Impressions from playing Portal

[blackboxme]

-the first game in which skipping as a form of locomotion is heartily encouraged (edit: Half-Life 2 does this too actually! wonder if Half-Life 1 does as well)

-was the companion cube making fun of Ico? lol

-I can't think of any games that made me feel so playful and creative. For instance, sticking just my arm out of the portal and dropping something. On my end, the portal is on a wall, but on the other end, it's coming out of a ceiling. That's so cool. That's like being a magical creature.

I feel like Portal falls into a type of game that I call "literary," by which I mean that:

1. It makes a powerful, unique statement of its own

2. Within its DNA, it is aware of the history of games, and it speaks in the language developed by that history to make further comments.

I use the term "literary" because this kind of communication seems to be at the core of books, while in other media people seem more indifferent to the broader discussion within the medium. For instance, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: In and of itself not the best story ever told, but it indelibly stamps certain ideas and characters into the world of fiction. Whenever you read something from then on about an isolated community(or a distant past remembered with nostalgia) Wuthering Heights gives you a point of reference, something to refer to and play with.

When I was playing through Portal, I was constantly thinking about Portal in reference to other games, and what Portal was saying in the broader discussion. It was really fun and exciting to play a game that was so playful within its own medium.

So, do you think my concept of "literary" games is fair? Got a better term? Do you ever have these experiences of games talking to each other in the "literary" way?

Edited March 15, 2009 by blackboxme

[MrChaz]

For me I found portal to be a very insular game. Unique in so many aspects that, for me, it stands very much alone as a singular piece of brilliance.

[blackboxme]

For me I found portal to be a very insular game. Unique in so many aspects that, for me, it stands very much alone as a singular piece of brilliance.

Unique, brilliant, I've got no argument with that, but I don't understand what you mean by insular.

[MrChaz]

I mean that it seems to exist apart from other games. It doesn't really seem to take it's cues from other games or attempt to interact with them

[blackboxme]

I mean that it seems to exist apart from other games. It doesn't really seem to take it's cues from other games or attempt to interact with them

Portal Taking Cues From Half-Life 2

HL2

Portal

HL2

Portal

HL2

Portal

HL2

Portal

HL2

Portal

HL2

Portal

HL2

Portal

Edited March 16, 2009 by blackboxme

[blackboxme]

Examples of Portal advocating new ideas and putting it's own take on classic ideas

Portal

Portal

Portal as an advocate of the Gaming Short Story, beating out Mario Galaxy for GOTY Shacknews

GOTY

Portal as an advocate for Steam, and for new pricing models for video games

Portal's central role in a defining game of 2007 Video game conversation

WikiQuote

Awards

The Orange Box has won a number of awards for its overall high standard and use of technology. The compilation won "Computer Game of the Year" at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards and was nominated in the "Overall Game of the Year", "Action Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming" categories.[93] The Orange Box won the "Breakthrough Technology Award" and the "Best PC Game Award" at the 2007 Spike Video Game Awards, and was additionally nominated in the "Game of the Year", "Best Shooter", "Best Xbox 360 Game", and "Best Multiplayer Game" categories.[94][95] It was also named the second-best video game of 2007 by Time Magazine,[96] while the PlayStation 3 version was nominated in the category of Action and Adventure at the BAFTA Video Games Awards.[97] Valve also received developer awards for their work on The Orange Box.[98][99] The Orange Box received 17 Game of the Year awards and over 100 awards in total.[100]

Portal won "Outstanding Achievement in Game Design", "Outstanding Achievement in Game Play Engineering", and "Outstanding Character Performance" at the 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.[93] The game won 76 awards, including 37 Game of the Year awards,[100] and was recognized for innovative design and game mechanics.[101][102][103] The dark humor of Portal and the ending music track Still Alive were also singled out for awards.[104][105]

Team Fortress 2 was nominated in the categories of "Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction" and "Outstanding Achievement in Animation" at the 11th Interactive Achievement Awards.[93] Although unsuccessful at the IAA, the game did receive 10 awards, including five Game of the Year awards,[100] and other awards for its artistic direction and multiplayer gameplay.[106][107][108]

