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Portal: Still Alive is an expansion of the widely popular title that came along with last year’s compilation game The Orange Box and as you can tell from our own review it was one of the 2007’s must-have titles. The Orange Box and its separate parts were all incredible, but the one surprising shining star of the bunch was Portal.
The object of Portal is to test out a unique device that creates portals, and the story as little as there is, is actually pretty decent. The game happens within the same universe as the Half-Life series, although that is irrelevant to the game as a whole. The object is to get through test chambers by using the portal gun to solve a series of puzzles. The right trigger creates an orange portal, while the left creates a blue one. It is in the first-person mode, but it is more of a puzzle title than it is an actual shooter.
The game walks you through it in baby steps, along with the help of an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS. GLaDOS sounds like a woman computer voice you could make on your own computer, except she is also kind of crazy. You start out using one portal, and then eventually you get two. So one example of a level after you gain control of both portals is Test Chamber 5. The trick to the game is thinking ahead, and literally outside the box, or else you will get stuck in there and not be able to progress to the next level. A companion cube (also a “character” later in the game) is on top of a level you can’t get to, so you create a portal next to it, one on the floor, grab it, put it on a big red button, go back to the upper level through a portal and proceed into a more open area. Then to charge up a moving platform, you must direct a energy ball through a portal into a charger, get on the moving platform at the right time by making a portal above it, grab that cube, put that cube on one button, while you stand on another button to open a door. Then, shoot a portal on the inside of the door, and another portal so that you can enter it without being on the button, door completely closed, and head into the elevator for the next level.
If it sounds confusing, don’t worry it gets a lot harder, and more frustrating, yet once you figure out a level it is incredibly rewarding. Eventually you will be completing levels that have you shooting out of portals upwards at incredible speeds, shooting portals to higher platforms, all the way until you get to the top of the level, otherwise if you miss you fall and as GLaDOS would say, “Please note that we have added a consequence for failure. Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an "unsatisfactory" mark on your official testing record, followed by death. Good luck!" The puzzle aspect, as entertaining as it is, hearing what quirky morbidly humorous thing GLaDOS has to say is the real treat. Eventually she starts talking about cake as a reward, and just listening to her degeneration, and constantly lie to you and abuse you is a very strange treat. The entire games atmosphere pertains that dystopian quality that Valve is so well known for in the Half-Life games but in a gray, sterile environment that works out perfectly for puzzles. The music compliments the action, or lack thereof nicely, and even simple ambience is iTunes playlist worthy. More amazing, when you finally think the game is done it completely done something entirely new happens, challenging you to put all the know how from the first few levels to more practical use. Ultimately the reward at the end credits will make you so joyful that you’ll be wondering why there isn’t a VH1 special about it. Despite the main game of Portal: Still Alive being fairly short at about three-five hours long, it is an incredibly satisfying experience from beginning to end, and it could just make you feel like a rocket scientist when your done.
New to the version of the game on Xbox Live Arcade are new achievements not found in The Orange Box version and twenty-six new Challenge Maps. These maps are a great addition, and make the game worth an extra two hours or so of time, but the challenge as you progress through is very uneven, and these feel a bit more like ideas that haven’t been completely realized sometimes rather than a hearty jog of one’s noggin. It does bring some new elements to the game such as ceilings that push down on you, electrical floors, and clear material that you can see and shoot through but walk through. These ideas though don’t really seem to add much more to the game, and often aren’t nearly as tough as some of the other obstacles in the game, such as cute but pesky turret robots. Still it is a welcome addition, and you will not find these maps on any other version of Portal (for now).
So what is keeping me from giving this incredibly well made title a perfect 10? Well it mostly comes down to price and content. The game cost 1200 points or fifteen dollars, and while it is fantastic, you can buy full original Xbox games such as GTA: San Andreas for the same price, or for thirty dollars or less, you can buy The Orange Box, get the best parts of Portal, and four other incredible games for incredibly cheap. So if you have no desire to play the entire Half-Life 2 series and Team Fortress 2 or you are a hardcore Portal fan then this is definitely right up your alley. Otherwise, the lack of new content in the game and the promise of a Portal 2 in the future makes it hard to recommend to every gamer especially at fifteen dollars.
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Portal: Still Alive is like the “Director’s Cut” of an incredibly short, but good game. It is by far the best to come out on Xbox Live Arcade, and while it clocks in at over 600MB you will want to make some space if you are a huge fan or have never tried it out. No matter how you play it, be it through Still Alive or running out and buying The Orange box, this is a must play title for every gamer.
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