Portal | |
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Portal's box art displays a figure falling into a portal | |
Developer(s) | Valve Corporation |
Publisher(s) | Valve Corporation |
Designer(s) | Kim Swift |
Writer(s) | Erik Wolpaw Chet Faliszek |
Composer(s) | Kelly Bailey Mike Morasky |
Series | Portal |
Engine | Source |
Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, OS X, Linux, Android |
Release |
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Genre(s) | Puzzle-platform game |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
![Advanced Advanced](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123711171/498880886.jpg)
Portal is a puzzle-platformvideo game developed and published by Valve Corporation. It was released in a bundle package called The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2007. The game has since been ported to other systems, including OS X, Linux, and Android.
Portal consists primarily of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the player's character and simple objects using 'the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device', a device that can create inter-spatial portals between two flat planes. The player-character, Chell, is challenged and taunted by an artificial intelligence named GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) to complete each puzzle in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun with the promise of receiving cake when all the puzzles are completed. The game's unique physics allows kinetic energy to be retained through portals, requiring creative use of portals to maneuver through the test chambers. This gameplay element is based on a similar concept from the game Narbacular Drop; many of the team members from the DigiPen Institute of Technology who worked on Narbacular Drop were hired by Valve for the creation of Portal, making it a spiritual successor to the game.
Portal was acclaimed as one of the most original games of 2007, despite criticisms of its short duration and limited story. The game received praise for its originality, unique gameplay and dark story with a humorous series of dialogue. GLaDOS, voiced by Ellen McLain in the English-language version, received acclaim for her unique characterization, and the end credits song 'Still Alive', written by Jonathan Coulton for the game, was praised for its original composition and humorous twist. Portal is often cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Excluding Steam download sales, over four million copies of the game have been sold since its release, spawning official merchandise from Valve including plush Companion Cubes, as well as fan recreations of the cake and portal gun. A standalone version, titled Portal: Still Alive, was released on the Xbox Live Arcade service in October 2008, which added an additional 14 puzzles to the gameplay, and a sequel, Portal 2, which was released in 2011, adding several new gameplay mechanics and a cooperative multiplayer mode.[4]
- 2Synopsis
- 3Development
- 5Critical reception
- 7References
Gameplay[edit]
A representation of how the (magnitude of) linear momentum is conserved through portals. By jumping into the blue portal, the character is launched out of the orange portal and onto the platform on the right.
A more advanced portal technique. The character builds up speed using two blue portals, to reach an otherwise unreachable area. The second blue portal is carefully created in mid-air, after exiting the orange portal for the first time, destroying the first blue portal in the process.
In Portal, the player controls the protagonist, Chell, from a first-person perspective as she is challenged to navigate through a series of rooms using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, or portal gun, under the watchful supervision of the artificial intelligence GLaDOS. The portal gun can create two distinct portal ends, orange and blue. The portals create a visual and physical connection between two different locations in three-dimensional space. Neither end is specifically an entrance or exit; all objects that travel through one portal will exit through the other. An important aspect of the game's physics is momentum redirection.[5] As moving objects pass through portals, they come through the exit portal at the same direction that the exit portal is facing and with the same speed with which they passed through the entrance portal.[6] For example, a common maneuver is to jump down to a portal on the floor and emerge through a wall, flying over a gap or another obstacle. This allows the player to launch objects or Chell over great distances, both vertically and horizontally, referred to as 'flinging' by Valve.[5] As GLaDOS puts it, 'In layman's terms: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.' If portal ends are not on parallel planes, the character passing through is reoriented to be upright with respect to gravity after leaving a portal end.
Chell and all other objects in the game that can fit into the portal ends will pass through the portal. However, a portal shot cannot pass through an open portal; it will simply deactivate or create a new portal in an offset position. Creating a portal end instantly deactivates an existing portal end of the same color. Moving objects, glass, special wall surfaces, liquids, or areas that are too small will not be able to anchor portals. Chell is sometimes provided with cubes that she can pick up and use to climb on or to hold down large buttons that open doors or activate mechanisms. Particle fields known as emancipation grills, occasionally called 'fizzlers' in the developer commentary, exist at the end of all and within some test chambers; when passed through, they will deactivate any active portals and disintegrate any object carried through. The fields also block attempts to fire portals through them.[7]
Although Chell is equipped with mechanized heel springs to prevent damage from falling,[5] she can be killed by various other hazards in the test chambers, such as turret guns, bouncing balls of energy, and toxic liquid. She can also be killed by objects falling through portals, and by a series of crushers that appear in certain levels. Unlike most action games at the time, there is no health indicator; Chell dies if she is dealt a certain amount of damage in a short time period, but returns to full health fairly quickly. Some obstacles, such as the energy balls and crushing pistons, deal fatal damage with a single blow.
GameSpot noted, in its initial review of Portal, that many solutions exist for completing each puzzle, and that the gameplay 'gets even crazier, and the diagrams shown in the trailer showed some incredibly crazy things that you can attempt'.[8] Two additional modes are unlocked upon the completion of the game that challenge the player to work out alternative methods of solving each test chamber. Challenge maps are unlocked near the halfway point and Advanced Chambers are unlocked when the game is completed.[9] In Challenge mode, levels are revisited with the added goal of completing the test chamber either with as little time, with the least number of portals, or with the fewest footsteps possible. In Advanced mode, certain levels are made more complex with the addition of more obstacles and hazards.[10][11]
Synopsis[edit]
Characters[edit]
The game features two characters: the player-controlledsilent protagonist named Chell, and GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), a computer artificial intelligence that monitors and directs the player. In the English-language version, GLaDOS is voiced by Ellen McLain, though her voice has been altered to sound more artificial. The only background information presented about Chell is given by GLaDOS; the credibility of these facts, such as Chell being adopted, an orphan, and having no friends, is questionable at best, as GLaDOS is a liar by her own admission. In the 'Lab Rat' comic created by Valve to bridge the gap between Portal and Portal 2, Chell's records reveal she was ultimately rejected as a test subject for having 'too much tenacity'—the main reason Doug Rattman, a former employee of Aperture Science, moved Chell to the top of the test queue.[12][13]
Setting[edit]
The logo for Aperture Science Laboratories
Portal takes place in the Aperture Science Laboratories Computer-Aided Enrichment Center—Aperture Science for short—which is a research facility responsible for the creation of the portal gun. According to information presented in Portal 2, the location of the complex is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Aperture Science exists in the same universe as the Half-Life series, although connections between the two franchises are limited to references.
