Tuesday, January 15, 2008

New Game Fun

I just spent the last couple of hours playing Portal, from the Half-Life 2: The Orange Box collection. Man, what a great puzzle game! McChicken had told me how much fun he'd had with it, but I really couldn't grasp the concept all that well without playing it. Now I can see why it's so addictive!

The idea is that you have a portal gun that you use to open 2 gates (which are really the 2 sides of the same gate) on any surfaces that will allow it (floor, walls, ceiling, etc, but only some will work with the gun). You have to figure out how to get through certain areas which are impassible on their own, by using the portal gun to move in the appropriate manner.

My favourite trick so far has been where you have to get over a high barrier that you can't jump over. To do this, you need to put one portal in the floor (that you can step into) and another on a high wall, such that you step through, fall out of the high opening back into the first portal, causing you to come out of the high one (again) but with greater momentum, which propels you over the barrier! If that sounds confusing, it is! But it's also typical of the sort of physics that you have to figure out in order to get through this very challenging game! And I'm only about 7% of the way into it so far, meaning that the going is sure to get much, much harder before I'm done! I love it!

3 comments:

NerdAlert NerdAlert said...

Totally, I was already impressed before I got to the jump through the floor through the wall through the floor part, but that sealed the deal.

David Webb said...

I hate puzzle games, but I love Portal. It has been nice to not be shot at for a change. Maybe I love puzzle games and don't know it.

Anonymous said...

It must be a spatial / math boy brain thing....it simply hurts my head. There were some parts that when it was solved and we were through the level that had me still scratching my head. But oh yes, fun, hard, frustrating, fun....