Portal

 For Macintosh from Valve, free until May 24th from Steam

Hello, Valve. We've been waiting for you.

I've been at this video game reviewing thing for more than ten years. Three times a week I get a press release talking about a game that's "innovative", "ground-breaking" and "brand new". And every single time, it turns out to be a big, fat bag of lies. "Come try our innovative game" they say. Then what do I get? Defend your flag from enemies... collect resources and build a base... do quests and level up... it's a nonstop merry-go-round of suck, and I thought it would never come to pass that one of these blowhard promises would ever be fulfilled.

And then there was Portal.

Available through Valve's Steam service (a frankenhybrid of game store, community hub, game launcher and chat room), which has only just arrived on the Mac one week ago, Portal is being offered for free until May 24 for those who download and sign up (Mac and PC both). In 2007, it was the toast of both critics and consumers as part of Valve's "Orange Box" collection... but now we are being given this celebrated game as something of a gift? Peace offering? Platitude? Trojan Horse? Who cares? This game frikkin' rocks.

Why review a game that's already well-known to every gamer on earth (even Mac gamers) and is probably already downloaded a bazillion times? For the Mac, it goes beyond that. Portal is important in ways that not every other game for the Mac is. Portal takes a place in the Mac gaming pantheon that few other games have been able to claim. That's why.

Welcome to Aperture

Portal puts you in the role of an unnamed protagonist who wakes up in a very small, futuristic cell with a toilet, a utilitarian bed and a little radio playing peppy music. It becomes clear quickly that you are held prisoner by a corporate science facility that is steeped in Orweillian double-speak and lies to pacify and control test subjects before throwing them into evil, deadly situations. The company, known as Aperture Science, gives you a strange device around which the entire game revolves: From it, you can create holes - or "portals" - and pass through them. So long as you have two portals in play (one to go into and one to come out of), you can move as freely through them as you would an open door. The tests you are subjected to involve being thrust into complicated situations - almost always dangerous - and being challenged to find a way out using your portals. 

Portal plays like a first person shooter (and it borrows heavily from Half Life, to which it makes some winking references along the way), in that you move with your W, A, S and D keys, press the space bar to jump, aim with your mouse and press the buttons to fire. Your portal gun also as the ability to grab things and pick them up, which is often as core an element of the gameplay as the portals themselves. What makes the controls so perfect is that, once you have a basic grasp on how they work, the interface get in your way. There's no "alt" fire to worry about. There's no health bar. No shields. No swappable weapons. No grenades. No vehicles. It's just you, your nonlethal portal gun and your brain.

Leading you through your various testing scenarios is a disembodied robotic voice which overlays a sweet, deft layer of humor that's neither too much nor too little. It's emotionless warble has to be heard to truly appreciate just how amusing it can be, but it's almost more star of the game than the portals themselves. As you are cajoled, lied to, taunted, condescended to and praised by that insincere, saccharine tormenter you'll find you're given just enough context to make sense of the sterile, Sisyphian hell that is the Aperture testing labs while chuckling at the same time. 

Portal is only one evolutionary step removed from simple puzzle games of old; it brings elements of that old video game Traffic as well as non-video puzzles like the Rubik's Cube. Yet, the world in which Valve has built Aperture Science offers a little more... so that one never simply feels like they're playing a big, fancy version of Sudoku. In fact, Valve does an absolutely brilliant and nuanced job of making the player feel engaged in the story, and this is achieved not just by what they reveal, but by what they don't. There is a pervasive and frightening sense that you are something of a rat in a maze and your omniscient puppet masters keep you alive only for their own entertainment... and unanswered questions follow you throughout your harried struggle to stay ahead of Aperture's robotic sadists. How many people were made to perform these tests before you? What became of them? What happens once they're completed? Even wondering how you got there in the first place adds to the elaborate and subtle lattice of unspoken narrative. 

Oh, and make sure when you beat the game you stick around for the closing credits. It's so worth it.

This is why Valve makes the big money

Portal has all the elements needed to make a video game into something special... and moreso. The theme and environment are fresh and unique (though Aperture Science could pass for a wing of the Black Mesa complex before the Gordon Freeman incident). The graphics aren't just beautiful and detailed, but they scale way, way up for Macs with  more horsepower and way, way down for those without... all the while remaining a treat for the eyes. The puzzles are complex but you'll rarely find yourself so stuck that you'll burn off what seems like hours trying to get past one single head-scratcher (something that Portal's older brother, Half Life, can't claim). You are immersed in a rich, detailed world without being forced to sit through endless cutscenes. The ambient sound is haunting and masterful, tricking your brain into believing that you are quite alone in an endless metal hamster maze, and the voice work is probably the best I've ever heard in a video game (wait till you meet the automated turrets). 

