Still Alive

Over the course of the past four weeks, I've been picking up all manners of video games, and happened to pop one of my all-time favorite games back into the old 'box: Portal. Granted, the first night I did, I was not entirely sober, which meant that the mindbendiness of the game was a bit of a mindfuck...but there were no repercussions, luckily.

Since then, I've been playing it more, as well as listening to the theme song, which I actually found somewhat disturbing, due to the following line:

"Now these points of data make a beautiful line / and we're out of beta, we're releasing on time."

*Spoiler Alert*

This is sung by GLaDOS after she was "killed" by Chell (the game's protagonist). Now, it's not disturbing as much that the computer is continuing to sing, as that's sorta the point of the song (GLaDOS is singing about how she's Still Alive, hence the title). The disturbing point (which I'm sure everyone and their brother had already arrived at) for me was how, at the beginning of the game, Chell sat alone in a cell with a timer counting down to zero. Her progress is tracked over a series of controlled levels, but, for some reason, the infinitely scheming GLaDOS fails to take into account the fact that Chell could escape the final trap.

...or did she? It's a little surprising that all of the areas Chell gets to after she escapes the final trap have portal-accessible areas, culminating with a wonderful battle in GLaDOS's control room. Why would GLaDOS make a mistake like that? Easy answer: She wouldn't.

We already know that Chell is a subject of an experiment...but which one? We're led to assume it's testing the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, which is said to be untested. But, if that was the case, why would GLaDOS claim that once Chell is out in the wild (perhaps going to Black Mesa? Ha ha, that was a joke, fat chance...) that her project is "out of beta...releasing on time"? Is it not that we played a lab rat forced to play a game, but that we were actually part of a deeper, more sinister project, of which we are the moving force?

Everything about Chell's testing and subsequent escape, from the counting clock that sets her loose to her destruction of GLaDOS's control center (and GLaDOS's destruction of Chell's identity) has a feeling of a tightly controlled experiment, in which Chell was supposed to escape.

Brr. I didn't know a game could make me feel that used. I didn't beat it; it beat me through me beating it. Wow, just...wow. It makes me find a whole new level of appreciation for its multi-layered subtlety.