Information about the company, developed by Valve for creating the setting of the game, is revealed during the game and via the real-world promotional website.[14] According to the Aperture Science website, Cave Johnson founded the company in 1943 for the sole purpose of making shower curtains for the U.S. military. However, after becoming mentally unstable from 'moon rock poisoning' in 1978, Johnson created a three-tier research and development plan to make his organization successful. The first two tiers, the Counter-Heimlich Maneuver (a maneuver designed to ensure choking) and the Take-A-Wish Foundation (a program to give the wishes of terminally ill children to adults in need of dreams), were commercial failures and led to an investigation of the company by the U.S. Senate. However, when the investigative committee heard of the success of the third tier—a person-sized, ad-hoc quantum tunnel through physical space, with a possible application as a shower curtain—it recessed permanently and gave Aperture Science an open-ended contract to continue its research. The development of GLaDOS, an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk-operating system, began in 1986 in response to Black Mesa's work on similar portal technology.[15] A presentation seen during gameplay reveals that GLaDOS was also included in a proposed bid for de-icing fuel lines, incorporated as a fully functional disk-operation system that is arguably alive, unlike Black Mesa's proposal, which inhibits ice, nothing more.[16] Roughly thirteen years later, work on GLaDOS was completed and the untested AI was activated during the company's first ever bring-your-daughter-to-work day in May 2000.[14] Immediately after activation, the facility was flooded with deadly neurotoxin by the AI. Events of the first Half-Life game occur shortly thereafter, presumably leaving the facility forgotten by the outside world due to apocalyptic happenings. Wolpaw, in describing the ending of Portal 2, affirmed that the Combine invasion, chronologically taking place after Half-Life and before Half-Life 2, had occurred before Portal 2's events.[17]
The areas of the Enrichment Center that Chell explores suggest that it is part of a massive research installation. At the time of events depicted in Portal, the facility seems to be long-deserted, although most of its equipment remains operational without human control.[18] During its development, Half-Life 2: Episode Two featured a chapter set on Aperture Science's icebreaker ship Borealis, but this was abandoned and removed before release.[19]
Plot[edit]
Portal's plot is revealed to the player via audio messages or 'announcements' from GLaDOS and visual elements inside rooms found in later levels. According to The Final Hours of Portal 2, the year is established to be 'somewhere in 2010'—twelve years after Aperture Science's abandonment.
The game begins with Chell waking up from a stasis bed and hearing instructions and warnings from GLaDOS, an artificial intelligence, about the upcoming test experience. Chell then enters into distinct test chambers that introduce players to the game's mechanics, sequentially. GLaDOS's announcements serve as instructions to Chell and help the player progress through the game, but also develops the atmosphere and characterizes the AI as a person.[5] Chell is promised cake and grief counseling as her reward if she manages to complete all the test chambers.[20]
Chell proceeds through the empty Enrichment Center, with GLaDOS as her only interaction. As the player nears completion, GLaDOS's motives turn more sinister than her helpful demeanor suggests; although she is designed to appear helpful and encouraging, GLaDOS's actions and speech suggest insincerity and callous disregard for the safety and well-being of the test subjects. The test chambers become increasingly dangerous as Chell proceeds, and GLaDOS even directs Chell through a live-fire course designed for military androids as a result of 'mandatory scheduled maintenance' in the regular test chamber, as well as having some test chambers flooded with a bio-hazardous liquid. In another chamber, GLaDOS boasts about the fidelity and importance of the Weighted Companion Cube, a waist-high crate with a single large pink heart centered on each face, for helping Chell to complete the chamber. However, GLaDOS then declares that it 'unfortunately must be euthanized' in an 'emergency intelligence incinerator' before Chell can continue.[18] Some of the later chambers include automated turrets with childlike voices (also voiced by McLain) that fire at Chell, only to sympathize with her after being destroyed or disabled, such as 'I don't blame you' and 'No hard feelings'.[21][22]
After Chell completes the final test chamber, GLaDOS congratulates her and prepares her 'victory candescence', maneuvering Chell into an incinerator in an attempt to kill her. As GLaDOS assures her that 'all Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4,000 degrees [sic] Kelvin (3,727 °C, or 6,740 °F)', Chell escapes with the use of the portal gun and makes her way through the maintenance areas within the Enrichment Center.[23] GLaDOS becomes panicked and insists that she was only pretending to kill Chell, as part of testing. GLaDOS then asks Chell to assume the 'party escort submission position', lying face-first on the ground, so that a 'party associate' can take her to her reward, but Chell continues anyway. Throughout this section, GLaDOS still sends messages to Chell and it becomes clear that she became corrupt and had killed everyone else in the center, which is also revealed in a later comic.[12][13] Chell makes her way through the maintenance areas and empty office spaces behind the chambers, sometimes following graffiti messages which point in the right direction. These backstage areas, which are in an extremely dilapidated state, stand in stark contrast to the pristine test chambers. The graffiti includes statements such as 'the cake is a lie', and pastiches of Emily Dickinson's poem 'The Chariot', Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 'The Reaper and the Flowers', and Emily Brontë's 'No Coward Soul Is Mine', referring to and mourning the death of the Companion Cube.[5]
GLaDOS attempts to dissuade Chell with threats of physical harm and misleading statements claiming that she is going the wrong way as Chell makes her way deeper into the maintenance areas. Eventually, Chell reaches a large chamber where GLaDOS's hardware hangs overhead. GLaDOS continues to plead with and threaten Chell, but during the exchange, a sphere falls off of GLaDOS and Chell drops it in an incinerator. GLaDOS reveals that Chell has just destroyed the morality core or her conscience, one of the multiple 'personality cores' which the Aperture Science employees allegedly installed after GLaDOS flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin gas, and goes on to state that now there is nothing to prevent her from doing so once again. A six-minute countdown starts as Chell dislodges and incinerates more of GLaDOS' personality cores, while GLaDOS attempts to discourage her both verbally, with a series of taunts and increasingly juvenile insults, and physically by firing rockets at her. After Chell has destroyed the final personality core, a portal malfunction tears the room apart and transports everything to the surface. Chell is then seen lying outside the facility's gates amid the remains of GLaDOS. One of the final scenes is changed through a patch of the PC version that was made available a few days before Portal 2's announcement; in this retroactive continuity, Chell is dragged away from the scene by an unseen entity speaking in a robotic voice, thanking her for assuming the 'party escort submission position', revealing the entity to be a 'party associate'.[16][24]
Portal Advanced Test Chamber 15 Walkthrough
The final scene, after a long and speedy zoom through the bowels of the facility, shows a Black Forest cake,[25] and the Weighted Companion Cube, surrounded by a mix of shelves containing dozens of apparently inactive personality cores. One by one a number of the cores begin to light up, before a robotic arm descends and extinguishes the candle on the cake, causing the room to blackout.[26] As the credits roll, GLaDOS delivers a concluding report: the song 'Still Alive', which declares the experiment to be a huge success, as well as serving to indicate to the player that GLaDOS is still alive,[27] that her 'happy' core was not disabled.