Portal goes above and beyond, however, with touches both little and big which go far to make it something special. Take Valve's decision to include the option Closed Captions, for instance; not all games give the player an option for subtitles for spoken dialogue, but very few indeed go all the way as to offer Closed Captioning (the difference being: Subtitles only print spoken text on the screen, but Closed Captioning tells the player via onscreen text what sounds are happening as well as dialogue and how it's spoken). As a man with a deaf brother who loves games, this really went a long way with me; not just because it's personal for me but it stands as an excellent example of a feature that could have been left out and nobody would have said a word. 

Additionally, it would be a crime not to applaud the fact that Portal has shown conclusively that awesome video games can be made without relying on gut-churning violence. It's not that I'm particularly sensitive to using the business end of a virtual firearm, but it's hard to argue that game developers have come to rely far too much on guns and swords to bring gameplay to the player... almost indolent in the creativity department. Portal doesn't shed a drop of blood from beginning to end, and yet none of the adrenalin or excitement is diminished by it. I very much doubt this will inspire any kind of trend, but I, for one, am relieved not to see yet another exposed skull or severed limb. If there's one single testament that Portal makes for Valve's brilliance, the ability to keep me on the edge of my seat till the very end in a nonviolent first person shooter is it.

Above all else, Portal gives your brain a workout... and that's its trump card. Though there are definitely examples of using your quick reflexes to diffuse a puzzle, the measure of this game is how it stretches your mind. You literally "think" your way through every room and open your logic up to new ideas. The first time you create a portal in the floor and another in the wall and find yourself jumping in one and rotating suddenly to the center of gravity when you pop out of the other, you're going to start rethinking a whole lot of things about how to use space and motion to get something done. Many of my biggest stumbling blocks as I worked my way through Portal came from my reluctance to open my mind and look at a challenge from a new angle. I don't know how many games (video or otherwise) push the player to do that in this day and age but I don't think I need to tell you... it's not many.

Criticisms

Portal definitely does not run as quickly on the Mac as it does on the Xbox or PC. Tom's Hardware has done some testing which indicates that the Mac lags about 20% behind Windows where performance is concerned, citing the GPU as the main problem. The Mac still easily delivers very playable framerates without having to turn the visuals into graphical dog food in order to get there, but don't go bragging to your Windows-using pals about how much better the Mac version of Portal is. 

According to Tom, the drivers are the problem, and he claims that the Apple drivers just aren't up to the job like the Windows drivers are. What's more, he makes some arguments for the performance of DirectX and how it trumps OpenGL. While good arguments can be made for the openness of OpenGL and how, once upon a time, it was as least as capable as DirectX, Microsoft has polished their proprietary graphic tech too well to pretend there isn't a gap between them. 

So yes, Portal plays just fine on the Mac. Well, in fact. But not better than Windows. In case that matters to you.

Portal for Mac is clearly a fledgling effort on Valve's part; small graphical glitches or artifacts pop up semi-regularly, and even though it's only been out in the wild for less than a week there are reports of some patches-gone-wrong that made the Portals turn black instead of allowing you to see through. At the moment, Portal appears to work more than passably on the Mac and you shouldn't hesitate for a second to try it out, but be aware that weirdness has been reported and more patches for Mac Portal are probably coming. 

The only other conceivable complaint, if you absolutely must make it, is that Portal is an old game. To qualify as "old", for me, a game has to have been released before Justin Bieber was born. Ironically (and to my occasional dismay), the gaming community is largely made up of Justin Biebers... so a game that was released in 2007 must look to them the same way that crumbling mummies in mausoleums look to me. This is going to put off a small percentage of gamers and, well... that's a shame. 

Snaps for Valve

I attempt to make no secret of how impressed I am by Portal. Valve has created a reputation for themselves as the purveyors of legendary gaming, and Portal could possibly be the best of their entire legacy. Now busy working on Portal 2 (which will be released simultaneously for the Macintosh), Valve promises unwavering commitment to the Mac platform. Not that we haven't heard that one before (from them, no less), but to simply say "Here. Have Portal for free." is a good way to gain a little good will among the Mac gaming community. 

I'm grateful to Valve for Portal because, for once, I get to say "Yeah, it really is as good as the press release says"... and that's a pleasure I don't often get to enjoy.