Portal: Still Alive
The siren song of Portal 2 continues to ring in the ears of America. But where did it all begin, I found myself asking myself as I turned on the Xbox to find something, anything to play. So I booted up the old classic and played all the way through. I had forgotten how slow and sterile the beginning was, very very gingerly guiding you to understand the portal mechanic, and how nearly believable GLaDOS was. She did seem like she was merely generally malfunctioning and meant you no harm, until you got even further into the game, where she starts getting more…passive aggressive. But considering that the world has known GLaDOS as the murderous AI for so long, it’s a bit weird to be reintroduced to her.
One thing that I completely forgot about that doesn’t show up at all in Portal 2 is the energy balls. They are pretty enough to use, require some precise timing, and you can tell that they went out of their way to get rid of timing puzzles in the second game. Also no signs of lasers or reflector cubes, which I could have sworn were in the first game. They just seemed so natural at the time. A lot of stuff in Portal 2 feels like the most natural progression, in fact. Light bridges also feel like something that was there from the beginning. The excursion tunnel is just weird enough to stand out, and the gels of course have a brand new feel to them, but comparing the two games side by side, Portal 2 offers such a rich experience where they really bent the mechanics.
Also how on Earth did people get so incensed by that goddamn cake? It’s not that funny of joke. Still digging the little jazzy remix of Still Alive that plays through the radios though. That's a good tune.
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