PORTAL

GAME DETAILS :-

Developer : Valve Corporation

Publisher : Valve Corporation And Microsoft Game Studios

Engine : Source Engine

Genre : Sci-Fi First-Person Shooter And Puzzle

Release Date : October 9 , 2007

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS :-

Operating System : Windows XP / Windows Vista

CPU : AMD Athlon XP 2400+ / Intel Pentium 4 Processor

Memory (RAM) : 512 MB

Graphics Hardware : DirectX 9.0c Compatible Video Card with Memory 128 MB

[NVIDIA : GeForce 6600 Series
ATI : Radeon X1050 Series]

Hard Disk Space : 5 GB

GAME FEATURES :-

Portal's plot is revealed to the player via audio messages from GLaDOS and side rooms found in the later levels. The game begins with Chell waking up from a stasis bed and hearing instructions and warnings from GLaDOS about the upcoming test experience. This part of the game involves distinct "test chambers" that, in sequence, introduce players to the game's mechanics. GLaDOS's announcements serve not only to instruct Chell and help her progress through the game, but also to create atmosphere and develop the AI as a character. Chell is promised cake and grief counseling as her reward if she manages to complete all the test chambers. Chell proceeds through the empty Enrichment Center, only interacting with GLaDOS. Over the course of the game, GLaDOS's motives are hinted to be more sinister than her helpful demeanor suggests. Although she is designed to appear helpful and encouraging, GLaDOS's actions and speech suggest insincerity and callous disregard for the safety and well-being of the test subjects. The test chambers become increasingly dangerous as Chell proceeds, and GLaDOS even directs Chell through "a live-fire course designed for military androids" due to the usual test chamber being "under repair." In another chamber, GLaDOS boasts about the fidelity and importance of the "Weighted Companion Cube," a waist-high crate with a single large pink heart on each face, for helping Chell to complete the chamber. However, GLaDOS then declares that it "unfortunately must be euthanized" in an "emergency intelligence incinerator" before Chell can continue. Some of the later chambers include automated turrets with child-like voices (also voiced by McLain) that fire at Chell, only to sympathize with her after being disabled ("I don't blame you" and "No hard feelings"). After Chell completes the final test chamber, GLaDOS congratulates her and prepares her "victory candescence" where she slowly maneuvers Chell on a moving platform into a pit of fire. As GLaDOS assures her that "all Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees Kelvin," Chell escapes with the use of the portal gun and makes her way through the maintenance areas within the Enrichment Center. Throughout this section, GLaDOS still sends messages to Chell and it becomes clear that GLaDOS has become corrupt and may have killed everyone else in the center. Chell makes her way through the maintenance areas and empty office spaces behind the chambers. Instead of receiving guidance from GLaDOS, graffiti messages point Chell in the right direction. These "backstage" areas, which are in extreme disrepair, stand in stark contrast to the pristine test chambers. The graffiti includes statements such as "the cake is a lie" and pastiches of Emily Dickinson's poem "The Chariot," "Because I Could Not Stop For Death," and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Reaper and the Flowers" mourning the death of the companion cube.

GLaDOS attempts to dissuade Chell with threats of physical harm and misleading statements claiming that she is going the wrong way as Chell makes her way deeper into the maintenance areas. Eventually, Chell reaches a large chamber where GLaDOS's hardware hangs overhead. GLaDOS continues to plead with Chell, but during the exchange one of GLaDOS' core spheres falls off; Chell drops it in an incinerator. GLaDOS reveals that Chell has just destroyed the "morality core," which the Aperture Science employees allegedly installed after GLaDOS "flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin," and goes on to state that now there is nothing to prevent her from doing so once again. A six-minute countdown starts as Chell dislodges and incinerates more pieces of GLaDOS, while GLaDOS attempts to discourage her with a series of taunts and increasingly juvenile insults. After she has destroyed the final piece, a portal malfunction tears the room apart and transports everything to the surface. Chell lands outside the gates of the facility amid the rubble of GLaDOS. The final scene, after a long and speedy zoom through the bowels of the facility, shows a mix of shelves surrounding a Black Forest cake and the Weighted Companion Cube. The shelves contain dozens of metallic spheres similar to the cores the player has just destroyed in the battle with GLaDOS, some of which begin to light up before a robotic arm descends and extinguishes the candle on the cake. As the credits roll, GLaDOS delivers a concluding report: the song "Still Alive", considering the experiment to be a "huge success". Certain surfaces are not portal-able, and this is one way that subsequent levels, known as test chambers, become more difficult. Other elements, such as energy balls, weighted cubes, floor switches, and moving platforms, are incorporated into the test chambers in increasingly exacting ways, but the real complexity and the real genius of Portal lie in the challenge of "thinking in portals." For all its heady delights, Portal is a short-lived feast and can be reasonably completed in as little as five hours. To help draw things out a bit, Valve has included six advanced chambers, all of which are existing test chambers tweaked to present a tougher challenge. You can also take on challenge maps and attempt to complete the test chambers with the least number of portals, the least steps, or in the least time. Ever since it was originally released more than six months ago, there has been ample time for the online community to produce a bevy of maps that, though varying in quality, are freely available for any test-chamber-hungry portaler to download. Its Orange Box roots mean that Portal also comes equipped with in-game achievements that can serve to extend its longevity. Nevertheless, the odds are that it'll be over a bit too quickly for your liking. Short as it may be, Portal is a fantastic game that should be played by anyone interested in unique, well-crafted gameplay and a witty, whip-smart script. Portal may not last much longer than some feature films, but pound for pound it remains one of the best games on store shelves. With delightfully unique gameplay and fantastically witty writing, Portal is a huge success.

GAME REVIEW :-

9/10

Portal Trailer :-