PORTAL

Admittedly, I didn't give Portal much of a chance. Having caught wind of it from various friends, and then imagining what seemed to be the latest in a seemingly endless tradition of first-person shooters, I really didn't care to try it. Having matured far beyond my days of blasting Nazis in the antiquated Wolfenstien 3D demo, I viewed the whole genre as a playground for those with reflexes. I was its counterpoint - the man without reflexes. Nerves aside, I was coaxed by my friend Alex to give the game a shot. Having been intrigued by the massive hype-engine surrounding the game, I acquiesed. Back in 2001, I was fascinated by The Strokes for months before I had even heard them, only to be moderately pleased by their breakthrough US single "Last Nite." Similarly, Portal delivered - but I was left wondering if it really lived up to the hype.

First a light summary for those who haven't played the game. In a way the plot focuses around mysteriously finding yourself in a laboratory, and then being trained to use what is referred to as the 'Portal Gun.' Once mastered you are able to fire it against any two flat surfaces, and create a spacial portal between those two points. This singular feature is then utilized by your character to solve various ingenuitive puzzles. It is also illustrated in the screenshot above, where the portals are aligned in such a fashion as to create an infinite loop. Really cool - really science. A bit after you've mastered the gun, the game takes a steampunkesque turn and drops the sets which seem recycled from Rare's 1997 smash for the N64, Goldeneye. This new steampunk feel propels the second half of the game and allows it to take on overtones borrowed from George Orwell's 1984. Mostly, your character realizes that she must escape the laboratory in which she is imprisoned. After a good bit of puzzle solving and consideration of curious messages about cake scribbled on the walls, you battle a deranged robot, the mastermind pulling your strings. Yes, with a little bit of sobriety and resourcefulness this entire journey takes about three hours. This places Portal, in a realm of cinema alongside movies like Lost In Translation; there are a few scenes of really engaging action, but many more long stretches of puzzling narrative in-between. It's true!

At the end of the journey you are rewarded however, with an even more confusing allusion to 'the cake,' and finally the most rocking indie track to ever grace a video game - Still Alive by one Jonathan Coulton (See YouTube video above). Coulton who spends most of his time blogging about his weak heart being broken by 13 year old kids flaming him, and composing wacky songs for his internet fans, was really able to get into the mechanical brain of the robotic mastermind in Portal. Seasoning the game with the perfect human spice.

A reading of the lyrics to Still Alive explain how the robot is predictably 'still alive' somewhere. They make various allusions to the player, cake and game itself. The evil robot queen in Portal is indicated as getting her kicks through her robotic immortality, versus the player's flesh given mortality. What is really interesting however, is how definitively 'Indie,' the song is.

Coulton, clearly a Brooklyn hipster, and questionable internet celebrity is writing for an audience which seems separate from Brooklyn's dense history of lo-fi bands, and quasi-intellectuals lamenting the days of Sonic Youth gone by. Has the gaming audience grown to desire a more cultured music than the 8-bit sonatas of Mario Brothers, and the low brow techno grinds of Final Fantasy VII? Apparently gamers are growing up, crossing that threshold when one leaves home and seizes their indie-pendance.

Still Alive is brilliant, as is Portal, which means that Valve (The games production company) has latched onto a key concept boasted by most hip communities - irony. It is ironic that Portal derives its sense of suspense mostly from lonely, poorly furnished rooms which draw on a claustraphobic sense of Orwellian fear. It is ironic that video games now feature bulky computer queens which croon sentimental / nefarious indie songs. It is ironic that Valve, with their breakthrough game Half-Life ushered its pioneering independent mother-company Sierra Entertainment to the grave. Finally, it is ironic that an artist like Jonathan Coulton who was previously only respected by shut-in World of Warcraft players, would gain notoriety for penning the closing track to Portal. None of the above are really ironic: they are instead just symptoms that Portal is a game in line with the times.

If Micheal Cera can sing a Moldy Peaches song in 2007's indie film hit Juno, Valve can design a computer that croons narcissistic indie songs to the player. Independant music is a genre which thrives on the tastes of the individual as opposed to the tastes of the masses, simillarly Portal is a game that emphasizes isolation and entrapment above extroverted exploration. Instead of placing the player in a dense world with numerous other characters, they wander around Aperture Science Labratory alone. What better audience for Still Alive could there be than Portal's player? - Found delving into isolation deep within a Minotaur maze. And yes, there would be ASCII hearts...there would be rockin' tunes, and of course...there would be cake.

Still haunting me is the line:

We do what we must because we can...