All right, let’s talk about Portal. There’s no need to talk about the gameplay or the story or the dialog, because everyone agrees that all are stellar. So we’re going to talk about something else instead.
As an extra for the Orange Box, Portal is a fantastic value. But if you want to buy it separately, it’ll cost you…$19.95.
Is Portal worth that much? It’s a game that is as refined as any other out there, with fantastic production values. It took at least a year to make. But it’s only three hours long. Are those three hours worth $19.95?
Personally I would say hell yes, because I have beaten the game about five times, done all the advanced maps and about half the challenge maps and thus I’ve played Portal for over twenty hours. But not everybody is going to do that, even if they loved the game the first time through.
What’s Portal worth?
And another thought. Everybody loves Portal. I haven’t met a single person who has played it who didn’t think it was fantastic.
Can a game that is only three hours long win Game of the Year awards? Again, personally I’d say yes. Portal is by far the best game I’ve played this year and I don’t expect to play a better one between now and January.
But will professional gaming websites be willing to man up and say, “Yes it’s short, but the quality of what’s there is so great that it deserves a Game of the Year award”? Or will they cop out and give it easy awards like Best Writing, Best Voice Acting or Most Innovative?
What do you think?
Everybody’s raving about it. It’s not all that expensive. But still, I haven’t played it.
The orange box contains two games I would care about, one game I don’t care about, and two games I already own. The two games I would care about, bought separately, cost exactly as much as the whole box.
To me, this is Valve saying, “thanks for funding us, now you get to pay for the same games again”.
I’m considering waiting for the ‘pink box’, where they’re bundling, along with episode 3, all the others with no extra cost. It’ll probably come with the kitchen sink as well.
We’ll see, I might change my mind at some point, but I think their pricing model as it stands is designed to cross faithful fans.
I dunno… Portal isn’t too expensive at $20.
I bought the orange box, but if I had bought portal by itself for $20, I don’t imagine I’d be disappointed.
Seriously, give Portal a spin. It’s worth it 😉
My friend dressed as a Weighted Companion Cube for Halloween. A number of people recognized him and gave him high praise. Portal seems to be quite popular, so I don’t see it having a problem actually getting a nice, big award.
But then again, I’ve been disappointed before.
Portal definitely has the ability to grasp a ‘game of the year award.’ BUT, there are quite a few other games that is going to make it particularly challenging for Portal to come out with it.
Portal is a blast to play. But, for me, after those 3 hours I spent on it, I was done.
I find Bioshock having a good chance of pulling out a Game of the year award.
Yeah, we had a “weighted companion cube” at NCsoft, too! http://www.playtr.com/image_gallery/pictures/20_2.jpg The cool thing was, Aaron’s costume actually had portals above and below the cube that lit up. The picture doesn’t do it justice. (I thought I had a pretty cool costume, too — http://www.playtr.com/image_gallery/pictures/20_8.jpg Props to my wife, Cathy, for the outstanding job she did on the mask!)
And yes, Portal was FANTASTIC. So far, game of the year is a toss up for me between Portal and Bioshock. (But we’ve still got Mass Effect coming!)
“You can’t go home, Celso, you’re dead! But you’re not alone! Everybody here is just as dead as you. That’s why we call it the Land of the Dead.”
Both of those costumes were great. Sorry your comment languished in the queue, Wynne – it had two links in it so it was flagged as spam.
Having played Episode 2, which was excellent (except for the last 30 seconds, of course – Valve still has NO idea how to tell a goddamn story), I’m betting that the editors will cop out and just award Game of the Year to “The Orange Box”.