Review: Portal: Still Alive (XBLA)

Valve seems to always be at the forefront of what it takes to make a great shooter. Last year, when The Orange Box was released, fans everywhere marveled at the feat that was Portal and spoke volumes of the greatness in the concept of the game. There were naysayers who had purchased all of the original Half-Life games that didn’t want to shell out $60 for a 2 hour game, a mini-expansion and a multiplayer title. These people can now be comforted that for 1200 Microsoft Points, they too can now play Portal. They shouldn’t feel like they missed anything because Portal: Still Alive on the Xbox Live Arcade is the exact mirror image of what aired on The Orange Box, only with a few small extra maps thrown in as an afterthought.

Gameplay:

You awaken in a cell, not sure where you are and the game instantly takes on the perspective of a First Person Shooter. As you progress through the game, you receive a “gun” that shoots portals on certain surfaces that allow you to teleport yourself from one instance to another. With that, clever puzzles are setup in which you must navigate your way through seemingly impossible situations in order to make it to the end. Its this simple design of mouse-after-cheese maze theory that makes Portal work so well. All the while, you’re being taunted by a digital voice over a loudspeaker that is trying to ultimately make you fail. For the few that may not have played this game, I wont spoil the details of this voice, but know that it plays a prominent role in the game. Multiple obstacles await you as you go through some 19 levels until the end. Seasoned puzzle players may only need about two hours to complete the game and even less if you’ve played the original. The challenge maps that are included offer additional obstacles and make subtle changes to the maps you already know from the Story Mode. For instance, a landing pad that you were used to standing on in one map will be completely gone in the other map, thereby making you have to think of another, more advanced way through the map.

Graphics:

The visuals in the game are crisp, well done, yet forgettable. The textures on the walls offer little variation, the color pallet isn’t very deep, but the details are where it counts. Valve went through great lengths to give the feel of the game a very industrial and even medicinal feel to the environment and it comes off pretty well. I appreciated the details of everything you interact with, but after 19 levels of the same thing, your eyes tend to drown in seas of similarity. Aside from the obstacles, there really isn’t much that discerns one map from another.

Sound:

Audio in the game is where it shines. There is a stark silence throughout the game in that there is no background music and everything feels rather alone. Your only companion in the game is a wise-cracking and often funny robotic guide named GLaDOS. What originally comes off as institutional, ends up having genuine laugh out loud moments from its off-the-wall comments about your progress. The sounds of your equipment is very well done in the fact that, if you were genuinely holding a portal gun, you’d expect those sounds to emanate from it.

Controls:

Everything seems rather fluid with the controls. You’re faced with typical FPS controls in that you navigate your character with both analog sticks and each respective portal is fired by the shoulder trigger buttons. There are ways to interact with things on the screen and these are simply handled by the face buttons. The controls are very accurate, make sense and never a hindrance on gameplay.

Conclusion:

What started out as a surprise runaway pack-in hit from The Orange Box has settled into a regurgitated mirror image of the same thing we’ve already played. There is nothing new in the game other than a few challenge maps that offer a higher degree of difficulty for those who truly enjoy puzzles. The main game is almost like an inclusion to justify the 1200 point cost for some map packs that could have been sold individually at a lesser price point for those who already own The Orange Box. I love the game, but would have loved to see something more original come for those hard earned points.