Development[edit]
![Chamber Chamber](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123711171/636599453.jpg)
Concept[edit]
Portal is Valve's spiritual successor to the freeware game Narbacular Drop, the 2005 independent game released by students of the DigiPen Institute of Technology; the original Narbacular Drop team was subsequently hired by Valve.[28][29] Valve became interested in Narbacular Drop after seeing the game at DigiPen's annual career fair; Robin Walker, one of Valve's developers, saw the game at the fair and later contacted the team providing them with advice and offering to show their game at Valve's offices. After their presentation, Valve's president Gabe Newell quickly offered the entire team jobs at Valve to develop the game further.[30] Newell later commented that he was impressed with the DigiPen team as 'they had actually carried the concept through', already having included the interaction between portals and physics, completing most of the work that Valve would have had to commit on their own.[30] Certain elements have been retained from Narbacular Drop, such as the system of identifying the two unique portal endpoints with the colors orange and blue. A key difference in the signature portal mechanic between the two games however is that Portal's portal gun cannot create a portal through an existing portal unlike in Narbacular Drop. The game's original setting, of a princess trying to escape a dungeon, was dropped in favor of the Aperture Science approach.[30]Portal took approximately two years and four months to complete after the DigiPen team was brought into Valve,[31] and no more than ten people were involved with its development.[32]Portal writer Erik Wolpaw, who, along with fellow writer Chet Faliszek, was hired by Valve for the game, claimed that 'Without the constraints, Portal would not be as good a game'.[33]
For the first year of development the team focused mostly on the gameplay without any narrative structure. Playtesters found the game to be fun but asked about what these test chambers were leading towards. This prompted the team to come up with a narrative for Portal.[34] The Portal team worked with Half-Life series writer Marc Laidlaw on fitting the game into the series' plot.[35] This was done, in part, due to the limited art capabilities of the small team; instead of creating new assets for Portal, they decided to tie the game to an existing franchise--Half-Life—to allow them to reuse the Half-Life 2 art assets.[16] Wolpaw and Faliszek were put to work on the dialogue for Portal.[29] The concept of a computer AI guiding the player through experimental facilities to test the portal gun was arrived at early in the writing process.[16] They drafted early lines for the yet-named 'polite' AI with humorous situations, such as requesting the player's character to 'assume the party escort submission position', and found this style of approach to be well-suited to the game they wanted to create, ultimately leading to the creation of the GLaDOS character.[16] GLaDOS was central to the plot, as Wolpaw notes 'We designed the game to have a very clear beginning, middle, and end, and we wanted GLaDOS to go through a personality shift at each of these points.'[36] Wolpaw further describes the idea of using cake as the reward came about as 'at the beginning of the Portal development process, we sat down as a group to decide what philosopher or school of philosophy our game would be based on. That was followed by about 15 minutes of silence and then someone mentioned that a lot of people like cake.'[16][36] The cake element along with additional messages given to the player in the behind-the-scenes areas were written and drawn by Kim Swift.[37]
Design[edit]
A typical Portal test chamber, with both of the player's colored portals opened. The Weighted Companion Cube can also be seen. The clean, spartan look to the chambers was influenced by the film The Island.
The austere settings in the game came about because testers spent too much time trying to complete the puzzles using decorative but non-functional elements. As a result, the setting was minimized to make the usable aspects of the puzzle easier to spot, using the clinical feel of the setting in the film The Island as reference.[38] While there were plans for a third area, an office space, to be included after the test chambers and the maintenance areas, the team ran out of time to include it.[38] They also dropped the introduction of the Rat Man, a character who left the messages in the maintenance areas, to avoid creating too much narrative for the game,[39] though the character was developed further in a tie-in comic 'Lab Rat', that ties Portal and Portal 2's story together.[12][13] According to project lead Kim Swift, the final battle with GLaDOS went through many iterations, including having the player chased by James Bond lasers, which was partially applied to the turrets, Portal Kombat where the player would have needed to redirect rockets while avoiding turret fire, and a chase sequence following a fleeing GLaDOS. Eventually, they found that playtesters enjoyed a rather simple puzzle with a countdown timer near the end; Swift noted, 'Time pressure makes people think something is a lot more complicated than it really is', and Wolpaw admitted, 'It was really cheap to make [the neurotoxin gas]' in order to simplify the dialogue during the battle.[32]
Chell's face and body are modeled after Alésia Glidewell, an American freelance actress and voice-over artist, selected by Valve from a local modeling agency for her face and body structure.[31][40] Ellen McLain provided the voice of the antagonist GLaDOS. Erik Wolpaw noted, 'When we were still fishing around for the turret voice, Ellen did a sultry version. It didn't work for the turrets, but we liked it a lot, and so a slightly modified version of that became the model for GLaDOS's final incarnation.'[36]Mike Patton performed the growling and snarling voice of GLaDOS's final personality core, named the Anger Sphere.
The Weighted Companion Cube inspiration was from project lead Kim Swift with additional input from Wolpaw from reading some 'declassified government interrogation thing' whereby 'isolation leads subjects to begin to attach to inanimate objects';[32][36] Swift commented, 'We had a long level called Box Marathon; we wanted players to bring this box with them from the beginning to the end. But people would forget about the box, so we added dialogue, applied the heart to the cube, and continued to up the ante until people became attached to the box. Later on, we added the incineration idea. The artistic expression grew from the gameplay.'[38] Wolpaw further noted that the need to incinerate the Weighted Companion Cube came as a result of the final boss battle design; they recognized they had not introduced the idea of incineration necessary to complete the boss battle, and by training the player to do it with the Weighted Companion Cube, found the narrative 'way stronger' with its 'death'.[41] Swift noted that any similarities to psychological situations in the Milgram experiment or 2001: A Space Odyssey are happenstance.[38]
The portal gun's full name, Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, can be abbreviated as ASHPD, which resembles a shortening of the name Adrian Shephard, the protagonist of Half-Life: Opposing Force. This similarity was noticed by fans before the game's release; as a result, the team placed a red herring in the game by having the letters of Adrian Shephard highlighted on keyboards found within the game.[38] According to Kim Swift, the cake is a Black Forest cake that she thought looked the best at the nearby Regent Bakery and Café in Redmond, Washington, and, as an Easter egg within the game, its recipe is scattered among various screens showing lines of binary code.[25][42] The Regent Bakery has stated that since the release of the game, its Black Forest cake has been one of its more popular items.[42]
Soundtrack[edit]
Most of the game's soundtrack is non-lyrical ambient music composed by Kelly Bailey and Mike Morasky, somewhat dark and mysterious to match the mood of the environments. The closing credits song, 'Still Alive', was written by Jonathan Coulton and sung by Ellen McLain (a classically trained operaticsoprano) as the GLaDOS character. A brief instrumental version of 'Still Alive' is played in an uptempo Latin style over radios in-game. Wolpaw notes that Coulton was invited to Valve a year before the release of Portal, though it was not yet clear where Coulton would contribute. 'Once Kim [Swift] and I met with him, it quickly became apparent that he had the perfect sensibility to write a song for GLaDOS.'[27][36] The use of the song over the closing credits was based on a similar concept from the game God Hand, one of Wolpaw's favorite titles.[43] The song was released as a free downloadable song for the music video gameRock Band on April 1, 2008.[44][45][46] The soundtrack for Portal was released as a part of The Orange Box Original Soundtrack[47] and includes both GLaDOS's in-game rendition and Coulton's vocal mix of 'Still Alive'.
