It's difficult to pinpoint what Minecraft does so differently that other games, before or after its inception, can't seem to be able to remotely capture. Regardless of how many years have passed since its Alpha days, booting the game up and spending those first couple of hours building dirt houses and digging ridiculously autistic tunnel systems still represent some of the most magical and captivating moments I have experienced in a videogame. A maverick trail-blazer of game design, Minecraft disregards any previous notions of what makes or breaks a game, and instead plops you into an indifferent and artifical world without any seemingly narrative context and invites the player to fill it with life and personality by leaving his permanent mark on it, starting right off the bat by having you punch wood out of trees and that totally making sense.

Either a stroke of genius or just pure luck, the combination of cutesy and colorful lego like aesthetic with the occasional lonely and scary desolation nature gives Minecraft a surprisingly introspective atmosphere, making grand statements about human labor and wilderness conquest out of simple moments like finally finishing that perfect wooden balcony as you watch the square sun rising and "Wet Hands" starts to play. The tangible and real threat of Minecraft's permanent item loss and unwillingness to throw the player a bone or hold his hand, turns the mere idea of exploring the outskirts of your comfy man hole into a cautious adventure that has you feeling a sense of joy as you catch on your way back the familiarity of your ever evolving house on the horizon, and turns a simple detour that leaves you lost in the woods at night into a dreadful nightmare that has you frantically searching for a light source inbetween the trees as you dodge a horde of zombies and skellies.

While there is some truth to the criticism that "there's nothing to do" in Minecraft, which can be attributed to its low skill ceiling and diminishing returns as you run out of goals and ideas, the devs have been intelligent enough to not mess with the core appeal of the game with its inumerous updates over the years, and that's letting the player find his own fun, be that building a giant castle at the top of a mountain, building a minecart track that crosses a lava lake in the Nether, conquering The End and beating the Ender Dragon, or simply exploding enough TNT at once to crash the game.

I still can't decipher Minecraft after all these years. All I know is that I keep coming back, be it with a group of friends, or by myself. I still find its quiet and randomized world to be beautfiul and imaginative. I still love how the animals and enemies look and sound. I still can't get over how perfect and effective its oddly sad soundtrack is. I still get a stupid grin on my face when I manage to make the simplest of redstone mechanisms work. I still shit my pants every time I fall into a sense of safety around my home base and suddenly hear that dreaded hiss behind me as I watch my work explode. I dunno, it's a very good game.

I don't know what the block does, do you? I don't know. I dunno. Hey everybody, I'm here with my good friend, Inspector Gadget. Uh, how're you doing Inspector Gadget? I'm having a lot of fun. So, you wanna do some reviews, Inspector Gadget? I'm better than you are, so I should do the review. Okay, alright, well, Inspector Gadget's gonna do the review. You can shut up now, I'm always on duty! Hmm, do you have that game, "Miney Crafta"? Penny was telling me she was playing it on her computer book. Let's play Miney Crafta! Um, well, I have Minecraft, I think that's probably what you're talking about. Let's try that. Hmm, oh yes, this is it: Miney Crafta! No no no, Inspector gadget, it's called Minecraft. Oh, Minecrap! I cannot wait to play Minecrap. Do you know what my favorite thing to do is in Minecrap? I love building bricks with Minecrap. Building bricks with Minecrap is the best thing and the most amount of fun you can have while playing an app. I understand why all the kids are playing this game these days -- it's because they like to build brown bricks with Minecrap. I also like to build brown bricks with Minecrap. It's the most fun you can possibly have. What is the point of Minecrap? Well, there really is no point. It's a sandbox game. Oh good, I love building sandcastles. No, that just means you can do anything you want like explore, build stuff, and mess around. What kind of stuff can you build? Well, anything, really. There's one guy that built a scale model of the Starship Enterprise. My deduction skills as a detective tell me he has quite possibly, never had sex. Come on, Inspector Gadget, it's about expressing your creativity! But, he is just copying a fake rocket ship blueprint designed by someone else! Seems more like monkey see, monkey do than using creative energy if you ask me. Oh, you think you can do better, huh? I have a robotic implant in my brain that lets me preform 12,000,000,000,000,000 calculations per second. I could rewrite the entire game's code, while helping Penny with her homework, and cleaning up brain's doody, all at the same time! He's a nerd, and I hate nerds more than I hate MAD agents. What an asshole! He may not have a powerful cybernetic brain like yours, but I think that the kid used Minecraft in a unique, and complex, yet beautiful way, making the adaptation of---- I told you to shut up, but you didn't listen. Oh look, a free iPad.

