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A single-player puzzle game involving jumping through... portals!

Summary

Portal is a first-person, puzzle-based game released by Valve on October 9, 2007 as part of the The Orange Box collection.

Intended to be simply a filler game for the popular Half Life 2: Episode Two and newly-released Team Fortress 2, Portal ended up being a sleeper-hit among gamers with it's innovative puzzle-style gameplay and dark, witty, unsarcastic humor by the game's antagonist, GLaDOS

Gameplay and Story

The game takes place in the Half-Life universe, inside a lab belonging to a company called Aperture Science, Black Mesa's biggest rival.

The player assumes a test subject whose name is never revealed during the game, but we learn afterwards is Chell. She does not talk at all throughout the game, as opposed to her chatty nemesis GLaDOS who talks almost too much. The game starts with Chell waking up from stasis in a small room. GLaDOS starts directing her where to go through each test chamber, eventually acquiring the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, or ASHPD. The gun allows the user to create two linked portals in which to pass through. Objects such as cubes and turrets can be chucked through the portals as well. Each test chamber is designed to test Chell in a series of maneuvers designed to demonstrate the portal gun's abilities, as well as Chell's.

As Chell progresses in these test chambers, she is told that she will obtain cake, and grief counseling, as compensation for completing the tests. She soon discovers in secret rooms behind defunct panels however, that her words may be an outright fabrication, as a previous guinea pig scrawled lines like "THE CAKE IS A LIE" repeatedly along with other weird, cryptic messages. This man turned out to be a former Aperture Science employee who escaped from events that took place prior to the start of the game, and was responsible for bumping Chell to the top of the test subject list in an attempt to use her to beat GLaDOS.

As the game progresses, GLaDOS puts Chell in perilous situations, such as maneuvering around apologetic turrets that can kill her, or navigating about toxic liquid. In an attempt to draw notice to what appears to be an ordinary box for use in a test chamber, a Weighted Storage Cube with a pink heart on it appears, which is nicknamed the Weighted Companion Cube. Unfortunately, in order to complete the level, you must throw the Companion Cube into the fire, effectively destroying it.

In the final test chamber, GLaDOS assures you that the platform you are standing on is perfectly safe from the fire pit below, but by this point Chell knows full well she is lying and portals above into the service corridors and guts of the facility in an effort to reach GLaDOS' control room, for a final confrontation with the computer itself.

Finally, Chell faces off against GLaDOS, and in doing so toasts her multiple personality cores, causing her to release the same neurotoxin that killed the employees and also fire rockets at Chell. After toasting the last personality core, which recites a cake recipe, GLaDOS explodes and rises upwards taking Chell with her out into the outside.

An unseen robot drags Chell's unconscious body away from where she landed chiming "Thank you for assuming the Party Escort Submission Position"

The game ends with a scene of cake and the Companion Cube, followed by the ending credits and a song written by Jonathan Coulton, and sang by Ellen McLain, the voice of GLaDOS.

The Still Alive song lyrics

This Was A Triumph
I'm Making A Note Here:
HUGE SUCCESS
It's hard to overstate
my satisfaction.
Aperture Science
We do what we must
because we can.
For the good of all of us.
Except the ones who are dead.

But there's no sense crying
over every mistake.
You just keep on trying
till you run out of cake.
And the Science gets done.
And you make a neat gun.
For the people who are
Still alive.

I'm not even angry.
I'm being so sincere right now.
Even though you broke my heart.
And killed me.
And tore me to pieces.
And threw every piece into a fire.
As they burned it hurt because
I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data
make a beautiful line.
And we're out of beta.
We're releasing on time.
So I'm GLaD. I got burned.
Think of all the things we learned
for the people who are
still alive.

Go ahead and leave me.
I think I prefer to stay inside.
Maybe you'll find someone else
to help you.
Maybe Black Mesa. . .
THAT WAS A JOKE. HA HA. FAT CHANCE.
Anyway. this cake is great.
It's so delicious and moist.
Look at me still talking
When there's science to do.
When I look out there,
it makes me GLaD I'm not you.
I've experiments to run.
There is research to be done.
On the people who are
still alive.

And believe me I am still alive.
I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I feel FANTASTIC and I'm still alive.
While you're dying I'll be still alive.
And when you're dead I will be still alive.
STILL ALIVE

Memes

Portal's popularity has caused the game to create memes within its fanbase... and people who've never even touched the game.

• Still Alive: The song mentioned above is often quoted, or just the tune itself.
• Weighted Companion Cube: The cube has a fanbase of its own, and is maybe the most popular character, despite being in the game for like 5 minutes and having no personality. Some people claim that they have cried after having Chell burn the cube. The cube's infamy has made Valve create plush dolls, fuzzy dice for cars, and other merchandise involving the cube.
• Turrets: The turrets are apologetic, and say "Goodbye!" "Are you still there?" in cute, high pitched voices. They're so adorable and killer!
• The cake is a lie: We get it. The cake is a lie. It's not funny. Stop saying it. It's from like 2007 cut it out. Especially since the cake was never a lie, you just didn't get any.

Origins

Based on the independent game Narbacular Drop, created by a group of students from DigiPen Institute of Technology, who later came on as developers for Valve to work on Portal, the game takes most of its roots from this game, expanding it into a physics-based puzzle platformer based on the Source SDK. The game was meant to be a package-in for the release of the popular Half-Life 2 series along with the remake of Team Fortress titled Team Fortess 2. Of the three, Portal went on to be the best-selling single hit of 2007 and 2008, as well as Team Fortress 2 going on to becoming one of Steam's most purchased and played multiplayer games.

Almost most of Portal's popularity is derived from its game-centric memes, including "The Cake Is A Lie" and the Companion Cube, however GLaDOS' dark and sarcastic humor became a platform for developer Valve to market the game extensively, as well as continue to slip in changes to the content to lead players into news about the upcoming Portal 2, as well as Half-Life 2: Episode 3. The marketing campaign for Portal 2 relied on adding Portal-based content to 13 indie developer games and creating a drive to "Get Portal 2 released early!" on Steam using those games, effectively adding sales to those titles, which was viewed with mixed reactions by the community.

One thing is for certain, Valve has mastered the fine art of both trolling and reverse-trolling.

Current status

Portal 2 was released on April 19th 2011 in North America and on the Steam online platform. The game now features a co-op mode in addition to the main single-player story mode. The plot follows the main protagonist Chell, and her attempts to finally escape Aperture Science (and a now re-awakened GLaDOS) with the help of a naive personality core named Wheatly.

A drive by Valve to "Get Portal 2 released early" using the 13 games from the "Valve Potato Pack" occurred starting April 15th at 12pm EST. It was thought that playing the games until the bars on the status page shown, as well as obtaining "potatoes" from the Valve ARG event on April 1st, would release the game faster. As of this writing however, the game is still 5 hours from supposed release, around midnight Tuesday morning. Well played Valve, well played.

Facts

Images

Chell as the 360 Kid.	The cube on a dude.	What will happen?	"The cake is a lie" written on walls in-game.
This is an actual game texture.	Sup dawg, we heard you like P-	Why would you do this?	Why would you do this either?
This is Chell.		A cosplayer.	The Weighted Companion Cube.
Portal fan Flash game.	In a nutshell.	The login for the interactive website.

Videos

Related Pages

Defense of the Ancients 2

Delicious cake

Gabe Newell

Half-Life

Halo

Portal 2

Still Alive

Team Fortress 2

External Links

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