Portal's soundtrack was released as part of a four-disc retail release, Portal 2: Songs To Test By (Collector's Edition), on October 30, 2012, featuring music from both games.[48] The game's soundtrack became available via Steam Music on September 24, 2014.[49]
Release[edit]
In January 2008, Valve released a special demo version titled Portal: The First Slice, free for any Steam user using Nvidia graphics hardware as part of a collaboration between the two companies.[50] It also comes packaged with Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, Peggle Extreme, and Half-Life 2: Lost Coast. The demo includes test chambers 00 to 10 (eleven in total). Valve has since made the demo available to all Steam users.[51]
Portal was first released as part of The Orange Box for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 on October 10, 2007,[52][53] and for the PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007.[54] The Windows version of the game is also available for download separately through Valve's content delivery system, Steam,[1] and was released as a standalone retail product on April 9, 2008.[55] In addition to Portal, the Box also included Half-Life 2 and its two add-on episodes, as well as Team Fortress 2. Portal's inclusion within the Box was considered an experiment by Valve; having no idea of the success of Portal, the Box provided it a 'safety net' via means of these other games. Portal was kept to a modest length in case the game did not go over well with players.[26] Since then, a standalone version of the game was released for Microsoft Windows users.
Portal was the first Valve-developed game to be added to the OS X-compatible list of games available on the launch of the Steam client for Mac on May 12, 2010,[56] supporting Steam Play, in which players that had bought the game either on a Macintosh or Windows computer could also play it on the alternate system. As part of the promotion, Portal was offered as a free title for any Steam user during the two weeks following the Mac client's launch.[57] Within the first week of this offer, over 1.5 million copies of the game were downloaded through Steam.[58] A similar promotion was held in September 2011, near the start of a traditional school year, encouraging the use of the game as an educational tool for science and mathematics.[59][60] Valve wrote that they felt that Portal 'makes physics, math, logic, spatial reasoning, probability, and problem-solving interesting, cool, and fun', a necessary feature to draw children into learning.[61] This was tied to Digital Promise, a United States Department of Education initiative to help develop new digital tools for education, and which Valve is part of.[62]
Portal: Still Alive was announced as an exclusive Xbox Live Arcade game at the 2008 E3 convention, and was released on October 22, 2008.[63] It features the original game, 14 new challenges, and new achievements.[64] The additional content was based on levels from the map pack Portal: The Flash Version created by We Create Stuff and contains no additional story-related levels.[65] According to Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi, Microsoft had previously rejected Portal on the platform due to its large size.[66]Portal: Still Alive was well received by reviewers.[67]1UP.com's Andrew Hayward stated that, with the easier access and lower cost than paying for The Orange Box, Portal is now 'stronger than ever'.[68]IGN editor Cam Shea ranked it fifth on his top 10 list of Xbox Live Arcade games. He stated that it was debatable whether an owner of The Orange Box should purchase this, as its added levels do not add to the plot. However, he praised the quality of the new maps included in the game.[69] The game ranked 7th in a later list of top Xbox Live Arcade titles compiled by IGN's staff in September 2010.[70]
During 2014 GPU Technology Conference on March 25, 2014, Nvidia announced that they are porting Portal to their Android handheld, the Nvidia Shield.[71] The version was released on May 12, 2014.[72]
Critical reception[edit]
Reception | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Portal received critical acclaim, often earning more praise than either Half-Life 2: Episode Two or Team Fortress 2, two titles also included in The Orange Box. It was praised for its unique gameplay and dark, deadpan humor.[74]Eurogamer cited that 'the way the game progresses from being a simple set of perfunctory tasks to a full-on part of the Half-Life story is absolute genius',[75] while GameSpy noted, 'What Portal lacks in length, it more than makes up for in exhilaration.'[76] The game was criticized for sparse environments, and both criticized and praised for its short length.[77] Aggregate reviews for the stand-alone PC version of Portal gave the game a 90/100 through 28 reviews on Metacritic.[73] In 2011, Valve stated that Portal had sold more than four million copies through the retail versions, including the standalone game and The Orange Box, and from the Xbox Live Arcade version.[78]
The game generated a fan following for the Weighted Companion Cube[79]—even though the cube itself does not talk or act in the game. Fans have created plush[80] and papercraft versions of the cube and the various turrets,[81] as well as PC case mods[82] and models of the Portal cake and portal gun.[83][84][85] Jeep Barnett, a programmer for Portal, noted that players have told Valve that they had found it more emotional to incinerate the Weighted Companion Cube than to harm one of the 'Little Sisters' from BioShock.[38] Both GLaDOS and the Weighted Companion Cube were nominated for the Best New Character Award on G4, with GLaDOS winning the award for 'having lines that will be quoted by gamers for years to come.'[86][87][88]
Ben Croshaw of Zero Punctuation gave the game the only entirely positive review in the show's history, calling it 'the most fun you'll have with your PC until they invent a force-feedback codpiece'. Croshaw went on to say: 'I went in expecting a slew of interesting portal-based puzzles and that's exactly what I got, but what I wasn't expecting was some of the funniest pitch black humor I've ever heard in a game'. He states that, while the game was short, the two- to three-hour length of the game was perfect as the game did not outstay its welcome, and called the ending 'balls-tighteningly fantastic', while praising the game as 'absolutely sublime from start to finish' (adding that he would jam forks in his eyes if he ever praised a game so highly ever again).[89]
Writing for GameSetWatch in 2009, columnist Daniel Johnson pointed out similarities between Portal and Erving Goffman's essay on dramaturgy, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which equates one's persona to the front and back stage areas of a theater.[90] The game was also made part of the required course material among other classical and contemporary works, including Goffman's work, for a freshman course 'devoted to engaging students with fundamental questions of humanity from multiple perspectives and fostering a sense of community' for Wabash College in 2010.[91][92]Portal has also been cited as a strong example of instructional scaffolding that can be adapted for more academic learning situations, as the player, through careful design of levels by Valve, is first hand-held in solving simple puzzles with many hints at the correct solution, but this support is slowly removed as the player progresses in the game, and completely removed when the player reaches the second half of the game.[93]Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Hamish Todd considered Portal as an exemplary means of game design by demonstrating a series of chambers after the player has obtained the portal gun that gently introduce the concept of flinging without any explicit instructions.[94]Portal was exhibited at the Smithsonian Art Exhibition in America from February 14 through September 30, 2012. Portal won the 'Action' section for the platform 'Modern Windows'.[95]
