It's not a $20 game imo. It's too short. If you've played puzzle games before (at least if you've played anything more advanced than Peggle or Sudoku), things only start getting interesting around level 12 or 13.
It absolutely frickin' is.
I don't buy a puzzle game to make levels for myself. Mapping is fun, very fun, but that is not what I want when I buy a puzzle game. I want a long, challenging experience. Portal was a brief, largely unchallenging experience that was partially but not completely offset by a good twist (the behind the scenes levels) and good humour. I wouldn't say there was enough of a story to praise that part of it. It was almost completely enigmatic (Who is Chell? Who is GladOS?). You might say that some of the greatest stories ever written have no ending and are enigmatic (Blade Runner, the director's cut, for example), but at least you know who the characters are, what their motivation is, their hopes, fears dreams, etc. Portal only begins a story, it doesn't offer any ending or any beginning, it's simply the middle. Chell suffers from attempting to do a non-speaking, sparse backstory Gordon Freeman, but fails to deliver through a lack of supporting cast. Gordon has Alex, Barney, Kleiner, Eli and others to slowly unwrap his character, He is able to live through them. Chell can only come to life through GladOS, and Portal is too short to throw up anything meaningful within the game experience (yes I know the website attempts to address this, but again, I don't buy a game to find out what happens via a website).
They had a hand in the PS3 port of the Orange Box... (oh snap!)
I thought the whole point of Portal's environment is that by conflating 'test/game' and 'real conflict' it confuses motivation and is claustrophobic in that it destroy all possible hopes, fears or dreams apart from "survive/escape."
You are a silly man. The levels are basic because it is necessary and clever for them to be so; they are not just boxes for the sake of being boxes but actively create an atmosphere and an aesthetic. Environments, though built out of very simple parts - and still offering some genuinely impressive sights toward the end of the game - are constructed with a view to lead the eye, and mind's eye, to the right area. The design foregroundscertain elements over others. Listening to the director's commenaries just highlights the extent to which everything in Portal is honed to create the best and most intuitive possible experience. Is this not the very definition of 'production values'?Crispy said:
