Welcome to the inaugural edition of Clickbait Girlfriend! I’m Clickbait Boyfriend, and I’m happy to be on the other side of the blog for once. On the podcast, Madelyn has not been coy about her dislike for Portal. It was the first video game we ever played together, before I was Clickbait Boyfriend, or even just Boyfriend. My roommate and I had an Xbox 360 back in our freshman dorm, and I believe we were taking turns play Portal 2 with a bunch of friends. Madelyn wasn’t very good at it, and she has had a senseless and irrational vendetta against one of the best puzzle games ever made ever since.
After the Portal/Abzu episode, Madelyn and I decided it would be the perfect time to revisit Portal to see if her thoughts on it have changed. Will Clickbait Girlfriend finally be good at Portal? Will she fall in love with its clever puzzles and mind-bending game mechanics? Will she earn the cake that surely awaits her at the end of her journey (shhh don’t tell her…)? Read on to find out!
An actual real life 100% legit photo of Clickbait Girlfriend and me.
“Will they hate me if I always destroy these?”
-on security cameras
“I really feel like this is bad.”
-on destroying further security cameras
Madelyn really has a guilt complex about destroying all these security cameras.
“It keeps telling me that its vital, but I feel like that’s a lie.”
-on destroying even more vital testing apparati
JUST LIKE THE CAKE!
“Nice!”
-on destroying yet another security camera
I’m pretty sure that the satisfaction that comes from destroying security cameras is the only thing that has been keeping Madelyn going.
Spoiler Alert: “Everything freaks you out” pretty much sums up Madelyn’s experience with this game.
“Isn’t the whole point of having a portal that I don’t have to jump anywhere?”
-on the purpose of portals
If only Madelyn had remembered this quote a bit later…
“I don’t think GLaDOS and I are going to get along.”
-on her relationship with a malevolent AI
Just to be clear, this foreshadowing was completely unintentional on Madelyn’s part.
“That was antagonizing.”
-on GLaDOS telling her the puzzle is impossible
Classic competitive Clickbait Girlfriend right here.
“This is bad.”
-on being able to shoot two portals
I think that Madelyn would have been more excited about portals if she realized their back-scratching utility.
“Oh that wasn’t the puzzle? I thought that seemed kind of easy.”
-on putting a box onto a button
Madelyn went through the full five stages of platforming grief. She started with denial:
“Platforming is my strong suit in gaming, so this is going to go well.”
-on jumping
Then moved on to anger:
(Just to be clear, this platforming section required you to clear 4 short jumps in a perfectly straight line.)
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me that I have to go back and platform again…noooooooo!!!!”
-on failed platforming attempt number 2
Next is bargaining:
“This is stupid. I don’t play this game to platform. This is a shooting game not a jumping game.”
-on fine-grained distinctions between videogame subgenres
Madelyn would like Portal a lot more if there were doggos. Get on it, Valve!
At this point Madelyn had moved on to the depression stage:
“This is embarrassing.”
-on failed platforming attempt number 4
Finally, after many jumps gone wrong, Madelyn reaches acceptance:
“I feel defeated.”
-on not understanding how to jump
At this point, Madelyn realized that she actually didn’t need to platform at all. She could have just shot a portal on the other side of the room. Always be on the lookout for portal-able surfaces, ya newbie!
“That was a bad harbinger of things to come”
-on her inability to platform
“Jump, and then become superman.”
-on instructional signs
To be fair, I get where Madelyn was coming from with this quote.
“This is a personal attack on me.”
-on the self esteem fund for girls
“That’s it. This game isn’t fun anymore.”
-on turrets
Madelyn got really worked up about the turrets. Even though they have pretty clearly defined and easy-to-understand rules about when they will notice you and how you can dispatch them, Madelyn was so dead-set on not getting ANYWHERE near them that I’m pretty sure she never quite figured out how to deal with them. Perhaps Madelyn is rethinking her earlier quote insisting that this is a shooting game.
How Madelyn wishes the turrets worked.
“Yeah yeah, I know the cake is a lie.”
-on iconic graffiti
I always thought the “off-limits” areas were one of the coolest parts of Portal. There is a certain thrill to discovering areas that you “aren’t meant to see” and piecing together the story of Aperture Science. It’s really effective at creating a slight sense of unease, and at driving you forward to find more secrets. Suffice it to say, Madelyn was not as enthused as I am. At this point, the turrets were too distracting anyway.
“I’m already there.”
-on android hell
That’s all for this week, folks! Tune in next time to find out what happens next on Clickbait Girlfriend’s Portal adventure!