Awards[edit]
Portal won several awards:
- At the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards, Portal won Game of the Year award, along with the Innovation Award and Best Game Design award.[96]
- IGN honored Portal with several awards, for Best Puzzle Game for PC[97] and Xbox 360,[98] Most Innovative Design for PC,[99] and Best End Credit Song (for 'Still Alive') for Xbox 360,[100] along with overall honors for Best Puzzle Game[101] and Most Innovative Design.[102]
- In its Best of 2007, GameSpot honored The Orange Box with 4 awards in recognition of Portal, giving out honors for Best Puzzle Game,[103] Best New Character(s) (for GLaDOS),[104] Funniest Game,[105] and Best Original Game Mechanic (for the portal gun).[106]
- Portal was awarded Game of the Year (PC), Best Narrative (PC), and Best Innovation (PC and console) honors by 1UP.com in its 2007 editorial awards.[107]
- GamePro honored the game for Most Memorable Villain (for GLaDOS) in its Editors' Choice 2007 Awards.[108]
- Portal was awarded the Game of the Year award in 2007 by Joystiq,[109]Good Game,[110] and Shacknews.[111]
- The Most Original Game award by X-Play.[112]
- In Official Xbox Magazine's 2007 Game of the Year Awards, Portal won Best New Character (for GLaDOS), Best Original Song (for 'Still Alive'), and Innovation of the Year.[113]
- In GameSpy's 2007 Game of the Year awards, Portal was recognized as Best Puzzle Game,[114] Best Character (for GLaDOS), and Best Sidekick (for the Weighted Companion Cube).[114]
- The A.V. Club called it the Best Game of 2007.[115]
- The webcomicPenny Arcade awarded Portal Best Soundtrack, Best Writing, and Best New Game Mechanic in its satirical 2007 We're Right Awards.[116]
- Eurogamer gave Portal first place in its Top 50 Games of 2007 rankings.[117]
- IGN also placed GLaDOS, (from Portal) as the No. 1 Video Game Villain on its Top-100 Villains List.[118]
- GamesRadar named it the best game of all time.[119]
- In November 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time.[120]
- Wired considered Portal to be one of the most influential games of the first decade of the 21st century, believing it to be the prime example of quality over quantity for video games.[121]
Portal Advanced Chamber 15 Walkthrough
Legacy[edit]
The popularity of the Weighted Companion Cube led Valve to create merchandise based on it, including fuzzy dice
The popularity of the game and of its characters led Valve to develop merchandise for Portal made available through its online Valve physical merchandise store. Some of the more popular items were the Weighted Companion Cube plush toys and fuzzy dice.[122] When first released, both were sold out in under 24 hours.[123] Other products available through the Valve store include T-shirts and Aperture Science coffee mugs and parking stickers, and merchandise relating to the phrase the cake is a lie, which has become an internet meme. Wolpaw noted they did not expect certain elements of the game to be as popular as they were, while other elements they had expected to become fads were ignored, such as a giant hoop that rolls on-screen during the final scene of the game that the team had named Hoopy.[16][124]
A modding community has developed around Portal, with users creating their own test chambers and other in-game modifications.[125][126] The group 'We Create Stuff' created an Adobe Flash version of Portal, titled Portal: The Flash Version, just prior to release of The Orange Box. This flash version was well received by the community[127] and the group have since converted it to a map pack for the published game.[128] Another mod, Portal: Prelude, is an unofficial prequel developed by an independent team of three that focuses on the pre-GLaDOS era of Aperture Science, and contains nineteen additional 'crafty and challenging' test chambers.[129][130] An ASCII version of Portal was created by Joe Larson.[131][132] An unofficial port of Portal to the iPhone using the Unity game engine was created but only consisted of a single room from the game.[133][134]Mari0 is a fan-made four-player coop mashup of the original Super Mario Bros. and Portal.[135]
Swift stated that future Portal developments would depend on the community's reactions, saying, 'We're still playing it by ear at this point, figuring out if we want to do multiplayer next, or Portal 2, or release map packs.'[10] Some rumors regarding a sequel arose due to casting calls for voice actors.[136][137] On March 10, 2010, Portal 2 was officially announced for a release late in that year;[138] the announcement was preceded by an alternate reality game based on unexpected patches made to Portal that contained cryptic messages in relation to Portal 2's announcement, including an update to the game, creating a different ending for the fate of Chell. The original game left her in a deserted car park after destroying GLaDOS, but the update involved Chell being dragged back into the facility by a 'Party Escort Bot'. Though Portal 2 was originally announced for a Q4 2010 release, the game was released on April 19, 2011.[24][139][140][141]
References[edit]
Footnotes[edit]
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- ^ abcdeValve Corporation (October 9, 2007). Portal. Level/area: In-game developer commentary.
- ^Alessi, Jeremy (August 26, 2008). 'Games Demystified: Portal'. Gamasutra. Retrieved August 28, 2008.
- ^The Orange Box manual (Xbox 360 version). Valve Corporation. 2007. pp. 12–17.
- ^Ocampo, Jason (July 13, 2006). 'Half-Life 2: Episode Two — The Return of Team Fortress 2 and Other Surprises'. GameSpot. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
- ^Craddock, David (October 3, 2007). 'Portal: Final Hands-on'. IGN. Retrieved October 5, 2007.
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- ^ abcEsposito, Joey (April 8, 2011). 'Portal 2: Lab Rat – Part 1'. IGN. Retrieved April 11, 2011.
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- ^ abVanBurkleo, Meagan (March 24, 2010). 'Aperture Science: A History'. Game Informer. Archived from the original on March 27, 2010. Retrieved March 24, 2010.
- ^'Aperture Science Web Site (login: cjohnson password: tier3)'. Valve.
- ^ abcdefgReeves, Ben (March 10, 2010). 'Exploring Portal's Creation And Its Ties To Half-Life 2'. Game Informer. Retrieved March 10, 2010.
- ^Stanton, Rich (April 26, 2011). 'Erik Wolpaw on Portal 2's ending: 'the [spoiler] is probably lurking out there somewhere''. PC Gamer. Retrieved April 26, 2011.
- ^ abcElliot, Shawn (October 10, 2007). 'Portal (PC)'. 1UP. Archived from the original on August 19, 2011. Retrieved August 3, 2008.
- ^Valve Corp. (2004). Raising the Bar. Roseville: Prima Games. p. 117. ISBN978-0-7615-4364-0. OCLC57189955.
- ^ abAccardo, Sal (October 9, 2007). 'Portal (PC)'. GameSpy. Retrieved February 25, 2008.
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- ^ abGeoff, Keighley (March 1, 2008). 'GameTrailers Episode 106'. GameTrailers.com. Archived from the original on March 5, 2008. Retrieved March 25, 2008.
- ^ abVanBurkleo, Meagan (April 2010). 'Portal 2'. Game Informer. pp. 50–62.
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In other Steam news, Portal: First Slice – the official demo for the title named Game of the Year by over 30 publications – is now available for free to all gamers via Steam.
