Portal --- and Really Good Bad Guys
I just finished Portal (downloaded directly from Steam, BTW). Dang, that was a sweet game.


I don't know what I could say about Portal that hasn't already been said, but I'll try. It started with a mod by a bunch of students (read: INDIES), who got hired on by Valve to make it an official game. And it turned out to be what will probably be remembered as the most innovative game of 2007.

Fun as all, too. The gameplay is wild and original, sometimes even mind-bending, requiring some eye-hand coordination but mostly just logic and problem-solving. It is a brilliant game that, like Thief and Rainbow Six before it (not to mention the excellent indie game Orbz), took the first-person-shooter mechanic and did something completely different with it. Additionally, the game was very careful to introduce you to tools / tricks very comfortably and on their own before you had to implement them in more stressful or time-dependent situations - or in think-out-side-the-box combinations. I never once felt (after I'd solved them) that the puzzles were in any way unfair, though there were a couple of them that I thought were impossible before I actually tried them.

I think about how the game could have been ruined by giving the player a traditional gun at any point, and thrown in just a few token traditional enemies. But the original team had been able to prove the concept via the freeware mod Narbacular Drop, so I doubt that was a temptation.

All that being said, I think that half the fun was the antagonist - your opponent, GLaDOS. She is just a WONDERFUL passive-aggressive foe. Well, passive-aggressive until the morality core chip is incinerated. Then more aggressive.

She begins the game as a traditional computer-voice instructor for the missions, and starts by making some statements so deadpan that I wasn't sure if they were serious or not. It was only later, as her frustration mounts, that her personality begins to shine through and she deadpans some seriously funny lines. My wife was hearing the game in bits and pieces, and began laughing herself after doing a double-take.

The thing that works so well is that - besides having an interesting personality and deadpan, passive-aggressive, homicidal humor - the villain of Portal is a constant presence. She's constantly there, instructing you, taunting you, nagging you, trying to murder you, and then laughing it off as a joke in a poor attempt to try manipulate you. She's unique.

She's earned a spot in my personal list of the Best Game Villains. GLaDOS, it was a delight to defeat you! Thanks! And... hey! Cake!

And now I can't get that Jonathan Coulton song (sung by GLaDOS) from the end credits out of my head...

(Vaguely) related failures of lucidity
* Who Are the Best Game Villains
* RE: Your Brains
* Building the Perfect Villain
* Where Is Indie Innovation?
* Will 2007 Be the Year of the Downloadable Game?
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Labels: Indie Evangelism, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:58 AM (Permalink)