Portal Review: The Amazing Adventures of Sir W.C. Cube

So, last weekend, I decided to purchase a copy of Portal off Steam. I figured, "Hey, it's twenty bucks, I can afford that this week, and it promises to be different enough to engage my interest."

...I had no idea how right I was.

The basic premise of Portal is this: You are a lab rat. You're a test subject inside the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center, and Aperture Labs wants YOU to test their nifty new Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, or "Portal Gun" if you simply must use the layman's nomenclature.

The Portal Gun lets you shoot two linked portals onto any flat, nonmetallic surface. That's very, very cool, and I want one for my very own, but that's not what amazed me. It preserves your angle of attack and momentum as you go through the portal, so you can pull off all sorts of twisty-flippy shit and essentially spank the laws of physics like a naughty schoolgirl. With the right timing and enough practice, you can pull off maneuvers that would make any superhero look on in envy.

That's pretty nifty, too, but that's still not what amazed me. Well, actually, it's pretty damned cool bordering on the awesome, and has kept me surprisingly amused, considering the relatively short span of the game's story mode, but it still wasn't the gut-puncher moment for me.

SPOILER ALERT -- SPOILER ALERT -- SPOILER ALERT -- If you have yet to play Portal and don't want certain parts of the game ruined for you, stop reading now. You have been warned.







Now that the obligatory warning is out of the way...

No, what got my panties in a bunch was this: There are, essentially, four characters in the game, and only two of them ever even speak. Even so, you still manage to get a good idea of the story behind the game, and it leaves enough hooks in you to keep you interested, even though some things simply are not explained.

For example, you have your character, Chell. She's the strong, silent type. Runs around with her Portal Gun, never says a word. Doesn't even grunt when she's shot at by autoturrets or falls from great heights. This makes me suspect she is related to Gordon Freeman.

Then, you have GlaDOS, your antagonist. At first, she sounds disinterested, but starts acquiring some subtle menace through the course of the game as little hints get dropped here and there that all is not kosher in Apertureville. Of all the characters, she natters on the most in her melodious singsong voice, provided by actress Ellen McLain, and lovingly synthed up by the Valve crew.

By the end of the game, I became utterly convinced that GlaDOS was completely effing nuts. Think Eddie from Electric Dreams meets HAL 9000 meets Your Friend the Computer from Paranoia and toss in a spurned psychotic stalker ex-girlfriend, and you're close. This is only reinforced by the lyrics to the end credits song "Still Alive," sung by the lovely voice of Ms. McLain, and provided by the musical genius of Jonathan Coulton.

Then, you have comic relief in the form of the Ferrets -- Ovoid autoturrets with a sighting laser and two cute little paddle-doors that extend off the sides to reveal a pair of freaking nasty machine guns. They speak in almost innocent, childlike voices, commenting on what they're doing as they try to kill you, and sounding almost petulant when you disable them by picking them up or knocking them over or faking them into shooting each other. A roomful of these things is bad, bad news. Clever use of portals is a key tactic in defeating these little buggers, either by circumvention, or my personal favorite, dropping in behind them, grabbing them, then portaling them off a ledge somewhere.

But strangely enough... the most compelling character in the game never says a word, never takes a single action on his/her/its own, and doesn't even have a name beyond that of an equipment designation: The Weighted Companion Cube.

W.C. Cube is just that. A cube. With a heart on it. Like so.

GlaDOS says, "This is your Weighted Companion Cube. It will accompany you throughout the test chamber. Please take care of it." Immediately afterward, you are forced to use it as a shield against deadly balls of energy that will vaporize your lab monkey ass on contact, but W.C. Cube is mighty, and is your friend and protector... as long as you hold him at the correct angle, at least.

GlaDOS then goes on to expound upon your Companion Cube's virtues, such as its inability to speak, and the fact that it will not stab you. And it is true, your Cube is a faithful companion. In fact, you cannot get through the test chamber without it...

...But you cannot get out of the chamber with it. GlaDOS dispassionately informs you that unfortunately, your faithful Weighted Companion Cube cannot accompany you for the remainder of the test and must be euthanized.

This moment changes the whole mood of the game. Rather than just being an objective if somewhat quirkily menacing observer in a laboratory that's obviously not complying with OSHA regs, GlaDOS takes on the role of the Science Gestapo, and forces a choice: You can stay there with your pal, W. C. Cube... or you can frag your buddy by dropping him in an incinerator, leaving you to go on alone. Later, as you race through your confrontation with the deranged artificial intelligence, she taunts you by saying, "There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend the companion cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him. All your other friends couldn't come either because you don't have any other friends because of how unlikable you are. Unlikable, it says so here in your personnel file: Unlikable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. SHALL. NOT. BE. MOURNED. That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official. It also says you're adopted, so that's funny too."

This was brilliant scripting, in my opinion. I mean... the cube is an inanimate object. It doesn't speak. It doesn't act in any way on its own, and yet it somehow managed to galvanize me. What started as a nifty puzzle game became a not only a quest for freedom, but a quest for vengeance. By the time I braced GlaDOS in her lair, it wasn't just about me. It wasn't even about the other poor soul who had also lost his or her Companion Cube before me as evidenced by half-sane scrawlings hidden behind stuck wall panels. It was for my pal, W. C. Cube, and that bionic bitch was going DOWN!