Don't think I'll ever really understand what is it about the Witcher series which gets people to gush so hard about it; I guess because fantasy novels have gone by the way side, it can be a bit novel to the general public to have a fantasy story that deals with discrimination, alienation, classism, sexual violence, etc. in an explicit, non-gratuitous way. For me though, it always struck me as if the point of CDPR's Witcher interpretation was that it was a gritty fantasy story, and that was it, rather than the point being that the grittiness is necessary to embolden the themes in the work. Like, one of the main takeaways people have of this series is that life has a whole lot of gray, morality is ambiguous, and every decision we make carries far dire consequences than we can envision.

And it's like yea, no shit buddy that's how the world works lmao. Why do you think those 'simple' fantasy stories were created in the first place? I don't mean to be callous but it's a weird mental schema we have that people in the past were somehow not dealing with as complex lives and problems as we were, and that the solutions and narratives they created were somehow less 'complex' and 'realistic' than ours. You can see this especially with how some people decry medieval policy around executions as 'barbaric'; there's an argument for the sanctity of life, sure, not very compelling but its there.

But if you're going to make that argument, you also have to recognize the fact that political executions were a quick, effective fix to the problem of treason. You can't just expect traitors to just stop spreading their ideas once they've been defeated or caught; there's always a strong possibility that the values of the traitor spread across the region, and you now are no longer looking at treason but a revolution. You can see this particularly with the American South: the Southerners may have "lost", but the culture of anti-black sadism and rigid economic hierarchies has persisted until present-day, to the point where America is just now realizing how odd it is to openly display the Confederate flag. Not to engage in alt-history, but you have to ask yourself if antebellum Southern values would have persisted for so long if we executed all Confederates for high treason, instead of voting them into office.

But I'm digressing; aside from the on-paper plot the Witcher 2 is an interesting case-study of multi-narrative video games, and the fact that this game released with as many branching paths as it did is a minor miracle. Doesn't make the game any funner to play or the plot more insightful, but you have to admire CDPR's technical work.

Imagine that for the next game in your favorite franchise, the entire premise would be reversed, like a Resident Evil game where you played as a zombie and had to hunt down a hero and exhaust their limited supplies. While a lot of the series’ staple elements would still be there, calling it a mainline entry rather than a spinoff would be an incredibly divisive move. Some people would certainly enjoy it, and you couldn’t argue that it doesn’t belong within the series, but you couldn’t be blamed for being disappointed all the same. By using the same franchise title but not fulfilling the same expectations, the developers break the unspoken trade that comes with that decision, exchanging some creative freedom for a guaranteed audience. Hitman: Absolution may not seem like this sort of flip, since Agent 47 is still pursuing targets, swapping disguises, and sneaking around, but in all other ways, the premise is a complete reversal. It’s not 47 stalking targets on his own terms anymore, he’s the one being hunted. He can’t just slip into disguises to avoid suspicion since people are actively trying to find him, so guards see through his tricks and he’s forced to do more typical sneaking. As a result, the room for free approaches and navigating maps has been severely limited, a core element of what gave the prior games their identity. This is what separates Absolution from successful franchise pivots like Resident Evil 4, its uniqueness actually declined rather than grew with the changes. Not only that, but even when compared to the games it seeks to emulate, it doesn’t have a particularly special level of refinement or polish. The game does occasionally shine, particularly in the few missions where it fully embraces the concept of a hunter being hunted, but these moments are but rare glimpses at the potential of the concept. The theoretical version of Absolution that completely embraced this style of gameplay could have been fantastic, and Hitman/2/3 have shown how hungry people are for iterative improvements, but the version we got only proves how flipping the script without adequate development just leaves everyone unsatisfied.