Half-Life 2: Episode Two won four awards, including one Game of the Year award, and was recognized for excellent NPC AI, level design, and story.[100]

Edited March 16, 2009 by blackboxme

[blackboxme]

Portal branching out beyond the game, showing the impact of the fact that it is a Video game short story that pretty much everyone could complete

Jonathan Coulton playing Still Alive in Rock Band DLC

GFW Radio (97.5 the brodeo) [02/22/2008-E093]

Edited March 16, 2009 by blackboxme

[blackboxme]

Yes, I am an ass.

[elmuerte]

THAT'S A LOT OF NUTS... erm... pictures

[Jake]

I hear ya.

[OssK]

Anyway this cake is great it's so delicious and moist, but there's no sense etc...

Thread about to turn into random pics thread, warning !

[toblix]

If this turns into a random picture thread I'll

[blackboxme]

I was trying to show that Portal took a lot of cues from Half-Life 2 in the first pic post

Then a few posts about how Portal was so central to PC gaming that it is guaranteed that it will have effects on other games going forward

In other words that Portal is not insular

I think I buried the lead on this one

Edit: I added headings to the images

Edited March 16, 2009 by blackboxme

[gdf]

Portal is fucking awesome.

It's almost perfect, they should leave it alone.

[OssK]

pure example: if portal had been twice as long, it would have been definitely perfect.

[DanJW]

Now that's asking for the banhammer....

If Portal had been twice as long, it would have been boring.

Blackboxme I think you're spot on about literary games. Portal does indeed make all kinds of comments about the FPS genre (if you like you can replace "cake" with "cutscene" for instance). And that developing language of using gameplay as a medium, not just a platform, is what will take games forward.

[Historical_Society]

Out of curiousity Jake, why do you have a picture of a random black boy, a bear, a freaky baby and a man on a plane?

[blackboxme]

Blackboxme I think you're spot on about literary games. Portal does indeed make all kinds of comments about the FPS genre (if you like you can replace "cake" with "cutscene" for instance). And that developing language of using gameplay as a medium, not just a platform, is what will take games forward.

Nice call, by the time I got to the game, I was so baffled by the cake meme from podcasts that I had no idea what was going on with the cake in the game.

[blackboxme]

And that developing language of using gameplay as a medium, not just a platform, is what will take games forward.

Zizek on The Birds

A good analogy of this process from the world of film can be found toward the end of this clip on Hitchcock's "The Birds." The relevant portion starts at 6:47. It's a good example of the construction of a fairly complex sentence in the language of film.

Here's another good one on Psycho starting at 7:09.

[Jayel]

Yeah, Portal does a good job of taking familiar Video game conventions and fucking with them (an obvious one to point out is how the lengths of the levels are divided up). Its a brilliant satire.

[brkl]

I was trying to show that Portal took a lot of cues from Half-Life 2 in the first pic post

Yeah, and I agreed with you before that post...

All those pictures show is that they both used Source. And they had graffiti... I guess... I don't even know what you tried to communicate with the specific pairs.

[Chris]

pure example: if portal had been twice as long, it would have been definitely perfect.

I disagree!

[MrChaz]

I disagree!

Your opinion is wrong!

[OssK]

I disagree!

You could argue that it's strength comes from being short but hey... If it was twice as long, it would definitely have to be something more, adding depth, adding content, developping and so, not just basically twice as much distance to cover.

Really, to me it was a shame that you couldn't check an option "glue the 3 HL2 episodes together and play through them all in continuity."

[MrChaz]

You could argue that it's strength comes from being short but hey... If it was twice as long, it would definitely have to be something more, adding depth, adding content, developping and so, not just basically twice as much distance to cover.

...."

I'm not sure what they would have added without diluting what was there, everything progressed nicely you learned all the skills then the game takes a twist to keep things fresh whilst coming to a conclusion. More levels would have been dull, harder puzzles wouldn't move things forward either. It's such a perfect story arc.