I had been seeing the quote “The cake is a lie” all over the Internet recently, almost to the same level of saturation as the old “all your base are belong to me“. So I decided to look into why the cake is a lie, if indeed a lie it is. And I do like cake! So a quick  prayer to the god of all knowledge Google granted me the Divine knowledge I needed. It was from a game called Portal, which was a current popular game amongst geeks. Not wanting to loose my “Geek Card” I did my best and got hold of a copy of the game and kick it off.

The game  is a first-person action/puzzle video game developed by Valve Corporation (The guys who brought us Left 4 Dead).  The game is set in the science testing labs of the “Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center”.  You wake up in a small room and the voice of an AI informs you that you are being tested and you have to work your way through 19 test stages, where after testing has finished you will be rewarded with cake. The challenges get harder and harder the further along you go, while the AI inspires you with promises of cake.  The problems are solved by teleporting yourself, or items from one place to another by means of portals.  The Test chambers are very clean and modern, but the further you go, the more erratic the AI gets, slipping in the odd threat or gibberish. There are also parts where you can see the rooms behind the test centre, these rooms are all derelict and falling apart. With graffiti all over the place with parts of poems, or “HELP” written in what looks like blood, not to mention hand prints everywhere and loads and loads of :-

the cake is a lie…
the cake is a lie…
the cake is a lie…
the cake is a lie…
the cake is a lie…

After completing the final test chamber (this one with the sign for cake on it) the AI places you on a conveyor belt heading into a furnace, where you will be baked and there will be cake. Here you promptly escape, not to the Los Angeles underground, but the maintenance part of the testing complex. That is implying you wish to escape, you could stay and be burnt alive in the hope of getting cake I suppose. Those of you who did not wish to die and escaped now find yourself lost in the bowls of an underground massive complex, which is falling apart, and guarded by robots with machine guns. You now make use of your portal Gun to try and follow the clues left for you by some mysterious person.  All the time with the AI telling you that your going the wrong way, and if you give up now you can have cake. or my favorite one “they have already cut the cake, I told them to wait for you, if you turn yourself in now you may be in time to get the last slice!”  You eventually (if you can complete the puzzles) get to the control centre where you come face to camera with GLaDOS (The AI). Who promptly tries to kill you, with nerve gas and rocket launchers (some computer systems).  If you can defeat GlaDOS in the time you have before the nerve gas kills you, the control room explodes, and you wake up outside and free……

There is then one of the best credit sequences I have ever seen in a computer game, where GLaDOS sings a little called “Still Alive” while the lyrics are typed on a text based screen, with asci images. Its good………And it ends with CAKE!!!!