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Bibliography[edit]
- Jeep Barnett, Kim Swift & Erik Wolpaw (November 4, 2008). 'Thinking With Portals: Creating Valve's New IP'. Gamasutra. CMP Media. Retrieved November 21, 2008.
External links[edit]
- Media related to Portal (video game) at Wikimedia Commons
- Quotations related to Portal at Wikiquote
- ApertureScience.com (viral advertisingalternate reality game)
- Portal on IMDb
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal_(video_game)&oldid=903271494'
Words by Hamish Todd.
Portal has the best-designed first-person puzzles I’ve ever seen. They’re surprising, focused, and concise. They are also designed very perceptively, and we can learn a lot from looking at this perceptiveness. Read on for an analysis of Portal’s level design, and some lessons about what learning from it can do to improve game design.
BE WARNED: This article uses multiple animated .gif images on the same page, and might be tough to load on slower connections.
This diagram shows a move called the “fling”, where you turn a fall into a leap forward using portals. It is a beautiful and interesting possibility within the game engine, and the level design is intelligently constructed to make it accessible. On the surface, Portal is a game about changing your position in space, but the fling move is about changing your direction and repurposing gravity as a means of increasing your elevation. So the fling move is a quite sophisticated idea; it’s also rich in uses, and involves you moving in a swift, continuous curve – so it’s very fun.
A fling is also an extremely disorienting experience. This makes it cool to plan around, but difficult to teach. Good thing then that Valve’s level designers are expert teachers, who know exactly how to craft around player’s thought processes. The sequences in the game that teach you the fling saw more design iteration than any other part of the game, so you can bet that they’ll be streamlined and full of clever psychology. In this article I’ll be looking closely at the series of levels that slowly build up the fling, and after that I’ll look at the deeper strategic variations on it that are presented.
Chamber 10
In the following rooms, the player is able to control the position of the blue portal only, the orange one being set down immovably by the designers, a limitation that is used to make your education smoother. The first part of this education is a room that is almost insultingly simple to “solve”:
In the following rooms, the player is able to control the position of the blue portal only, the orange one being set down immovably by the designers, a limitation that is used to make your education smoother. The first part of this education is a room that is almost insultingly simple to “solve”:
All you have to do here is put a portal somewhere and go through it. It would be wrong to call this a puzzle, really. It’s an antepiece, a brief task that exists not to provide challenge in itself but to introduce an idea that will help the player deal with a setpiece that will come soon after it. Another example of an antepiece in Portal is the incineration of your companion cube, which gives you a method you will later use to kill the last boss.
The action introduced here is a forward movement, out of a portal, across a gap, to a place you couldn’t reach (the player will have found that that ledge is slightly too high to jump onto). This action also becomes associated with the very visible thrust-forward panel with the orange portal on it, which will become a motif.
Straight away there’s the thrust-forward panel again. The clever thing that can happen here, which I’ve tried to depict in the gif, is that the player is lured into making a mistake that will actually bring them closer to a solution.
It may be a surprising concept to a player that you’re supposed to fall into a pit. So note that the platform over the pit is shaped like a diving board. This encourages the player to dive off it, and if it isn’t enough, the player is likely to fall off it anyway because it’s so narrow.
When you’re in the pit, there’s not much you can do other than try to get yourself out, and since this pit’s walls lack the white texture that other pits usually have, you have to put a portal on the floor in order to get out. So you do that, and you “plop out” (emerge with low momentum) of the orange portal panel, to a point near to the diving board again. And then there we are: your portals are now set for you to solve the puzzle, or at least give you a clue. You dive in again, and the momentum you build in falling takes you to the exit.
It is actually possible to have blundered through that previous room without even having looked directly at the thrusting panel with the orange portal on it, and therefore without understanding how you solved it. This room makes sure you get a better idea of what’s going on.
The designers have put the orange portal in the pit, so to prepare for your fling you must place your portal on the panel above – so you’ll have engaged with both parts of the set up. Famously, playtesters would take ages to look up and see the white surface they need, so to draw attention to the panels the designers gave them protrusion animations. They’re loud and slow-moving, so you’re unlikely to miss them.
The player flings themselves twice in this room, and all the variables (fall height, gap length, elevation of destination) get changed. This is a step toward the player being able to see the system and manipulate those variables themselves. Bearing in mind that the fling is so fast and disorientating (the second fling turns you upside-down!), it’s nice to be able to gain this understanding at a slow pace. As you leave the room, the voice over remarks “momentum is conserved between portals”. The player can link this neat fact to intuition quite easily.
Chamber 12
Between the chamber just described and chamber 12, we’re given control and responsibility for both portals. Chamber 12, then, exists mostly to make you handle both ends of a fling.
Between the chamber just described and chamber 12, we’re given control and responsibility for both portals. Chamber 12, then, exists mostly to make you handle both ends of a fling.
You start at the bottom, and you ascend by placing “fling-out” portals on the panels, to fling to places you won’t actually be able to see. When you’ve gotten to the top, you’ll be in a situation where your “drop in” portal is quite far away and out of sight of your “fling out” portal. This means you’re now comfortably using resources in two separated places. You’ll also fling from a skewed panel here, which is powerful and novel.
There’s an interesting, well-chosen structure here. An enjoyable vertically-progressing level is a rare beast in first-person games, and that is how you move through here, with flings out of successive panels as they slowly become visible to you. But then you keep returning to the bottom because that’s where the “fling pit” you’re using is (you even make a return from the very top shelf where the exit is, because you have to bring a cube down to a button). That means that you can understand and grow accustomed to these odd, initially-obfuscated spaces as they unfold, giving you a real sense of the privilege of having both portals and using them to explore lofty locations.
Chamber 15
We’ve taken a big step forward in the game. This room uses a thrust-forward panel to reminds you of the fling; but in contrast to previous areas there’s no pit to jump into. Understanding the fling means knowing the difference between exiting a portal with momentum and just plopping out of it. Without your pit to build momentum you can only plop.
We’ve taken a big step forward in the game. This room uses a thrust-forward panel to reminds you of the fling; but in contrast to previous areas there’s no pit to jump into. Understanding the fling means knowing the difference between exiting a portal with momentum and just plopping out of it. Without your pit to build momentum you can only plop.
The elegant solution is to use your plop as a descent. So the solution involves going into the same portal twice in a row, but with different results. Since flings are disorientating, players can have difficulty realizing they need to plan this, but when you get it the movement feels lovely.
There’s an aesthetically pleasing clue in the layout: the first half of the pre-wall area is white, while in the second half the walls and ceiling are black. The place on the floor you “plop” onto is at this precisely marked half-way point. The designers are suggesting to the player who arrives here “you have done half the job, you may want to double up what you just did”.
The puzzle here very strictly forces you to place a portal while falling through the air, such that you will go straight into it – not so easy, since you’re emerging from a fling that has rotated the direction you perceive as “up” by 90 degrees!
