Reviews
If we all thought the guys over at Valve went going to bring anything else out of the work-shop and onto the Arcade centre… We were wrong. Portal, one of the latest games to roll off the Valve production line finally hits us in Arcade style on the 360. So make sure you all have your Companion Cube and after reading this review we will all get cake…
One of the first major things people will notice for users with the 1st generation 20GB 360s is that this game takes up a whopping 629MB of space. Being one of the first Arcade games to be allowed to release under the new size restrictions Portal was giver special permissions from Microsoft to surpass the size limitations, by a lot. For those of you with the new 360 models with 60gb+ you’re in luck. Looking past the heavy download you do get a worth while game which is worth a fraction of everyone’s HD space.
Getting into the game, you start as a test subject for the Aperture Science Project. Guiding you through the game is a female computer voice names GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), which will give you details about the level as well as just make the overall game more enjoyable. The game gets accomplished by completing a series of obstacles in each stage using the Portal Gun. Following the level through avoiding the sludge pits, torrents and balls of flying energy to allow you to gain access to the elevator which takes you to the next stage and closer to the “cake”.
Portal has a great story line for a small game which has a main intention of showing off the portal effects allowing the player to follow along and find small secrets to help unravel the secrets behind the Aperture project and most of all to find the cake. Which if you follow the Portal discussions at all you will understand as the entire game the voice over is rewarding you with cake which will be given out at the end of the “test” period.
The Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (ASHPD) or Portal Gun is the key feature of the game as it allows you to surpass all obstacles. You start off using the basic Blue portal which will only allow you to go out of a stationary Orange portal that is places by the game. This main feature was done to allow people better use of the portal and understand how the system works, until later in the game when you gain the ability to control both ends of the portal. For true gamers of the Valve series you will also notice similar humour in the game as well as the small things written on the walls and the obscure cracks in the wall which lead to a room with writing on the wall from past ‘test subjects’
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