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One of Valve's most successful games to date, “Portal”, was made available for Ubuntu early this summer. Although originally released for Windows and Mac back in 2007 as part of “The Orange Box,” it was not until July 2013 that Valve ported “Portal” to Ubuntu through its Steam game engine. We are now delighted to be able to play the highly successful, puzzle-solving, first-person shooter, one-player game on Ubuntu.
Installing Portal
All you need to play the game is the Steam game engine, which can be installed through the Ubuntu Software Center. Once you have a Steam account, and you've installed the Steam game engine, then you can search for “Portal” and buy it at the current price of only $9.99. If you do not already have Steam, let me reassure you that it will be one of your most used applications; if you plan on doing some gaming on Linux, you will not regret it.
Playing “Portal”
“Portal” is not your average First-Person Shooter. For those who have never played “Portal,” it may come as a surprise that there are no enemies to kill, no blood, no running away to hide, no reloading of guns, no grenades, etc. Instead, when you acquire your first shooting device, which looks and feels like an ordinary video game gun, you will be shooting holes in walls, these holes are called portals. However, you are not just limited to shooting at walls; you can also shoot at the ceiling, or at the floor. You can create portals out of almost anything, and learning how to use them to get from point A to point B is the real purpose of the game.
The game takes place in the Aperture Laboratories, where you are one of many test subjects, or “lab rats.” “Lab Rat” is the name of an online comic that tells the story of “Portal” and can be found at the “Portal” website. When you first begin playing, in the early levels, the portals have already been created for you. Like most games, the early levels are sort of tutorials showing you how the concept of portals works. It took me a while to understand what was going on the very first time I played this game. The basic premise is that you go through a blue portal in one room, and you come out of an orange portal in another room. After only a couple of levels, you acquire your first shooting device, the blue portal gun. From this point on, the orange portals are stationary, and usually close to exits (or leading to an exit), and it is up to you to figure out where to create a blue portal and how to go through it successfully so that you can come out through the orange portal. These are the basic mechanics of the game. You go in through a blue portal and you come out of an orange portal, or vice-versa.
The picture shows me looking down at mysefl through the orange portal I made
A few levels later, you acquire the orange portal gun. Now your equipment is complete, you can create blue or orange portals by using either left or right mouse buttons. From this point on, it is all about physics. If you walk into an orange portal you will walk out wherever the blue portal was placed. However, if you jump from up high and go through an orange portal on the floor, you have the potential to gain lots of speed and come out flying through the blue portal, which, if placed in the correct spot, will help you get to places that otherwise would be unreachable. Some of these levels are confusing to solve, but that's what makes this game so addictive. “Portal” is now available through Steam, and I know I am not the only one waiting for Valve to release “Portal 2” on Ubuntu.
My Gaming Setup
I played “Portal” with my custom made desktop PC consisting of an AMD FX-6100 3.3GHz CPU, an Asus M5A97-EVO motherboard, a Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 graphics card, 8GB of Kingston Hyper X RAM, and a 1TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive. The software used was Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS with Unity desktop and AMD 13.1 proprietary graphic drivers. The game-play was very smooth and the graphics were phenomenal. No glitches and no problems whatsoever. All in all, it was certainly a delight playing “Portal” on Ubuntu.
Conclusion
Steam is doing wonders for Linux gamers, so it should come as no surprise that one of Valve's greatest hits, “Portal”, is now one of the best games available for Ubuntu.
Pros • Graphics are as good as they can get for a six-year-old game. • The dialogue from the “Aperture Laboratories” computer during game-play is very funny to listen to, and sometimes it can even give you hints to solve puzzles. • The keyboard and mouse work very well with this game. The latency, if any, is as good as it gets. • The concept of the game is unique and becomes addictive when you understand what it is that you're supposed to accomplish. • Ease of installation couldn't be any better. Without sounding too redundant, Steam is finally making games “just work” with Ubuntu. • “Portal” has a high replay value. Cons • To play “Portal,” it is recommended that you use the proprietary AMD graphics drivers, which for some FLOSS purists might be unethical. • Steam has the “Portal” minimum system requirements posted for Windows and Mac, but not for Linux, even though the Linux Tux Penguin logo is shown on Steam's “Portal” page indicating that the game is supported on Linux. This leaves the average Ubuntu user in the dark about what the minimum/suggested requirements are, thus having to guess or estimate based on the Windows and Mac requirements.