this was the moment in which the playstation made any and all competition look like a goddamned embarassment. if final fantasy vii wasn't already enough of an indicator that maybe nintendo should've reconsidered that cd-rom collaboration with sony, the release of metal gear solid is where they must've looked at themselves with their dicks in their hands and gone, "what the hell are we even doing here?" regardless of personal opinion or subjective takeaway, there is an objective throughline to the narrative design and storytelling of essentially the entire modern single-player gaming industry that leads back to 1998's metal gear solid. to call it one of the most influential video games ever made doesn't do its legacy justice. it's a game that continues to morph, bend, and redefine itself almost 25 years after its initial release. hell, it's a shame it didn't inspire MORE of the modern gaming world, in the sense that its experimentation and willingness to dip into the absurd and self-aware clearly was left behind in the shuffle tothe current generation's blockbusters. metal gear solid is a timeless experience that must truly be experienced to be believed.

the cumbersome burden of solid snake is felt in the control scheme, and while on some objective level it's aged, i'm willing to consider it part of the character and how the game defines snake in a metatextual sense to the player; the two may work in symbiosis by design of it being a video game, but there's also a discreet awareness in metal gear solid as a series that this is all, indeed, a video game - so regardless of whether it's intended or not (i'm willing to admit the likelihood kojima was bullshitting when he brought this up down the line, lol) i think it works to an effect. metal gear solid isn't difficult to control if you're used to titles of the era. the level design is immaculate - truly has an intentional "video game-y" feel especially in areas like the second vulcan raven duel, or the section where snake can't use his weapons, or the furnace section - that carries a distinctly futuristic and militant vibe heightened by the score. every piece of music in this game has to be etched into my skull at this point, the highest point of all undoubtedly being the vocal track "the best is yet to come" and its various instances in leitmotifs throughout the game. of course one can't discuss metal gear solid without nodding to the truly game-changing, top class voice performances across the entire class. this had to be a deep scare to the rest of the market at the time - english dubs of this level and with this much spoken dialogue was unheard of in this day and age, and to this day the performances and writing have aged tremendously.

the cinematography and scene composition of metal gear solid is truly amorphous. there are sequences where you might get away with calling this a horror game; the hallway before the cyborg ninja battle where you meet otacon, or the entirety of the psycho mantis sequence. there are moments in which characters' tension or intimacy is highlighted; the seductive ferocity of sniper wolf and snake's interactions, or the sparse moments of genuine care and peace between snake and meryl, or otacon. threats often are 'shot' to feel larger than life, like the sequence with the hind on the roof top, or the titular metal gear rex, which the game forces you to consider the sheer scope of by actually having you traverse its entire scale. while the narrative storytelling is deserving of its constant praise, i think it's these instances of master 'camera work' and visual storytelling that help the game feel a true cut above all the same.

there's much to be said about metal gear solid's sociopolitical messages or the means with which it deconstructs the media it draws much of its inspiration from, but i think one of the most prevelant themes of the game that resonated with me when i first played it as a teenager, especially in tandem with its sequel (a game i wonder if i could even talk about here to any level of justice) was its warcry in the name of individualism. what it means to be a free person, what freedom means and who, if anyone, has the means to attain it. metal gear solid makes it clear there is no war and no country that might offer you peace and liberty - it's a matter of self-attained enlightenment and a tranquility with your reality and surroundings that offers man the means to find true freedom. snake, otacon, fox, meryl, liquid, mantis, wolf, they're all soldiers of circumstance. to be a dog of war is to offer your life for the sake of freedom to observers - we see meryl go through the motions as she realizes, though, she IS green and that her perception of war and heroism was also propoganda all along. pretty girls and gruff rambo would-be's get shot and bleed out, too. the masters of war turn a blind eye and deploy the next one. if you want freedom, as dave and hal find out, you're going to have to go off the grid and find it yourself, no matter the cost.

