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Game Zone: Portal

by daiashi


About The Game

Portal™ is a new single player game from Valve. Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal has been called one of the most innovative new games on the horizon and will offer gamers hours of unique gameplay.

The game is designed to change the way players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities in a given environment, similar to how Half-Life® 2's Gravity Gun innovated new ways to leverage an object in any given situation.

Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuver objects, and themselves, through space.


My Synopsis

I find the game a pleasant change from all the shoot-em-up and gore titles out there. While there is some turret dodging and some hanging robot computer thing to defeat, it's nice to see a title where real puzzle solving skills are required. Why, you ask, did you do a review on a game this old? That's easy. It plays on PCLinuxOS and it is still a great looking game. My only gripe is it's somewhat short of a story line. Other than that, it is still a highly played game by anyone that is into Valve and Steam. Although Portal2 has been out for a bit, I wanted to start from the beginning and maybe do an article on the second Portal if there is enough difference between the two.


System requirements

Software:

PCLinuxOS & Steam by Valve.

Hardware:

OS: PCLinuxOS
Processor: x86-compatible 1.7GHz or faster processor
Memory: 512 MB System RAM
Hard Disk Space: 4GB free space (subject to change)
Video Card:3D graphics card with at least 256MB of addressable memory.


About The Company

Valve Corporation http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/people.html

Valve is an American video game development and distribution company. Its home is in Bellevue, Washington. Founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, Valve is most noted from its 1998 release of Half-Life and its 2007 release of Portal. After securing a license to the Quake engine in 1996, the team started developing Half-Life. Half-Life was released in late 1998. At the back bone of all of Valves games is their source engine, which was released in 2004. With its modability and updates via Steam, it is a firm competitor on the gaming scene.


Some Gameplay Screenshots

These screenshots were shot solely by me as I played through the entire game.














Getting It To Run

You will need to fully update your system, including your graphics drivers. After your update, search for steam-launcher from your PCLinuxOS package manager. Install Steam (if you don't have it installed already), then start it. You will need to create a new account, if you do not already have one. Once you have Steam up and running, go to the store tab. Click on the Linux tab if you wish and search for Portal. Click on and download the demo. If you have updated your system, including graphics drivers, you should be good to go.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/400/



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