PC Gamer - UK (2021-12)

P

ortal has a place in
gaming canon that
makes it difficult to
argue why you should
replay it. Either
you’ve played it, and love it, or you
know what it’s all about. It’s like
pitching somebody on watching the
original Star Wars trilogy for the
first time: we all know who Luke’s
father is. Its iconic moments are
part of games culture – the
companion cube is almost passé as
a symbol of nerd culture, not quite
old enough to be retro but old
enough to be out of date – and ‘the
cake is a lie’ was more thoroughly
memed than ‘taking an arrow to the
knee’ was for Skyrim. And in the
meantime, plenty of other games
have built on Portal’s ‘thinking with
portals’ mechanics, from puzzlers
like Bridge Constructor to shooters
such as Splitgate.

That’s before mentioning Portal 2,

too, which expands significantly on

what the original Portal introduces.

About four times as long with

additional puzzle mechanics and a

co-op campaign, Portal 2 both gives

us backstory on Aperture Science

and GlaDOS, and introduces the

highly quotable new characters of

Wheatley and Cave Johnson.

Johnson’s speech about how ‘when

life gives you lemons, don’t make

lemonade, make life take the lemons

back’ may not have surpassed ‘the

cake is a lie’, but it’s printed on

many, many tea-towels.

Why, then, play Portal now if its

mechanics have been built on by

newer games, and its most famous

lines have been strip-mined for

hilarity and printed on gamer t-shirts

for years? Because, I argue, what

Portal’s position in games canon

belies is its effectiveness not as a

puzzler, or a comedy, but in telling a

horror story about powerlessness.

TEST DRIVE

Portal constantly plays with control

• and how much or little of it you
  have at any one time. As the game
  begins, you wake up in a small glass
  case which has no exit. All you can
  do is pick things up in your
  surroundings: a radio, a clipboard, a
  mug you can smash. (Which of
  course, I always do. Resistance may
  be futile, but I feel it is necessary.)
  All the while, a camera is watching
  you – from outside your glass case
  prison – and a timer is ticking down,
  while a robotic voice welcomes you
  to the facility, explaining that “your
  specimen has been processed” and
  testing may now begin.
  It’s easy to forget, but the first
  tests don’t even let you use the portal
  gun, instead forcing you to navigate
  around pre-set portals. Even when
  you do eventually gain full control of
  boththeblueandorange portals, and

PORTAL

The cake is... far more sinister than you remember. By Ruth Cassidy

NEEDTOKNOW

RELEASE

October 10, 2007

PUBLISHER

In-house

DEVELOPER

Valve

LINK

bit.ly/3DGTBRz

OLDGAMES,NEWPERSPECTIVES

REINSTALL