Portal

A few years ago, I saw a movie called Cube. It was simultaneously one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen, and one of the most intriguing. The premise of this movie reminds me very much of the newest game I'm playing, called Portal. Whereas, you're trapped in a rather plain square room, which may or may not contain traps, and you have to find a way out.

Portal, however, is much, much more fun than Cube was.

This game isn't your traditional first-person shooter. You don't have a gun. Actually, you don't have any kind of weapons. All you have is the ability to create portals, which I'll explain in a bit.

The game starts with you waking up on a table in some kind of a test lab. A robotic voice starts talking to you and telling you that you're a test subject, but doesn't give you any details as to the nature of the experiment. Then, a portal opens up in the wall, and you walk through it. The robotic voice then explains the idea of portals to you.

Things start out pretty simple. In the first test, the exit is a portal way up out of reach. So you use your portal making gun to open a portal in the wall beside you, you walk through it, and you come out way up above at the exit. It explains the basic principle of how portals work -- you walk through one and you come out of the other. And because your portal making gun can open up a portal in places you can't get by foot, you can get across large gaps in the floor, or up on unreachable platforms, etc.

Here's a screenshot of me making a portal. And that person you see through the portal....is ME. You're looking into infinity.


I probably won't be taking too many screenshots of the game, because basically there's not much to see. All the rooms are very bland like this one is. There's not much to see. But each test gets progressively more difficult, and the game hooks you in because you want to figure them out and move on. The last test that I've figured out so far, #14, was very cool and it was quite satisfying to complete it.

I was in a room with a high wall. Here's how I got over the wall:

First, I opened up a exit portal up near the ceiling on the wall behind the obstacle. Then I opened an entrance portal on the wall beside me. I stepped through it, and I came out of the portal way up high near the ceiling, and of course started plummeting down towards the floor (and my death).

Then, as I was falling towards the floor, I opened up a new entrance portal where I was about to go splat. I fell through it, and came out of the exit portal way up high near the ceiling again. But because I was now moving much faster (because I'd been falling), I was launched across the room and over the wall to the exit.

Brilliance.