venta

This weekend, among other things, I have been playing Portal on the Xbox 360. This may surprise people who know my computer-game playing habits (or, rather, the lack of them).

It's a fun game, it's a fun concept. I like the puzzle-solving aspects of it. I'm amused by the strange, sing-song, deadpan commentary from the test supervisor. I like cake.

What I don't like, however, is actually having to play it. If, like me, you haven't significantly played any games since pixellated graphics went out of fashion, you'll be completely bewildered by the concept of two analogue sticks. One controls the way you're moving, one controls the way you're looking; apparently this is pretty standard in this day and age.

I've never got on well with FPSs. I remember, many years ago, watching

failmaster playing Quake and wondering how on earth he didn't get dizzy with the wildly scrolling background. I've still never quite got over this. In Portal (where "up" is a slightly fluid concept) I'm continually disorientated.

Fortunately Portal has no timer, so I can move very slowly and sedately and look about me carefully. At least, some of the time I can. The rest of the time I accidentally walk left when I meant to look left and fall off a platform and die. No, this doesn't get any better. I'm up to level 14 and I'm still walking into walls and falling off things.

To make things worse, the camera view works backwards the entire time. Apparently this is a well-documented problem with up/down: some people think that pulling the stick down should make you look up, some people think that pulling the stick up should make you look up. Accordingly, there are two modes: you can set the up/down to work either way. My problem is similar, but with left/right. Apparently this is not a well-documented problem, and pulling the stick left makes you non-negotiably look left. (Irrelevantly, perusing the configurable bits there is also a "Duck Mode". This is very disappointing if you're me.)

So, a typical few minues of me playing Portal will feature me blundering around, walking sideways a lot, looking up when I meant to look down, turning all the way around a bit, flailing about, and falling to my death. There have been several occasions where I've solved the puzzle, but the difficult part has been actually getting through the portal I've placed. I'm sure that's not meant to be the difficult part.

I'm looking forward to the cake, though :)