The game that crashes on certain chipsets (Portal)

Member Name: raypdaley182

Product:	Portal
Date:	21/04/09 (36 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great concept

Disadvantages: Its kinda dull and gets old fast

Portal, brought to you by Valve who also created Half Life. Portal was made using the same design engine used to create Half Life 2 but don't let that fool you into thinking your PC will play this because it can play HL2.
Would that it were my FPS playing friends but sadly its untrue.

Portal is badly designed but its implementation is even worse, installing the game for the 1st time is nice & simple. It'll install Steam (Valves INCREDIBLY annoying copyright authentication system that insists you MUST be online to register the game, possibly the worst game authetication idea since the lenz lok in the 80's) then it'll install the game from the dvd, verify your Steam account and the validity of your game then it'll let you play it.

Well I say "let you play it" but sadly Valve decided to do something to the game engine since they created HL2 and for certain users of certain graphics cards the game is unplayable. If you are the owner of an Intel onboard GMA graphics chip (they are shipped in many Dell & Lenovo/IBM machines) then this game is loadable and not much more.

With a bit of mucking around (a fair bit actually) on the command line you might even get the chip to allow you to play the first few rooms but it will definately crash before you do much in room 3.

It'll crash as soon as you try and leave the very 1st room, there are recommended fixes with command line instructions which you can try (along with incredibly stupid bits of advice from Valve like "AVG might be stopping the game from working") but you will be lucky to get the game to run at all.

Sadly Valve were so dead set on making a kickass end product they forgot the 1st rule of game programming which is "make sure it'll run on everything currently available" and set out to write the game on the most powerful highest specification system they could possibly lay their hands on. The game requires a graphics chip or card that can handle something called pipelining and its something the Intel GMA onboard chip just isnt capable of.

It seems I was being unfair on the game so I have now included the following information. So what are the bare minimum system specifications it needs to run on?

O/S:- Windows XP/Vista or 2000
Processor:- 1.7ghz
Memory:- 512 MB RAM
CD-DVD:- 8 Speed
Video Card:- 128 MB RAM
Direct X:- Version 8.0

My Lenova Think Centre more than covers all these specs and STILL won't run the game. So there is the tale of woe, waste your £9.99 (its the cheapest price you can currently buy the game on its own for) and take the chance that you won't have similar graphics related issues.

I will write an actual review of the game as soon as either Valve or Intel release a patch for my particular gaming issues. To date using various command line controls I have got as far as the 3rd room before the game crashed my entire machine stone dead several times. Suffice to say I won't be playing Portal until better fixes exist or I get a more powerful machine or a different graphics card.

UPDATE:- After having purchased an ATI RADEON 9250 128mb PCI card for my machine I have actually been able to play my way through the first 5 or so rooms. Graphics are fairly sparse as textures in the rooms are very minimal and puzzle seems very simple, you just use Portals and the gun that fires them to activate switches and make your way from one side of a room to another. It may sound incredibly simple and thats its charm, the best puzzle games are extremely simple.

It hooks you in with simple looking puzzles that gradually ramp up in difficulty and you learn new abilities on the way to help you on your journey. Obviously I'm only right near the start so I will update this review at a later date after I have played much further into the game.

The game starts out by teaching you how to use 1 Portal to get to places, then how to use 2, then how to use the Portal gun firing just 1 Portal then you later get an upgrade and are able to fire 2 Portals to be able to move to places freely providing they are of a substance you CAN fire Portals onto as not every substance can take a Portal. You also use how to use momentum and physics to Portal jump which allows you to reach high places or jump very long distances.

FURTHER UPDATE:- It actually only took me a few more hours to get to level 15 (fairly) and I got about halfway through it before getting stuck and had no choice but to consult a walkthrough. I progressed 1 room further in the same level and then got hopelessly stuck & decided to cheat which is incredibly easy as Valve left access to the developers console within easy reach so they clearly decided just like Half Life 2 that sections of this game are too hard to complete fairly.

A few quibbles with the game, it doesn't have run or crouch function or keys for them either and there are obvious sections in the game where you clearly need to either run or crouch or do both (whats known as a duck jump in the Half Life universe) and I was left with the only option remaining which was to cheat and use noclip (allows you to move through objects, walls or even fly), I ended up doing this to work my way through the final 4 levels and reach the end of the game.

This is where you meet GLADOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) who is the evil computer mastermind behind all the deaths and the rather nasty puzzles you've been trying to beat for the past 18 levels. She's kind of like a female version of Skynet but without the Terminators or the global war. She'll be quite nice to you at first, then sarcastic, then she'll lie to you, then be mean then lie to you some more. She'll even beg for mercy when you face off against her at the end of level 19.

During the game she'll try and kill you in a kind humoured way, making you step into stuff thats toxic and is instant death, or guiding you into a live fire course for androids and then expecting you to survive. That course is the first but most definately not the last place you will meet turrets who have a polite little voice and say many pleasant things but it doesn't stop them trying to blow you into tiny pieces when their lasers lock onto you.

GLADOS will also misguide you into energy balls that can (& will) vapourise you also resulting in instant death. The character you play is called Chell but like Gordon Freeman before her in Half Life before her she is also seemingly mute as she never speaks.

Many reviews I have read of the game say it is too easy, I found it easy until I reached level 15 where it just got to silly skill level required to progress further into the level so I simply cheated to get any further. I found certain skills like Portal jumping or even double Portal jumping quite difficult to learn, maybe thats just my personal issues with visual acuity, depth perception and spacial awareness.

I did have very high expectations for the game having seen playthroughs and many screenshots, I'll admit my graphics card couldn't fully do the game justice but it rendered everything required and the game is very barren and often quite dull. Because you are only doing a few things in terms of puzzles there isn't really all that much of a challenge (which I assume is why so many gamers called it "too easy"), I know I got stuck but I'm hardly the worlds greatest gamer.

Portal starts out as a very good and playable game but fools you into believing it will get better where it doesn't, I might have missed a few things having cheated my way through the final 4 levels but I really can't believe it got all that better in terms of gameplayablility. Its graphics weren't great, its game play was average at best and it really has nothing to offer in terms of lastability as I doubt anyone would want to replay it once they'd completed it.

If I am honest I don't even want to go back to it to even complete the game, it bored me that much. Portal proved to be disappointing and very over hyped sadly. If you like FPS games and don't already own it then i would say its worth a look on its novelty value alone.

Summary: Valve change something after HL2 & totally screw the playability of this game