metal gear solid wasn't afraid to consider possibilities that major titles even now tiptoe around - today's gaming industry has seen massive shooter franchises no longer even disguising their ulterior motives as nationalist propoganda. we've seen an industry willing to trounce creators and small teams in hopes of following trends that peter out within months. we've seen games that dare to question the status quo and dare to do something unique and challenging, thanks in no small part to this pioneer, only to be met with backlash about how games "are all political now" or some centrist hogwash talkpiece nonsense like that. look to the past, to metal gear solid, to learn the truth; when savant visionaries are given the resources, this is a medium that can offer truly life-changing experiences that will force discomfort and challenge preconcieved notions to its entire audience, while remaining heartfelt, loving and tender - universal. a story, a work of art without borders. in the 24 years since its release, metal gear solid still remains damn near the top of the line - one of the finest works of art in this entire medium.

Hiçbir şekilde wikiye bakmayın.

Metal Gear serisi benim için ps ile özdeşleşmiş bir seridir. Herhangi bir ps im olmadığı için bu seriye her zaman uzak olmuşumdur. En sonunda oyunları açacak bir cihaz almamla seriye en başından ilk oyundan başlama kararı verdim ama bu oyun ilk oyun değilmiş. Solidsiz olan metal gearların bir hikâyesi var ve bu oyundaki hikâyenin şekillenmesinde önemli olan iki olayı anlatıyorlar. Bundan önce de farklı farklı zamanlarda ve platformlardan baştan başlayıp hiç devamını getirememiştim çünkü bu oyunun yapay zekası iyi ve oyun en başında sizi tamamen savunmasız bırakıyor. Küçücük bir odada silahsız zeki yapay zekalarla kapana kısıtlısınız. Oyunun en zor kısmı da bence bu ilk kısımdı. Asansör geldikten sonra karşınızdaki binaya girmek için oyun size iki seçenek sunuyor ki bu sadece başlarda gördüğünüz bir özellikle. Daha sonraları ilerlemeniz tamamen lineer şekilde oluyor. Oyun biraz kriptik olsa da aslında yanınızda bir vt var. Codec inizden arayarak yardım isteyebiliyorsunuz. Codec iniz çoğunlukla sorunlarınızı çözüyor. Oynanış aşırı kanser benim oyunun sonlarında öğrendiğim first person da ateş etme özelliği belki bir nebze size yardımcı olabilir ama genede en büyük düşmanınız kontroller oluyor. Müzikler güzel. Gelelim esas can alıcı noktaya hikâye... Bunun gibi eski oyunlardan mekanik için oynanacak sayısı azdır. Ve MGS de onlardan birisi değil.(gerçi iyi bir gizlilik oyunu olduğunu kabul etmek lazım yapay zeka düşman pozisyonları bölüm dizaynları gizlilik için aşırı elverişli düşmanlar sizden çok ama çok daha fazlalar ondan dolayı savaşman değil saklanman gerekiyor.) Hikâye olarak da çok çok iyi olan yerler de var ciddi olup çok komik olan yerler de var. Hikâye ögelerinin çoğunluğunu MG lerde işlenen olaylardaki karakterler oluşturuyor. Gizem hikâyede oldukça önemli bir yere sahip. Bir ara biraz bokunu çıkartsalar da gizem hikâyenin parladığı yer diyebilirim. Diyaloglarda işlenen felsefe olayı ise ... Karakterler genel olarak iyiler ama bu kadar çok ara sahnenin olduğu bir oyuna neden önceki oyunlardaki olan olayları gösterdiğin bir iki ara sahne koymazsın ki. Önceki iki oyun nes e çıktı, nes. Nes oyunlarını bitirebilen insanlara insanlar kutsal varlık muamelesi yapıyordu. Kim oynayacak da bitirecek onları. Oyunun yarısında cut scene izliyoruz zaten 5 dklı bir ara sahne koymak çok mu zordu. Öte yandan nükleer savaş, nükleer tehdit çok iyi işlenmiş. İnsanı şaşırtacak kadar iyi hem de. Olay çok boyutlu bir şekilde ele alınarak bir taraf iyi diğer taraf kötü şeklinde yapılmamış. Anlatılmak istenilen şeyler üzerine ciddi araştırılarak ve araştırılan materyallerin özenle kurgulanması ile yazılmış bir hikâye var. Bu özen ve çaba oyunun hikâyesinde size hissettiriliyor. Mgs 1 e de devam etme nedenim de zaten buydu. Boss savaşları güzel ve yaratıcı bölümlerde o şekilde beklemediğiniz anda olan olaylar sizi oyunun içerisine çekiyor. Çok yaratıcı fikirler ile karşılaşabiliyorsunuz. Yaratıcılık ve öznellik size sadece bu oyunda görebileceğiniz şeyler gösteriyor. Bir sonraki bölümde acaba ne göreceğim merakı uyandırıyor. Oyun easy de bile kontroller sayesinde yeterince challenge oluyor bence ondan kendinizi daha da fazla kanser etmeyin easyde oynayın. Son olarak Konaminin aq.
Edit: Oyunun titreşim kullanımı çok iyi gördüğüm en iyi titreşimi kullanan oyun.

