Anyone heard of Portal yet?
From what I know, it uses a modified version of Half-life 2's Havok gaming engine. The basic idea is that you're a test subject for testing out a new portal technology. You have this special portal gun that you can shoot at a wall and create a portal, then you can shoot another portal somewhere else and the two are linked. You go through one and you come out through the other. You run around and you solve puzzles and do all kinds of trippy things. It's a FPS without the shooter. To my knowledge the only gun you ever possess is the portal gun.
It's a very strange, but fun game. Using portals in this way isn't new I suppose, but this is the best implementation I've seen of it yet. You can do really weird things. For example, you can shoot at the ceiling directly above you and then shoot directly below you. What happens? You fall through the portal below you, which sends you through the portal at on the ceiling, and then you fall through the portal beneath you again and again, looping, until you make another portal. You can fall vast distances and gain huge speeds, shoot a portal somewhere, and then shoot another portal right where you were about to fall and splat into the ground. You fall through that portal and your momentum is conserved in respect to the portals. You are sent flying! through the next portal regardless of which axis is in: up, down, sideways... I'll stop talking and show you what I mean with a video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if3Qv2tHyfA
I haven't actually played the real game by Valve. I'll get it sometime when I have the money to upgrade my computer or get a PS3. But there's a pretty damn impressive 2-D Flash mock-up of this game available on Newgrounds.com. Here's the link. This is actually a really fun game that I've been playing lately. There are 40 levels. I've beaten it already. Here's the link:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/404612
12 Oct 2007, 9:54 pm