Here, if you plop out of the portal on the thrusted panel with zero momentum, you’ll just fall onto the black unportalable floor. That’s why you use the petite fall in the room on the right to get a minor fling – not enough for you to clear the glass barrier, but enough to get you to the white, portalable floor. It is when you’re falling towards that surface that you slap down a portal in front of you, allowing you to chain directly into a second, more powerful forward fling that completes the puzzle.
You have to climb some stairs to get up to the small fall. This is possibly to emphasize the fact that you are getting some usable elevation here, small as it is.
It happens, just reset it in a minute. Industrial Relations- Arun Monappa. Personnel administration. Books for Professional Courses Humanities Economics Political Science.
This challenge puts the last parts of your tool in place. You can make a plan involving a descent divided into two quantitatively different sections, in two separate rooms. You’re trained in repositioning a portal while in the air, and you’ll probably find that you’re capable of making the decision to do that on-the-fly (lol). You will think nothing of reappropriating the fling as a convenient means of transportation – which is sadly what you are required to repeat ad nauseam in Portal’s “behind the scenes” sequence, and Portal 2’s.
Strategic extensions of the fling
Now that we have a thorough understanding of the fling, we can create and enjoy interesting puzzle solutions by putting mathematically natural spins on it.
Now that we have a thorough understanding of the fling, we can create and enjoy interesting puzzle solutions by putting mathematically natural spins on it.
This is like the previous fling, but you’re falling towards a portal on a miniscule piece of floorspace. It takes a delicate jump (from a portal in the hallway) and air control to to hit the target.
This puzzle from the “Advanced” version of chamber 15 is also more about dexterity than brains, but it’s a very cool kind of dexterity. You have to get a portal on the thrusted panel while doing an endless fall between portals on the white squares. This requires the shooting of a target that is (from your point of view) rapidly cycling upwards.
What happens if you do a fling out of a portal that’s on the floor? You fly high into the air, and then fall back down, into your portal – and then you come out of your other portal, and repeat!
When you’re flung out of one of the platforms in this level, at the apex of your trajectory you have a chance to slap a portal on the surface of the next platform up. You climb these mammoth stairs by repeatedly doing that – and remembering to alternate firing blue and orange portals! Note that the platforms resemble the earlier thrust-forward panels.
Your body does a complete sideways roll whenever you pass through your upward-facing portals. Initially people try to counter this movement, trying to get a clear shot by staying upright, but eventually they learn that it’s better to just let the movement happen and try to aim as soon as you’re upright. It’s an amusing feeling to try to compose oneself while falling at terminal velocity and periodically doing side flips. Fortunately you never lose any momentum, so you can go through a “portal-trampoline” on a given platform as many times as you like before taking a shot at the next one.
Putting two portals on the floor is one of the first experiments a lot of people do when they get the gun, and they find that it often just results in a mess. If you did that experiment, this is a rewarding chamber to come to. There’s a game design principle to be gleaned from this: we must look for the things that people tend to enjoy doing in our engines, and then make levels with some practical excuse for doing those things.
The above puzzle is by far the best piece of design in the whole of the “Portal: The Flash Version mappack”. Here the portal that you initially go into is the same as the portal that you eventually fling out of, so there’s that cute fall on the left side of the picture where you come out of the blue portal and then immediately reposition it such that you fall directly back into it. It may seem simple, but realizing you can conserve that orange portal where it is can take a lot of thinking – then when you get it, there’s a delightful symmetry to it.
In the real Portal there’s a puzzle in the Advanced version of test chamber 15 which has the same solution. Those of you who have played it will see that the sloped ceiling that you bounce off at the end here is a very conscientious touch. Valve screwed up their version of this somewhat; instead of the bounce, it’s like you have to manually air control yourself onto the ledge, which is a fussy dismount from an elegant routine.
Finally, this article would not be complete without a picture of this, the final puzzle of Narbacular Drop, the student game that would eventually become Portal. In the middle of the screen is the avatar, princess Noknees; the two monster-faces you can see are the portals.
This was the first proto-fling ever to be implemented. It’s situated at the top of a tall tower which you climb mostly by positioning portals over platforms at precarious angles. The room as a whole has something in common with chamber 12, though less like a piece of shapely Rococo furniture, more like a multi-storey car park.
In theory it’s cool to have you climb almost all the way up a tower in one way, and then have you ascend the final step in a novel but somewhat-related way. However, I think that surprising puzzle solutions like the fling require focused puzzle design, so to me this is very ugly. It’s certainly enclosed and obfuscating. When you get the solution it doesn’t feel so smooth or substantial. And chances are that you won’t get that solution without having wasted some time searching for clues or getting fixated on unimportant details in this level. The time-wastiness is compounded by the room being deadly and unforgiving, and therefore discouraging experimentation.
Assessments
When people talk about works of interactive entertainment aspiring to offer some insight into the world, they tend to advocate titles like “The Walking Dead” and “Dear Esther”. That is sad to me, because it seems to suggest that to be artistically insightful, a game must be strategically dull.
When people talk about works of interactive entertainment aspiring to offer some insight into the world, they tend to advocate titles like “The Walking Dead” and “Dear Esther”. That is sad to me, because it seems to suggest that to be artistically insightful, a game must be strategically dull.
I feel that the most beautiful pieces of interactive entertainment are the ones that communicate through strategic decisions you make. This means that the things you communicate are mostly “mathematical”, so I usually use comparisons with Bach and Islamic art when I’m trying to explain to people the kinds of artistic insights video games can offer.
I believe Portal contains quite a lot of mathematical communication. I would not claim that the puzzles teach you anything about the wormholes that may actually exist, with the possible exception of the ones that focus on the energy pellet. But it seems to me that the solutions I’ve discussed here do have a thing or three to say about the real world. For example: when real objects are moving at high speed and there is a sudden change in the direction of their acceleration, they move through a curve that you will be able to recognize, as a person who has experienced the “fling”. And that may not be the kind of insight that you usually expect artists to work on, but it is communicated beautifully, which is why we need even more good developers working on things like Portal.
Portal offers a brave new philosophy of puzzle design: “we value puzzles not because we like struggling, but because we like having mechanical phenomena revealed to us”. Less like math questions, more like interactive math papers.
When you’re writing a math paper, you want to be as clear and concise as possible, which is what we have in Portal. A designer plays around in a game engine, discovers some naturally emerging phenomenon like the fling, and says “now to design a puzzle which involves the player experiencing this phenomenon”. In designing the puzzle, to paraphrase Einstein, we must make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. No red herrings; no unnecessary extra tasks or things for the player to get distracted by. Use stepping-stone puzzles to make the player’s discoveries active, concise, and thoroughly-established, and only allow things to be repeated if there’s a real chance the player hasn’t understood something yet. This is a philosophy you only see in post-Portal puzzle games, with a few wonderful exceptions.
