and we can create an endless jumping loop using portals. The portal revolves around such mechanics. Maybe there are as many as I mentioned, maybe not, but it is definitely a refined game. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find refined games nowadays. Everyone is stretching their game and wanting it to last longer hours. Portal is not like that, it ends before the mechanics start to get boring and the puzzles start to feel forced. If the boss fight at the end of the game had been a little better, maybe it would have been more enjoyable, but that part was a little inadequate. Even though I couldn't figure it out for a long time, I think it's my fault. Because it feels like work after solving it.

Finally, let's come to the sensory aspects of Portal. Even though the game doesn't look ugly to me at all, it certainly doesn't look as good as MW2 and Bioshock. Of course, this has a lot to do with the environment. There is nothing around that looks good. I mean, there is no such thing as a view that we can enjoy to our heart's content, we are literally running away here and there in a factory. But it's okay since the game doesn't look ugly either. The music was wonderful. Even though I didn't realize there was music in the game until a certain point, once I realized it, I really liked the music. Some games surprise me by giving more value to music than I expected. In other words, they make albums that we can listen to even though they are released separately from the game, like Undertale. This isn't that good of an album, but there are still tracks that provide incredible atmosphere. Moreover, the song at the end is so sweet that normally I would not watch the credits, but this time I listened to the song with pleasure.

Portal is a very refined experience. Short term, using his mechanics very well. I think it's a great game that has designed the atmosphere very cleverly and beautifully. It is a game that has been very influential in the gaming world. There's nothing better about physics. It is a great concept in science to invest in reality and play games with things that unfortunately we can only imagine and exist in theory, and they seem to have made the best of it. Although Valve has not made a name for itself for a long time, it is a company that has created classic milestones in the gaming world and deserves a lot of respect. Portal is a game that I can recommend to everyone, as its puzzles are not too difficult.

I played Portal in one day in college where I had a pretty bad headache, and the game felt like a fever dream. The main things I do remember: 1) Glados is an effective villain, but she didn't leave as much of an impact on me because I knew about her whole schtick going in; 2) I really liked the puzzle design concepts; and 3) I had a rough time with the controls because this was, shockingly, the first time I had ever used mouse/keyboard FPS-like controls.

Maybe I'll revisit it someday with a clearer head, but my impression was mainly that it's a well-made game that's not quite on my wavelength.

(Reseña sacada de mi cuenta de Steam: APolChrome)

Portal es una obra maestra. Cuando empecé a jugarlo, no entendía el por qué de las tan buenas críticas al juego. El inicio es muy simple y cuando digo muy, es muy simple. Pero, cada vez el juego se iba volviendo mejor. Cada puzzle es más difícil que el anterior, con una idea que es muy simple y al mismo tiempo compleja (como es el usar dos portales para ir a distintos sitios), que se usa de forma genial durante 19 niveles.

La historia es simple (no por ello mala, es bastante original) pero lo mejor es sin duda su villana: GlaDos. Glados es de los mejores antagonistas que he visto en mucho tiempo, porque solo te quiere para que hagas las pruebas y a tu casa, solo quiere que la obedezcas y ese humor sádico que tiene a veces es genial.

Los puzles son magistrales, de los mejores que me he encontrado en videojuegos, que se complementan con un diseño de niveles perfecto que te tendrá horas atrapado en Aperture Science. La ambientación es de locos, con unos sonidos perfectos para el entorno y un estilo artístico muy minimalista pero muy funcional.

Es imprescindible. Solo te pido que lo juegues.

You can never doubt the classics.

But seriously, there really isn’t much to be said here with how revered this game is with its amazing well designed puzzles that really puts that scratch on the head but also makes you feel like an absolute genius when you discover the secret. Funnily enough the atmosphere gives me horror vibes somewhat, but GlaDOS’s commentary is always that right balance of humorous snark but also uncomfortably chilling knowing that it is the only other sentient being in the whole facility. Obvious now why she’s such an icon in gaming and see her be used as a cameo in other properties. You probably already have it on your steam library at this point, the game is as dirt cheap as it gets so get around to playing it already.

I played Portal once or twice over the years, but I admit to being enough out of the loop with what it was doing that I didn't really get the hype about it being an amazing or especially hilarious game. That I think put me at odds with the game, enough that I gave my last attempt back in 2016 or thereabouts after getting stuck on one of the puzzles.

For whatever reason, I gave this a bash the other day, seeking to play something relatively straightforward where I wouldn't have to be dealing with too many things. Admittedly a strange sentiment to hold considering what Portal asks of you, placing portals carefully to make your way around and solve puzzles, but you only have to worry about one puzzle at a time. The overall clean design means it's easy enough to figure out what and how you need to do things, though I admit that the later tests got quite tricky.

That final part of the game is a very nice change of pace, focusing purely on navigational puzzles, and there's some great visual design that creates a tangibly grotty, depressing monolith of machinery. In general the presentation's really good in that subdued fashion where you can sense something in the moment, like the ambient synth score by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky.

It's such a frequent thing to happen with these super well-regarded games, that I eventually come round to them on my own terms and find that they're pretty cool titles even if I don't love em like everybody else does. But that's not a bad thing, and that's pretty much what happened here with Portal. Cool little puzzler that I could comfortably play through, though I don't fancy trying those more difficult challenge rooms lol