(Not actually angry.)

In VVVVVV you play Captain Viridian, whose spaceship has crashed in an alternate dimension, leaving the crew scattered around in need of rescue. It’s your job to go out into the open world (and into its linear ‘dungeon’-like levels) and bring them back, via the time-honoured medium of 2D puzzle/platforming. This is the latest from distractionware (aka Terry Cavanagh), and indeed you might call it his first ‘proper’ game in the sense that it’s quite long and costs money, except that that would be to the disparagement of his earlier free games, which are entirely proper in their own way.

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1. It really feels like Tomb Raider. Awesome scenery, great environmental puzzles, frustrating repetition when you can’t quite figure out what to do next; all that good stuff.

2. Surely there is a point in Archaeology School when somebody says “Do not kick the possibly priceless ancient pots, even if you think there may be an inexplicable first aid kit inside”.

That is all.

The pre-review-section editorial in this month’s Edge is about, well… what games are about. When they try to be about things. How well they succeed in being about things. Whether they need to be about things at all. Among others, it makes specific mention of Call of Duty 4, and the “uncomfortable line” it walks between trying to show what it’s really like to be a soldier, and entertaining with dramatic set-pieces and tense action.

Obviously, COD4 can’t show us what it’s really like to be a soldier; no game can. There’s no way it can overcome the fact that I’m sitting comfortably on my couch with my Xbox controller in hand, and not lying prone in a roadside ditch in the Middle East with bullets whizzing over my head. So it doesn’t try. It gives me drama, and tension, and spectacle instead. This is all good and right; that’s what I want from it. Most of us want nothing more than this kind of distant simulacrum of soldiering, and the game can’t provide anything like the real experience anyway, so everyone’s happy. Read more

So, the coming of the Orange Box has finally brought a ray of sunshine into our otherwise dull and pointless lives. I’ve played Portal, and I can confirm it’s not just a slogan: I really am thinking with portals. And the best part is, I’m not even sure how it happened.

Valve’s mastery of the seamlessly integrated playable tutorial will be obvious to anyone who’s played Half-Life 2. Or maybe obvious is the wrong word for such a subtly applied method; anyway, it’s not news. Portal, though, refines the technique into its purest form.

The concept (briefly, because everyone knows it by now): you are a test subject in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, participating in a test of the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, a gun-like machine that can create portals between two surfaces. Point at a wall (or floor, or ceiling) and left-click to place a blue portal; point somewhere else and right-click to place an orange portal. Things (including the player) that go in one portal come out the other. Simple, but like all good puzzle concepts, its implications are deep and complex.

The way the game teaches you the unfamiliar skills necessary to get to grips with its completely new (yes, yes, Narbacular Drop, I know) gameplay style is nothing short of genius. It builds up your repertoire of abilities in a manner that’s so gradual, so intuitive and most importantly so much fun that you scarcely notice how much you’re learning. You’re never left confused or out of your depth, yet there’s a constant progression of new concepts that maintain a reasonable level of challenge. Each puzzle requires you to extend your abilities just slightly, until by the later levels, complex multi-portal manoeuvres feel as natural as rocket-jumping or circle-strafing. But much more exciting.

If that’s all there was to it—a fun, fresh, exceedingly polished puzzle game—Portal would be a fine way to spend a few hours. But, as I’m sure you can tell from my use of the conditional tense in the previous sentence, there’s so much more.

(Warning: spoilers follow! Don’t read any further if you haven’t played the game, just go and buy it now. It’s really, really, really good.)

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