The computer promises that cake and grief counseling will be available at the end of the test. Sounds.. terrifying?
After you go through the entry hallway and get into the first 'room' of the chamber, look above the hallway entrance. There is a piece of wall sticking out above there. Make a portal on it. Then, look at the floor and make a portal ofthe other color below you. While you fall, look down and make a new portal where you are about to land, the same color as the one you put on the floor. If you do it correctly, your increased momentum will take you through the particle field above the glass wall.
In the next 'room', put a portal on the black spot on the wall where the pellet is hitting it. Note that if you go through a particle field, any portals that you have placed will disappear. So, make a portal of the other color facingthe other particle field. Once the pellet goes through, walk through the particle field that has the containment thing behind it. Quickly make a portal above the containment thing, and then make another portal where the pellet is now bouncing inside of this shielded area. When the pellet goes through, it will go into the containment thing.
Take the platform to the next area. As with the first 'room', there is a piece of wall sticking out above the entrance, and a floor that you can put portals on. However, as you will find out if you try, falling through a floor portal to get through a portal on the piece of wall sticking out doesn't give you enough momentum to reach the floor portal again. But there is a small side room where there is a pit.
So, make a portal on the piece of wall sticking out above the entrance, then go to the side room and make a portal of a different color on the floor of the pit. Fall into it, and then as soon as you start falling, look straight down and make another floor portal so you can get enough momentum to go over the glass wall. If you still don't make it, just keep making floor portals under you as you fall.
![Portal advanced test chamber 15 Portal advanced test chamber 15](https://vmire.life/go.php?https://i.ytimg.com/vi/wFkovYQyrNQ/mqdefault.jpg)
In this next room, make a portal on the piece of wall sticking out, then another on the floor. This time, you get enough momentum to land on the floor again, so just make another floor portal as you fall to get over the barrier.
Finally, make a portal on the wall where the pellet hits (you can make the portal on the angled piece of wall or on the room wall itself.) Then make a portal on the wall facing the other angled piece (not on the angled part itself). If done successfully, the pellet will go into the containment thing.
Once that's done, you'll have to do the old wall portal to floor portal trick to get the momentum to get back to the area that has the pellet shooter and the pellet containment unit.
In that area, there is now an open door in which you can see some moving platforms. Shoot a portal onto the far wall that you can see, then make a portal on a wall in the room you're in. Look through the portal to see theapproaching platforms, and step onto the platform when it appears. Then, shoot a portal onto the next far wall that you can see and ride the platform back into the entrance to the big room. Hop off of the platform beforeit disappears and make a portal of the other color to see the approaching platforms. Get onto a platform and shoot a portal into the room that you can see in the distance.
Notice the piece of wall sticking out. After pressing a couple of buttons, you will want to put a portal onto it, and then put a portal of the other color onto the floor where the containment unit is shining its light. But first,you need to take care of those buttons. Here's how. Ride a platform up to one of the rooms near the ceiling. Go in, then make a portal on the wall near the button here. Next, look out of the room to the other room,and shoot a portal of the other color in that far room. Finally, press the button in the room that you're in, then go through the portal and press the button in the other room. Then put a portal onto the piece of wall that sticks out,and finally another one on the floor under the containment thing.
If you did it correctly, the pellet will go into the containment thing, and you can ride the platform to the elevator.
Shoot a portal on the ceiling over the floor across the pit, then use a wall portal to drop over to that side. Once you land,there is a tall white wall that you can see. Look at the ceiling above it, and shoot a portal at the farthest part of the ceiling.Then make a portal of the other color on the face of the tall white wall, below the level that you're standing on, so you can fall through it.You should land on a piece of floor with a two-dot tile on it.
Next, shoot a portal onto the ceiling above the ledge with the three-dot tile on it. Finally, when you can see the four-dot tile,make a portal on the piece of wall that sticks out, then make a portal below your feet to fall onto that higher ledge with the fourdots.
Now make a portal on the lower piece of floor that you can see from thefour-dot ledge that you're standing on. Fall into that portal and you should have enough momentum to make it to the ledge with thered button.
Don't bother with the red button just yet. Instead, go through the door and into the room with the small red button. Pressing that button will make the wall panel push out, giving access to the big room. Be careful, though, because there are turrets here, and at least one of them can see you if you emerge from the right. While the panel is pushed out, make a pellet shooter shoot a pellet at the various turrets until they are all disabled (thereare four). If you want, you can exit from the left of the panel. If you position yourself correctly, none of the turrets will be able to see you if you standto the left of the pushed-out wall.
Now that the turrets are gone, you have to put a portal on the piece of wall that sticks outat the far side of the room that faces the small room and small red button to the left of theledge you're standing on. Make a pellet come out of that portal, then quickly put a portal on the piece of wall sticking out that is closeto the small red button, and put a portal on a wall close to you. You need to press that small red button as soon as possible.You can probably reach the red button through the portal, without having to jump through. But if you want to try that, practice first to make sure.It's not that hard to just jump through and press it while you fall, though.
Once the containment thing has the pellet in it, a platform from your ledge to the other end of the room will be activated.Ride the platform to the far end, and fall onto the lower ledge. Pressing the red button here will temporarily open the wall panel that you entered thisroom through, so before pressing it, make sure that there's a portal over there, as well as a portal on a section of wall in this area. Then press the button and hop up through the portal. Go through the wall panel (crouching if necesssary), then look down from the ledge where the big red buttonis and make a portal on the far ledge down below.
Now go back to the small red button, press it, make a portal of the other color on the piece of wall that just opened (it's angled up), and quickly go back through the wall panelto the big red button. Drop down through the floor portal before the wall panel closesand you should have enough momentum to fly over the pit into the upper ledge in the room that had the fourturrets.
There is a cube here. Take it and jump onto the moving platform when it gets close to the ledge. Drop it off on the ledge with the glass wall, and make a portal next to the wallpanel that opens up. Ride the platform back across and drop down to the lower ledge. Make a portal of the other color on one of the walls here, then press the small red button and hop throughthe portal. Pick up the cube and take it with you through the wall panel. Put it on the red button and make a portal on the other side of the room where the chamber lock opened. Make a portalof the other color on the four-dot ledge to the left, then drop onto the four-dot ledge, and fall through the portal to reach chamber lock.
There is another area beyond. Drop down from the ledge and make a portal on the piece of floor in the pit in front of you. Then look down into the deep pit to your left and make a portal of theother color there. Drop through and you will be launched up from the small piece of floor in the pit.
As you fly up, shoot a portal of the other color on the ledge that you can see over as you reach the top of your jump, such that the portal that you just came through will still be there for you to fall through.Then, alternating the color, do the same for the higher ledges that you can see. Be careful not to touch the directional keys at all, to ensure that you continue falling through the portals below you.Eventually, instead of a flat ledge, you'll see an angled wall piece. Shoot a portal onto that to be dumped into the hallway where you can reach the elevator to the next text chamber.