All the games I have on Steam that are First Person Shooter-Style Puzzle Games About Women Navigating Abandoned Scientific Research Facilities and Solving Cube and Button Based Obstacles With Their Robot Buddies, rated by how much I'm stretching the terms to fit this name
My word, that's a long title. Anyway, The Talos Principle 2 was on sale recently and, while I haven't actually played it yet, it reminded me that back when I did a post about The Entropy Centre I mentioned it added another entry to my another item to my list of “First Person Shooter-Style Puzzle Games About Women Navigating Abandoned Scientific Research Facilities and Solving Cube and Button Based Obstacles With Their Robot Buddies” games, a.k.a. Portal-likes™. I was going to do a post about them, and never did. So this is that list, and here are the criteria.
First Person Shooter-Style (FPS) Puzzle Games: Is it first person? With shooting? But in a Puzzle context?
About Women: Is the player character female?
Navigating Abandoned Scientific Research Facilities (SRF): Are you in one of these? After it has been abandoned? Navigating it? (Also, the player character being there won't count for judging the abandonedness of the place)
and Solving Cube and Button Based Obstacles (CBO): Cubes with which to push buttons? Buttons to be pushed by cubes? Cubes that have buttons on them? Buttons that have cubes on them but in a different way to the cubes activating the buttons?
With Their Robot Buddies: Do you have a lil' robo buddy to chat with between puzzles? Is this lil' robo buddy 1) little, 2) a robot, and 3) your friend?
Spoilers abound, so be wary.
Portal
The OG. Surely this one has to pass with flying colours, right?
FPS: Indeed, Portal is entirely first person, and you fire your Portal gun. Handy side-effect of being based on the Half-Life engine, I guess. 5/5
Women: Chell does appear to be a woman. In the absence of any evidence to suggest she is not, I'm going to assume she is. 5/5
SRF: This depends a lot on your definition of the word 'abandoned'; Aperture Science is less abandoned and more everyone died from deadly neurotoxin. The only person actually working in it is GLaDOS, but then against she is the entire operating system for the facility. And yes, I'm considering sapient robots to be people, c'mon now. So... 3/5
CBO: Lotta Cubes, lotta Buttons. You put the cubes on the buttons. 5/5
Robot Buddy: Well, Chell has GLaDOS. But she's not really a buddy; heck, for the first half of the game she's treated like a completely automated message system. Also, she's trying to kill you. That's not very friendly of her. So I'm afraid this only gets 1/5.
Total: 19/25
Portal 2
The OG 2. Let's see how much this one holds up.
FPS: Gameplay is identical to Portal 1. 5/5
Women: Chell makes her return, so she's still as much a woman as she was before. 5/5
SRF: Aperture is more abandoned than it was before, if we're counting 'everyone dying' as 'abandoned'. And while GLaDOS was around for the first one, she too has succumbed to the passage of time and Chell. Wheatley and the nanobots are the only entities around. I'm sure they're doing their best, but 4/5 'cause it fits the aesthetic better.
CBO: Still more cubes and buttons to be pushed. Even rounded safety cubes and new receptacles for them. 5/5
Robot Buddy: You actually have two now; Wheatley and GLaDOS herself. So while there are stretches of the game where you don't have them around, or one of them isn't very friendly again, they're integral parts of the story. Wheatley fits the robot buddy archetype better at the start of course, which GLaDOS being a reluctant hanger-on. But even GLaDOS gets some growth, and while I won't say she likes Chell, she has definitely grown a respect for the lass. 5/5
Total: 24/25
The Entropy Centre
It's like Portal, but with time instead of space.