The people calling this game a tech demo aren't necessarily wrong. Half-life 2 runs on a (at the time) brand new proprietary engine, one that Valve is 1000% confident in. The Source Engine would, in fact, come to define the aestethic and brand of most of Valve's titles. Technology-wise, Half-life 2 is one of the greatest successes a single company could hope for, one that partly built the Valve we know today.

It would be dismissive to call the game just a tech demo, when it is a complete experience; one that is propelled forward by the new tech. The gravity gun is the perfect example. One can play the game entirely by only busting it out during puzzles (Citadel aside, even Ravenholm could be beaten without using it to throw a single sawblade against a zombie) but the fact that it can become one of Freeman's most lethal weapons makes it incredibly fun to use.

That said, it may be a bit puzzling as a sequel to 1998's Half-Life. That game was very action-focused, putting the player in situations where thinking fast and applying the right tool to the right situation was necessary for survival. In that game human enemies were bloodthirsty, cunning and lethal, which coupled with their robotic patterns of speech, made them somehow more terrifying than 2's Combine. The latter are scary at first, when they chase you around City 17 while you are unarmed; but as soon as you pick up a weapon they are revealed to basically be meat puppets, losing all sense of presence as soon as their health drops to zero, their bodies flopping to the ground in an unintended comical way. 2 must know this, as it relies mostly on (very strong and memorable) setpieces that take center stage and where the enemies are just a part of it. Half-Life 1 had plenty of setpieces (the fights against black ops assassins, the bridge and cliff sections in Surface Tension spring to mind) but in 2 they are more varied, thanks in great part to the inclusion of drivable vehicles.

Story and characters change drastically in the sequel. Where 1s plot and characters were in large part flat and one-dimensional, 2 fleshes out its supportive cast, flexing its impressive facial expressions of the Source Engine.
The character who instead loses the most from this exchange is Gordon Freeman. Where in the first game he had complete freedom to act in the structure he's given (the messiah that saves scientists and guards alike, the psychopath who murders his peers with glee, the opportunist who will kill a guard in cold blood for ammo or a gun) is now flattened into an infallable saviour of humanity. I won't argue it is bad for the story, but for ceratin players it may hurt their immersion, which is bad in itself.

There is also a throughline between the two games, the hallmark of a good series: the iconography. It's no accident that something as simple as a black and red crowbar has become an iconic symbol; not simply because it's an unorthpdox fps melee weapon, but as a tool that both games give you plenty of targets for, whether they be boxes, planks or headcrabs. It also smartly maintains the amazng sounds of the first game: the medic and HEV stations and the original voice actors for Kleiner, Barney and G-man.

