Thinking With Portals - The Games I've Played

I finally beat it last night.

For how much hype is behind the Portal world and how awesome people think it is, I was sort of whelmed. It wasn't overwhelmed and it was underwhelmed, it was a solid whelming. The biggest thing within this is that it was interesting to play, and there were some cool concepts into the world of puzzle genre, and let us never forget Glados.

She is what makes the game. The puzzles are interesting, and there are some ways that your brain has to work that are pretty cool, but what really makes this game worth playing is the passive aggressive, overly violent, always calm Glados.Without her mocking, without her plotting, and without all of who she is, this game would not be worth playing. It'd be an interesting puzzle game, and people would appreciate it for thinking with Portals, but really it wouldn't nearly be as big a smash as it currently is. Glados is the one thing about this game that makes people enjoy it so much.

This is when I have to praise the writers of the game. The game doesn't involve much dialogue, the protagonist is quiet the entire time, but the simple sentences and quick wit of Glados makes it worth it. If you play this game with no noise or no subtitles, you're missing out on what makes this game as strong as it could be. The only problem that I have with this amazing writing is that it is the only real thing that Portal is hanging it's hat on, and that's a scary idea.

It's a good game, and it was fun to play, but after going through it once, there's nothing making me want to play it more. Nothing inside of the game makes me want to go back and see more. I already found about Glados, I already know about her life, and I already know what is happening to the main character. The puzzles aren't any more puzzling, so I can quickly put it back on my bookshelf and not have to worry about it ever again. It's nice for a single play through, but it's deffinatley not one of those games that was wildly in depth. It's the gamer version of a Saturday morning cartoon. You love it, it's over quickly, and it's full of some cheap laughs.