FPS: It's like Portal, but with time instead of space. Rather than a Portal gun that opens Portals, you're equipped with an entropy gun that reverses objects through time. 5/5
Women: The heroine of this game is Aria Adams, a woman. 5/5
SRF: This might be the only one where the facility is actually deliberately abandoned rather than having all the residents die. I mean, the residents did die, but only after they decided to collectively abandon the facility. 5/5
CBO: The Entropy Centre not only has cubes, but it has more types of cube! We've got regular cubes, we've got cubes that shoot lasers, cubes that make light bridges, cubes that help you jump, cubes that mimic other gameplay elements in Portal... point is, they're all in cubes or cube-like shapes (cuboids). And buttons, those too. 5/5
Robot Buddy: Aria is joined in her mission by ASTRA, a friendly little AI built into Aria's entropy gun. She fills Aria (and, thus, the player) in on the backstory of the eponymous Entropy Centre, though as she has had her memory wiped just before the game she can't help you with the current situation beyond telling you where to go and providing encouragement. Also, you can give her a little hat! Adorable. 5/5
Total: 25/25, this game is somehow more Portal-like than Portal itself.
The Turing Test
It's like Portal but with... robot philosophy? I don't know. I'd say 'energy balls' since that's what you're using most of the time, but Portal also had energy balls for puzzle elements before they were swapped for lasers in Portal 2.
FPS: Like in Portal, your main tool is a gun. In this case it simply absorbs and releases energy balls, but it's even more gun-shaped than the Portal gun. 5/5
Women: Ava Turing is a woman... but this only gets 3/5. If you want to know why, read on to 'Robot Buddy'.
SRF: The moonbase on Europa is not actually abandoned at all. Not by the inhabitants at least, the people on Earth seem to have given up on it but the ones sent there are still around. They're hiding from you, but they're still there. Waiting. In the walls. Or in a secure area, whichever. 2/5
CBO: This is the kind of game you'd think has a lot of buttons in. There are cubes, sure, and you can pick them up and move them around and stuff. But these cubes are all power sources to be slotted into sockets, there really aren't many puzzles that require placing them onto buttons, Portal-style. 2/5 because it does have cubes and the idea of putting them in places (though they're not even really cubes anyway. Cuboids again.)
Robot Buddy: The puzzles are broken up between little dialogues between Ava and TOM, where they discuss things like the Turing test, the Chinese room, and other thought experiments related to the sentience of AI. So normally, this would bring it to 5/5, it's like the quintessential robot buddy sidekick role. Except, as one will learn mid-way through the game or by continuing to read this sentence, you aren't actually playing as Ava at all. You are playing as TOM, who is in turn controlling Ava's actions. So if anything, the roles are reversed. TOM is the player, and Ava is his human buddy sidekick. 1/5.
Total: 13/25, on a technicality
The Talos Principle
Hey look, it's the game I mentioned at the start. The first one, anyway.
FPS: It's first person, that much is true. You don't get a gun, however. You do get an axe, and the image of a robot running around with a primitive metal axe is very nice, but it's not a gun. However, and this is a point that needs to be made; The Talos Principle actually started life as a testing area for Serious Sam, which is an FPS. So it has FPS in its bones. 2/5
Women: So, the Talos Principle's protagonist is a robot. And you learn nothing about who they are as a person. I'm not even sure they know who they are as a person. But, one thing I do know about the second game is that your character names themselves Athena, and I am assuming considers herself a woman. Does that mean she was a woman during the first game too? I really don't know. The philosophy of gender identity is a complex enough beast for humans, so I'm really out of my depth when it comes to robots. 2/5, barring any further information.
SRF: Welllllllllll... Kinda. You are in a scientific research facility, and there are no humans left in the world. But the actual gameplay doesn't involve the place much at all. Your character is actually in a simulation of different environments running on a computer (Elohim) within this facility. But the simulation you're in is also a series of ruins. So... 2/5 again?
CBO: It's actually called a Hexahedron, I'll have you know. This is a fancy geometry term meaning 'cube'. 5/5
Robot Buddy: In addition to The Player/Athena being a robot, you also get to chat now and again with an entirely digital entity known as Milton. It's kind of a dick, honestly. And it's not there all the time. So there's always an AI present since you/the world are/are inside of an AI for all/most of the game, but you/Elohim don't count as a 'buddy'. Sorry. 3/5
Total: 14/25
For further comparison purposes, here are two games that, while not simply mods of Portal 2 (you need to own Portal 2 to download them but they are their own separate application within Steam) are non-canon fan games designed to expand the world of Portal in a non-canon fan fiction way.
