Portal, Portal: The Flash Version Mappack, and Portal: Prelude

Portal

I didn't get to play Portal for over a year after it was released since my ancient computer didn't meet the minimum specifications. I knew it was going to be great from all the press and people talking about it, and I wasn't disappointed. One thing that was cool was sometimes I'd get stumped for a little bit and then I'd take a break, and then when I came back I figured out what I had to do in a few seconds. That happened several times, and I finished the game without having to look up anything online. This is currently my favorite PC game (not that I've played that many), and GLaDOS is on my short short list of favorite video game characters.

Grade: A++

Portal: The Flash Version Mappack

Based on Portal: The Flash Version, this mappack features great new puzzles and more GLaDOS goodness. The only thing I didn't really like was the boss fight. The first time I beat the boss I didn't know what I had done to defeat it.

Grade: A-

Portal: Prelude

In Portal the main challenge is figuring out how to use the portals to finish the level. Once you've figured it out, actually firing the portals correctly is pretty easy. I didn't appreciate how awesome this was until playing Portal: Prelude, where figuring out what you need to do is pretty easy for the most part, and the main difficulty is chaining together portal falls and building up speed to eventually reach where you need to go. In Portal it's awesome trying to figure out the puzzles, but in Portal: Prelude, quickly figuring out what you need to do, and then spending what seems like hours actually getting it is the opposite of fun.

The plot stuff after challenge 19 was probably my favorite part of the game. The easter eggs were pretty cool too.

Portal: Prelude has an awesome soundtrack. It's not original, but great music is great music. My favorite tracks are Silence - Larmes, Adrian Charkman - In The Beginning, and the Still Alive remixes and alternate versions by Jarrett Heather, Morgani, Razor Red Noise, TaVeRiC, and Valentin Brunn.

One last thing that sucked was that while making my way through the game, it hard froze my computer 3 times. I played version 1.1, and there's now a version of 1.1.5. Hopefully that's been fixed now.

Grade: C-