Portal Menu on the SHIELD
Nvidia has been talking about the fact that Portal will be coming to SHIELD since they announced it at their GPU Technology Conference along with the $199 price cut of the SHIELD. Since then, the guys at Valve and Nvidia have been working feverishly to deliver a working port of Portal from the PC to SHIELD. Well, we got an early access to the APK a few days ago and we’ve been playing it ever since, and the verdict is that its virtually impossible to tell whether or not I’m playing on my PC or on my SHIELD. I’ve played Portal before on my PC and the experience on the SHIELD might even be better because you’re so much more focused on the screen and the speakers are right in front of your face. Every time I pick up Portal on my SHIELD, another 10-20 minutes seemingly evaporate within what feels like seconds. Portal is just one of those games that you can’t help playing, especially after a really long break in playing the game.
Portal on NVIDIA’s SHIELD
The gameplay with the SHIELD feels incredibly natural and I hate to admit it, but I think I like playing Portal more on my SHIELD than I do on my keyboard and mouse because of how immersive the experience is. This is a great game that you can play virtually anywhere and anyone can enjoy. My only concern is the replayability of Portal for people after they’ve dropped the $10. Not to mention, this may expose a new generation of gamers to Portal that have never played it before (the game is 7 years old now). But since it is only coming on on SHIELD for now, which is understandable considering the controls, most of the people that will be buying Portal for SHIELD will probably already own a PC and have already bought Portal for their PC or have gotten it for free through some bundle or sale like most of us have. You can see all of the screenshots we’ve posted are actual gameplay of Portal from the SHIELD.
Playing Portal on Nvidia’s SHIELD
The game itself will be available to the general public on May 12th, for the ripe old price of $9.99 which if you ask me, is a bit pricey for a game that sells on Steam for PC for exactly the same price. Even so, nobody actually would pay $9.99 for Portal, they would wait for some sort of bundle or Steam Sale, which honestly would be an awesome thing for Nvidia and Valve to do, sell an ‘Orange Box’ like deal for the Steam-based Valve games ported to SHIELD. I would be really excited to see what other interesting things other than Portal Valve and Nvidia are able to accomplish, perhaps even simultaneous launches of Valve PC titles with the Tegra/Mobile version? Eh, maybe we’re just being too optimistic, but after our experience with Portal on the SHIELD, we can’t help but be overly optimistic.
