Hmmm...
Right in the description the hopefully attentive reader will note that the game will be Portal-y. But how far does the inspiration derive? This is a question that will no doubt haunt the player.
The story is very simplistic, a framework designed to give the game some premise. It does its job, but tried a tad too hard to be vague. I don't know about others, but I certainly haven;t seen much on the ways of vague logs. That sort of defeats the purpose of a log, no? Technicalities aside, it sets up some interesting questions. Who is she? What disaster? What all happened? these are questions that, like Portal, remain somewhat unanswered, but unlike Portal, this game doesn't even bother trying to address these. Sigh...
The gameplay is marvellous and inventive. Cloning is a recurring element in flash puzzles, and so is toying with gravity. Mashing both makes for some interesting puzzles, and trying to keep track of all four clones is an interesting task. Many of the puzzles required only to keep track of one or two clones, which usually meant in later puzzles having to walk one particular guy around a death trap while the other clones were conveniently walking into a safety wall. The game does require the player to eventually utilize all four clones effectively to progress, but it is not until the last level that all four have to be kept alive in order to proceed.
The gameplay is smooth, and the animation is crisp. Basic, not flashy, and it gets the job done.
The music has a decent melody, but the percussion is annoyingly constant.
The voicing is clear and audible, and fortunately does not randomly cut out when the character dies (that was nice). The text is conveniently placed so as not to block the player from important objects, and is an easy-to-read font (and spelled correctly!). Much of the flack that arises is for the voice.
The voicing in the introduction is designed to draw the viewer towards Glados. However, the similarity is not strong. The aspects of Glados that are accentuated is simply the Glados that wishes to hurt the protagonist. Other's have pointed out how Glados behaves in Portal, so I won't do that here.
Aside from the intro, the color palette, and the voice, not much connects to Portal. But the game literally talks with an attempt to be Portal.
Is it a true homage to Portal? Or did it just take aspects of Portal because the developers were focusing on gameplay and thought that if they made some weak Portal referances, they could pass it off as a Portal-inspiried game and not have to do any thinking into character work or story.
Good game. Play it for the innovative puzzles. Just don;t expect Glados to be convincing.