Portal Stories: Mel
FPS: As this is, as mentioned, a fan made stand-alone mod of Portal 2, it runs off the same engine and is intended to be a non-canon prequel to the events of Portal 2. So yeah, the gameplay is pretty much the same. 5/5
Women: You play as Mel, who, like Chell, I'm pretty sure is a woman. She's an Olympic athlete, and one of the volunteers for Aperture Science's experiments back when they could get that quality of volunteer. If the name sounds familiar, it's probably because Mel is a very common name. Also, she was intended to be the player character of Portal 2 before they went with Chell again, and then was going to be the Player 2 in the co-op campaign before they went with the robots. 5/5
SRF: Like I said before, this is set between Portals 1 and 2, in the long stretch of time between GLaDOS dying and GLaDOS waking up. So the facility is about as abandoned as it ever was and is ever gonna get. 4/5.
CBO: I said before that the gameplay was the same, and that's the case here too. There are a few new puzzle elements, but the Cube-and-Button aspects stick around. 5/5
Robot Buddy: Mel is joined by Virgil, another personality core who acts as Mel's guide to the world after she's woken up from her primitive form of cryogenic storage. He is friendly to you. 5/5
Total: 24/25
Portal: Revolution
FPS: Again, like Portal Stories: Mel, this is a stand-alone mod of Portal 2 so it runs of the same engine yadda yadda. 5/5
Women: The player character is not named in this game, but in true Portal tradition she is a woman as well. Let's call her Pel. 5/5
SRF: Yeah, like before, you're in Aperture Science between the events of Portal 1 and 2, 4/5. Listen, you cannot say that the facility is being poorly maintained by sapient robots and get full marks for abandonment, that doesn't work. Either get rid of the robots' intelligence or eat the point loss.
CBO: Again, Portal 2, buttons, cubes, the whole shebang. They even have the red energy barriers that kill you like in Mel (these are used in a variety of Portal 2 fan games). 5/5
Robot Buddy: Pel is woken up by Stirling, a Wheatley-esque Personality Core. Like Wheatley, he needs your help to escape the facility as it is breaking down. Also like Wheatley, he turns on you mid-way through the game and becomes the main villain of the story. Unlike Wheatley, Stirling is more condescending to you from the start and just not as likeable as the pre-corruption Wheatley was. After this shocking but inevitable betrayal, Pel is joined by Emilia, another Personality Core who is more of a typical robot buddy. If I'm being honest I didn't care for either Core too much; Stirling spent most of his time being patronising and Emilia spent most of her time trying to tell me stuff I already knew. 3/5
Total: 22/25
In Conclusion:
Huh? I'm doing conclusions now? Oh OK. Well, Portal 2, despite being the alleged baseline that these games are working from, didn't get full marks (albeit over a technicality regarding the word 'abandoned'). The Entropy Centre did, the Portal 2 mods got the next highest, and the lowest points went to The Turing Test, or The Talos Principle if we're not going to count the other technicality with who the 'player character' of TTT is. But then again, is higher points in this list something games should be striving for? If anything, a lower score on this list is just a higher score in the 'originality' list. Don't get me wrong, I liked The Entropy Centre a lot, but the Portal influences were strong even if the core gameplay mechanic was totally different (or mostly different, anyway). While the two games designed to be like Portal 2, which were also enjoyable, I didn't care for anywhere near as much. There's a lesson here, somewhere.
The Entropy Centre #22⏪(End) - Zara The Silent Gamer
The Entropy Centre is about Aria and her Entropy Device named Astra as they try their best to navigate the long abandoned Entropy Centre. I had a lot of fun with this game.
Even though I did get frustrated at times, it always felt satisfying once I figured out a puzzle. The story is genuinely interesting, and I never thought I'd become emotionally attached to a piece of machinery. It did feel a little stretched out near the end but over I had fun.4/5.