Far too many game writers think they need to "punch it up" by adding extra dialogue. All too often, it comes out forced, or cheesy. Freelancer was a good example of this... I can't count how many times I wanted to rabbit-punch an NPC after he said, "We don't own this place, but we have an understanding with the people who do." Here in Aperture Labs, though, Valve has shown that silence can truly be golden.

EDIT: When I arrived home from $DAY_JOB today, I discovered that the cake is, in fact, not a lie. I love my wife.

Please Sir, can I have some more? (plot...)

One thing that has begun to seriously bother me of late, to the point where it has actually influenced my buying decisions, is the quality of story writing in the computer gaming industry these days, or lack thereof in many cases.

Okay, so I shouldn't expect a great deal of plot and intrigue from "Boomstik McShooterGuy 6000," and honestly, I don't. If I've had a stressy day, and I need to blow off steam, well then, I load up one of the many mindless shooters I've got on hand, lock and load my trusty flak cannon or rocket launcher, and go to town, cackling like a mad, homicidal monkey.

However, when I want something a little slower-paced, a little more involved, and a bit less with the twitch-reflexes, there's a dearth of good entertainment, of late. Honestly. I think the last PC game I actually bought a copy of was the Gold Edition of F.E.A.R. and with that, I was still somewhat disappointed as what initially promised to be some good spooky-vision fun basically turned into this:

Oh, look. Another batch of mooks. *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM*. And another. *BLAMBLAMBLAM* And yet another overwhelming batch of mooks. *BLAMBLAMBLAM* Oh, hey, the music's gone all eerie and shite, and I'm moving into a dark area. Yep, there's the little girl. And there's the super-soldier commander. And ooooh, Spooooooooooooooky HUD flicker, check.. Expositional dialogue, check. Next obscenely ridiculous wave of oncoming mooks, check. *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMBLAM*

Gag me with the business end of an M4 Carbine. I mean, while the game does well setting up the atmosphere, and has a few nice moments where you feel like you've just been zapped with defibrillator paddles, I've yet to see anything that really resembles an o'erweening plotline. It's like they were trying to go for a mix between System Shock 2, X-Files, and Poltergeist with some thrilling military/police drama thrown in for seasoning. Throw in some contrivances like how the elevators always conveniently close behind the bad guys so you can't get out, and your character's ability to go into "Slo-Mo" which isn't "Bullet Time, HONEST," and, well...

The CD has sat on my desk for the past month, untouched save for when I had to go rummaging for some papers my wife needed.

It's a symptom of an overall problem in electronic and computer gaming these days. The field has gotten so competitive that there is a vast amount of pressure from investors to get the games out on schedule, damn the torpedos. Things like plot often get left by the wayside, or if they don't, then more often than not, the game suffers a shortening of duration as bits get cut out to make sure the street date is hit. In some cases, such as with KOTOR II, whole endings get scrapped, leaving the player feeling a bit unfulfilled and cheated. Of course, there's also the opposite problem: Games which are possessed of glorious, intricate plots, and gameplay so frustratingly broken that they might inspire pacifistic, enlightened societies to become revenant hordes, should they be loosed upon so innocent and unsuspecting a people.

It's rare that you find that proper balance between gameplay and plot. Half-Life 2 tried, and came close. System Shock 2 did a bang-up job, and was one of the best I've ever played in that respect. Independence War 2, while the plot was a little loose in a few areas, and the antagonist was more or less Snidely Whiplash in space, remains one of my favorites. There are a few up-and-coming ones that I'm looking forward to on a story perspective: Mass Effect looks promising, and Starcraft II seems like it's going to be another Blizzard megahit. Fallout 3, needless to say, makes me happy in pants.

The problem I see on the horizon for the gaming industry, having grown up alongside said industry, is this: When I was younger, I was a lot more into the twitch-games, where your primary objective was to just blow the everloving crap out of anything that moves and rack up points. As I grew older, I got into role-playing games, both online and tabletop, and my interests moved more toward diversions with some meat on their bones, so to speak. Granted, these days I'm as into MMOs like City of Heroes/Villains and World of Warcraft as your average casual gamer, but they at least try to have interesting story arcs in their multitudinous mission trees.

The current generation is faced with a range of choices several orders of magnitude more prolific than anything I had to deal with, and the competition for their dollars is by logical extension much more fierce. The publishers seem to me to be focusing on fancier graphics, more realistic visuals and physics, more "shock factor," and of course, getting the game out the door and into the waiting hands of the masses. Either that, or they're licensing the unholy everlovin' crap out of anything Hollywood decides to put out, especially if it has to do with superheroes (but that's another rant).

I just hope that along the way, story doesn't totally get discarded. I hope that plot doesn't get pruned away, because to me, without something to tie all the action together, the games of the future are just not going to be worth playing.