I want to conclude this by talking about the latter figure. He (they? It?) is the only character that has a consistent and consistently compelling writing in both titles. The first game's blockiness and voice performance made him even more alien than the rest of the cast and the game's quirks only amplified that. Half-Life 2, despite its marked improvements in the graphics and fidelity department, continues the tradition by finding even more visual tricks to maintain the mystery of his character, shedding just enough light in his plans while not revealing all of its hand regarding the big monster and puppeteer of the franchise.

Half-Life 2 is a triumph. One that Valve is still scared to follow up properly. Hopefully Alyx is a sign of things to come. Hopefully we can all one day play Half-Life 3.

I think that if there is any art-form that successfully reflects the condition of living under late-capitalism, that would be videogames (what a start, I know lol, but hear me out). There is always this idea of control that a player has when going through the experience. The feeling that you are the one that has the freedom to do whatever you want. That you have a choice over your actions and that whatever you are lead to, is because of your own interests. Since you are the one controlling this figure and making everything that seems relevant in this world.

However, you are never truly in control of your actions because everything you do in the virtual space has been predetermined and calculated by people above you who designed this system. You’re directed to perform certain tasks that they want you to, while others you’re limited to because they either didn’t plan for you to use the system in that way or because they went out of their way for you to not do that which you’re trying. Agency is nothing more than an illusion that any game sets on you because you are not doing more than what they ask you or what they allow you. The system was designed by them, and you are not doing more so than acting under its restrictions.

Some videogames, like for example those in the sandbox genre, capitalize on the power fantasy of being free. They sell you the idea that you are going to be allowed to do whatever you want. That you’re going to indulge in your wildest wishes and accomplish them. Living in this space as if it was reality and ascending in a hierarchy until you, as the exceptional you are, end on the top.

However, that cannot be seen as nothing more than dishonest because in the end video game are always limited. There are many tasks you cannot perform in GTA V, for example. No matter how much they thought it out, the system can only account for what the creators set up, along some outsiders that are produced out of its failures more than anything else. They might make it seem as freedom, but it is nothing more than the fantasy of freedom. (Not something that makes the games bad necessarily as there is still value in the illusion, but there is no denying in what it is).

And even without that, those very same sandbox games, ironically enough, end up having very linear and hermetic story modes in which you’re strictly told what to do. The instructions are clear and there is not space for the player to take a different path for that target. The contrast in the process reveals the farce of the surrenders and that you never had any freedom in the first place. The control is taken away from you from the start and the only things you can do are things you are asked to do.

The existence of this aesthetic hegemony of games that favor false freedom and saturation of options to hide your lack of agency only makes it more interesting when a game comes out and sets itself to be conscious about the conditions you are put in as player. Hotline Miami being one I recently talked about, but on the other hand there is also, among many others, Portal.

Interestingly enough, a game that was created few years after Half Life 2 by the same company. That one founding itself in empowering oneself against the system through revolution, just for your efforts to become meaningless. Despite how much other characters in the game try to enhance you as myth, you are nothing more than a puppet for a supernatural entity that decides to put you in this scenario just to take you as soon as you finished your task. Portal is not too distant, but I would argue its use of symbols to evoke similar territory is more sophisticated.

You wake up in a room with no information about yourself, and right away, a machine guides you through tests that you have to pass (while not being given an explanation). From that point on everything you perform in this space, every gesture and every action is instructed directly by the machine, who gives you information about how to solve the scenarios. You might be the one resolving the set pieces, but it is not too different from a laboratory rat that is promised a cheese at the end of the maze (in your case, a cake). The scenarios were designed by them for you to resolve in only one way, and there is nothing you can do in response other than obey. A brilliant touch to demonstrate this is how at the start the portals are put by the machine for you to solve the puzzles instead of giving you the gun and the two kind of portals right away.

