Top 10 VG Countdown - #2: PORTAL

Portal and Portal 2 are first-person puzzle solving games developed by Valve. Portal was released in 2007, and Portal 2 in 2011. In Portal, you find yourself in an enclosed room where an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) tells you what to do. Your sole purpose is, apparently, to solve puzzles using a portal gun in the Aperture Laboratories. Left-click with the mouse and your portal gun will shoot a blue portal. Right-click and your gun will shoot an orange portal. Walk in the blue portal and you come out the orange, and vice versa. Solving puzzles using these portals is challenging and messes with your mind. My favourite trick is using momentum to get past the puzzles. In GLaDOS's words: "Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman's terms, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out." There's nothing like jumping down one portal on the floor and come flying out another to get over a chasm or other obstacle.

I love these games for two reasons: 1) the challenging and innovative puzzles. 2) the dark humour. GLaDOS is sarcastic and hilarious. Pretty early on you realize she is an evil liar out to torture you (that's not really spoiler. Come on... a robot making you do tests? She had to be evil.) If you don't burst out laughing for most of her lines, I don't know what's wrong with you.

Portal 2 continues the story from the first game, but it is longer and adds a few more elements including lasers, tractor beams, light bridges, bouncy sludge and zoom goo. Now aren't you intrigued just from that list of stuff? I mean, who can resist zoom goo?

Portal 2 also has a two player co-op mode. And it is awesome. I played it through twice. That's how awesome it is. You and a friend play as two robots who have to get through testing rooms together. Puzzles that require four portals to solve instead of two are that much more challenging and exciting. You really do have to work together to get through the levels, sometimes timing things just right or relying on your partner to get you through an area. You can also interact with each other by high-fiving, hugging, waving while you careen to your death off a chasm, or pulling the other's head off and smashing it on the ground; I'm not gonna lie, there's just something satisfying about that last one. This is another one of those games that you might enjoy even if you are not a gamer, and one of the funnest games I have ever played.

 

If you've played Portal or Portal 2, what did you think? If you haven't, what are you waiting for?