Portal

This game has a 52 MB trailer available for download.
Download it in High Definition with Steam, or visit its web page to stream it.

90

This game has received a Metascore® of 90 from Metacritic.
For reviews or more information, please click here.

This game is included in the following packages:

• The Orange Box
• Valve Complete Pack

On July 13th, 2006 at EA's Summer press event, Gabe Newell announced that a game tentatively titled "Portal" was in production, and that it was due for release alongside Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 before the end of the year.

The game is described as a first-person shooter set in the Half-Life universe where you use an "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device to create dimensional doorways." [1] The game operates as a puzzle-based shooter, allowing you to create portals that link to one another on any flat and large enough surface.

The gameplay is similar to Narbacular Drop (archived) by Nuclear Monkey Software (archived), an indie game that won the IGF 2006 Student Showcase. Members of the development team who created the game were hired by Valve in 2005.

Tidbits

Calendar

The Girls of Aperture Science
No One Owns The Future Yet
September 1983

Cave Johnson's Notes

• 1953 - Aperture Science begins operations as a manufacturer of shower curtains. Early product line provides a very low-tech portal between the inside and outside of your shower. Very little science is actually involved. The name is chosen to make the curtains appear more hygienic.
• 1956 - Eisenhower administration awards Aperture a contract to provide shower curtains to all branches of the military except the Navy.
• 1957 - 1975 - Mostly shower curtains.
• 1978 - Aperture Founder and CEO, Cave Johnson, is exposed to mercury while secretly developing a dangerous mercury-injected rubber sheeting from which he plans to manufacture seven deadly shower curtains to be given as gifts to each member of the House Naval Appropriations committee.
• 1979 - Both of Cave Johnson's kidneys fail. Brain damaged, dying, and incapable of being convinced that time is not now flowing backwards, Johnson lays out a three tiered R&D program. The results, he says, will 'guarantee the continued success of Aperture Science far into the fast-approaching distant past.'
• Tier 1: The Heimlich Counter-Maneuver - A reliable technique for interrupting the life-saving Heimlich Maneuver.
• Tier 2: The Take-A-Wish Foundation - A charitable organization that will purchase wishes from the parents of terminally ill children and redistribute them to wish-deprived but otherwise healthy adults.
• Tier 3: 'Some kind of rip in the fabric of space... That would... Well, it'd be like, I don't know, something that would help with the shower curtains I guess. I haven't worked this idea out as much as the wish-taking one.
• 1981 - Diligent Aperture engineers complete the Heimlich Counter-Maneuver and Take-A-Wish Foundation initiatives. The company announces products related to the research in a lavish, televised ceremony. These products become immediately wildly unpopular. After a string of very public choking and despondent sick child disasters, senior company officials are summoned before a Senate investigative committee. During these proceedings, an engineer mentions that some progress has been made on Tier 3, the 'man-sized ad hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain.' The committee is quickly permanently recessed, and Aperture is granted an open-ended contract to secretly continue research on the 'Portal' and Heimlich Counter-Maneuver projects.
• 1981-1985 - Work progresses on the 'Portal' project. Several high ranking Fatah personnel choke to death on lamb chunks despite the intervention of their bodyguards.
• 1986 - Word reaches Aperture management that another defense contractor called Black Mesa is working on a similar portal technology. In response to this news, Aperture begins developing the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System (GLaDOS), an artificially intelligent research assistant and disk operating system.
• 1996 - After a decade spent bringing the disk operating parts of GLaDOS to a state of more or less basic functionality, work begins on the Genetic Lifeform component.
• Several Years Later - The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the planned activities on Aperture's first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day.
• In many ways, the initial test goes well...

Exclusive

Other than GLaDOS's cake ingredient core sphere, the companion cube, and the Aperture Science website, Portal gives no trace of any men.

• "Did you know you can donate one or all of your vital organs to the Aperture Science self esteem fund for girls? It's true!"
• "The Girls of Aperture Science"
• "Oh hey, you're the lady from the test! Hi!"
• "Well done! Remember: The Aperture Science Bring Your Daughter to Work Day is the perfect time to have her tested."

Viral radio campaign

On March 1st, 2010, Portal was updated. the only information given for the update was that, the radio transmission frequency has been changed "to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations".

once the game is completed, the second-onwards play-throughs of portal have a total of 26 radios playing in the Test Chambers and Escape areas, usually in an area that is difficult to reach, and with a red sprite added to the switch.

In-game, the radio must be moved in a particular spot of the Test Chamber. (or Escape area) When doing so, the music will be scrambled by interference. when venturing further into this "gray area" of interference, Morse code or data transmission sounds will be played on the radio, and the red sprite will turn green. if all radios are made to play the alternative transmission, a new Achievement is completed, called "Transmission Received". (although its description is simply "..?")

The morse code and data sounds have been decoded to display images, messages, and even lead to a BBS server containing foreboding ascii images. As of yet, it is unknown if this is a sign of a sequel, a bid to re-ignite the portal community, or maybe even a glimpse into Half Life 2-Episode 3.

However, it can be assumed that the presence of these new radios are not real to the actual portal story, and only serve as a viral campaign.

See also

• Portal Level Creation
• Portal user created content

External links

• Portal article on Wikipedia
• EA Summer Showcase trailer: FileFront.com, GameSpot
• http://www.aperturescience.com/
• myAPERTURElabs.com
• ThinkingWithPortals.com