Something that, on one hand is functional from a design standpoint. Since it allows the player to get used to the systems. Leaving a space between every element you are given so you can assimilate the information, giving a sense of there being a difficulty and complexity curve increasing at your pace. However, symbolically, it already presents the element about lack of agency revealing the fakery of it all. That the scenarios are artificially constructed for you with a single path to cross.

The dynamic of control that the machine GLaDOS has on you, however, changes halfway through. When you stop being useful to her and her tasks, she attempts to murder you. You served her interests and since you were nothing more than a tool now you have to be thrown away like many others before you. That is the point in which you rebel against your position. You stop being submissive, and you start using the gun to create portals where GLaDOS did not plan. You move behind the red curtain where you see everything going on to make the puzzles possible. In dark industrial places characterized by its violent cylinders that smash the walls and give little room for motion and comfort. Contrasting with the clean and polished places you are presented for the tests.

You do what it was not planned for you to do. You take what you are learned (with help of efforts by someone that preceded you and suffered in the same environment) and apply it without being told by a superior what to do and how to do it. In fact, you assert dominance by repeatedly doing the opposite of what you are told. The oppression reached such point of violence that now the only solution is to fight back. Which is very interesting in how the game applies it in multiple ways, including especially that you kill GLaDOS by using the missiles of her gun turret against her with the portals.

Like by the end of Half Life 2, there is a sense of empowerment in this comeback. You do not only fight back, you are even better with you tools that you were before. Now that you are at your peak, nothing can stop you from achieving the emancipation of the powers that repress you. However, through a melancholy finale, that empowerment is recontextualized as futility. And for Portal specifically, that gives sense to its individualist focus throughout the journey.

You might have successfully defeated the one machine that was gaslighting you, manipulating you and controlling you, but such effort was meaningless. So concentrated into a single being that it practically produces zero material effects outside of the little story you lived.

You see the woods; you see nature after having seen exclusively the mechanical. But an unknown robot takes your body to pull you back into the structure. Because the structure is still there, and you cannot change it by destroying one individual. You are back in your submission, probably to repeat the cycle of tests and control.

Is a more than functional exploration of corporative control against human interests, neoliberalism advancing towards structures that are more detached and cold, resulting in the further alienation of the people. Moreover, it is even more successful as a metaphor for games and the dynamics between creator, player and the game itself due to the precision of the symbols and aesthetics employed to evoke this significance. I would even prefer it to Half Life 2 in this reading of the political and the Meta as both interconnected because of the synthesis.

The way this plays out so simply, with no more than what is needed to tell its story, instead of extending itself to a duration that would conform to what is expected, feels almost “anti-commercial” (as much as an accessible, mainstream game can be) in its attempt. Two hours of content, a main story and that’s it. This was something that, when I first played it, underwhelmed me about the work because it felt like it was offering too little in comparison to the standards of what a game offers. However, is exactly that what compels me so much about this and makes me prefer it to its sequel.

Portal 2 might expand on the concepts and might give more to the player to extend the life of the title, but in my opinion it feel like a sequel that tries to replace the original by giving the same but More. More story, more characters, more puzzles, more tools, more Lore, more duration, more play modes, more everything. It’s a way of creating sequels that feels uncomfortable to me because it presumes video-games as a commodity to constantly improve on rather than as pieces of art to revisit, which is something that Valve’s sequels (except for Half Life 2) suffer from.

On the other hand, Portal is comfortable being concise. Making every element memorable rather than trying to saturate the experience. And it makes it feel like more artistic and sincere in its exploration of thematic ideas and ludic concepts (using the first person format for a genre like puzzles, using the mechanics of Half Life to explore and figure out rather than to make your way killing). And is the kind of simplicity that makes its speech more convincing, more so when comparing it to Half Life 2 that runs into some contradiction due to how it is designed.
Honestly, games should learn from this that not all stories need to be extensive, and sometimes brevity can be your virtue.