KOCHI: If you’ve been playing games on the internet in the last 9 years, it’s guaranteed that you’ve come across a Portal reference or meme at some point. Okay, that may be an exaggeration but it does describe the seismic impact that Portal had on gaming pop-culture. Portal’s spiritual predecessor, Narbacular Drop, was conceived as a college project by students who would later get hired by Valve. From such humble beginnings sprang a game that, in my opinion, was way closer to perfection than many of its more illustrious brethren.
Portal pulls the standard you-have-no-idea-what’s-happening trick when it begins — you just wake up in a room/cell, and you’re ushered towards a ‘test chamber’ by a voice you’ll soon be intimately familiar with. That voice belongs to GLaDOS, an AI construct entirely devoid of empathy (but who possesses an absolutely hilarious capacity for put-downs and insults) that’s running the Aperture Science Enrichment Centre that you’re currently trapped inside. To put it another way, she’s the scientist watching you, the mouse, try to navigate your way through a series of mazes on the merest promise of cheese.
Test chambers are usually filled with a variety of objects, devices and lethal hazards, and you’ll have to either use or avoid them in order to make it to the exit. The single most valuable tool at your disposal is the Portal Gun (Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device), which lets you create portals that can transport you or other objects across massive rooms with a single step. With that, every test chamber becomes an intriguing puzzle to solve, usually through varying levels of physics-defying acrobatics. This is the heart of Portal — it’s an entertaining and clever puzzle game that manages to constantly up the ante for the duration of the game (which isn’t much) and leave you wanting more.
However, if that’s the heart of Portal, GLaDOS is the soul. It’s practically impossible to overstate her importance to the game. On one level, she’s merely an unreliable narrator, tossing breadcrumbs to guide you to your next hamster wheel. She she sets the tone for the entire game, which is jovial and light-hearted on the surface, concealing murkier depths beneath. It’s not long before you start wondering if perhaps she isn’t quite all there, and what exactly awaits you at the end of the rabbit hole. All you know is, you’ll enjoy the way there because Portal’s writing is some of the funniest I’ve heard in gaming.
It’s hard to write about Portal, because so much of it has been spoilt, referenced and memed into oblivion on the internet. Don’t let that put you off, though — this is a game that everyone should try. You can finish it in a single sitting, even. It may not click for you, but it will for most people and it is so, so worth it. Trust me, it’s just that good.
(The writer is a gamer, book lover, and all-round rennaissance man)