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enough to be out of date – and ‘the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