The Orange Box [Half-Life 2] [X360]

Portal

Portal is Tetris for the next generation. It's a new kind of puzzle game that finally takes advantage of the 3D space and does something fresh and innovative. Set in the Half-Life universe (there is a direct story link to Portal in Episode Two), you play as a test subject at the Aperture Science Center. With an experimental portal gun in hand, you must navigate through nineteen levels, each time with the goal of reaching the lift to the next challenge. There is also a promise of cake should you complete the test.

The portal gun is ingenious. One trigger fires a blue portal, the other fires orange. You (or any object) go into one portal and come out the other. Shoot a blue portal at the ceiling and an orange one at the wall next to you. Step through the wall and you will find yourself falling from the ceiling. You maintain your momentum through a portal, so that you can create an infinite fall and gain incredible speed. Then, as you fall, aim your next exit portal from a slanted overhang. You will shoot out at incredible velocity, allowing you to leap a hundred yards to another ledge.

Progressing through the levels, your character discovers a few areas where the test scenery has been broken off. For brief moments, you can step behind the scene and read mad scribbles from previous test-takers. "The cake is a lie!"

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Pushing you forward in your training is the disembodied voice of an AI program. The dialogue is comic genius, the kind that is very hard to come by in a videogame. You will likely laugh out loud at some of the things the AI program says during the course of your evaluation. She has a sardonic wit that plays well against her robotic voice. The sense of humor is slick and adds quite a lot to Portal, which is not a particularly deep game.

The first fifteen puzzles in Portal are a real breeze. You can whip through them in a half hour easily. And, more than likely, you'll be wondering why anyone was making that big of a deal over this game. But it's the final few levels that will tax your brain a touch and add enough exciting story elements to evolve Portal into something beyond just a puzzle game. Few of the puzzles are difficult to solve, though the execution to get past them can be a challenge in the last two stages. Still, the puzzles themselves aren't that creative. It's the concept of Portal that shows ingenuity. And, all told, you should be able to beat the game in two hours.

However, it should be noted that advanced versions of puzzles unlock once you beat the game, as do time trials and other challenges. Tackling these will add considerable time to the play clock. Portal doesn't fully deliver on its promise, but is certainly a game worth playing. If nothing else, it has the greatest song to ever play in a game's credits.