Valve Software is best known for Half-Life and Half-Life 2, which are both revered as some of the best first person shooters ever made. In October 2007, Valve released The Orange Box, a long awaited compilation of Half-Life 2: Episode 2, the second episodic expansion to Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, a team-based multiplayer shooter, and arguably the oddest of all, Portal, a first person puzzle game.

Developed by a group of former students, Portal is the shortest, sparsest, and least hyped part of The Orange Box, but it is in many respects the best. Portal blends humor and mind-bending puzzles into one of the best games of 2007.

In Portal, you play as an unlucky test subject of an AI gone mad. Forced into experiment after experiment, your only choice is to navigate deadly obstacles with the portal gun, or as it’s formally called, the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device.

The gun fires two linked portals: what goes into one comes immediately out the other. The concept is difficult to grasp at first but is incredibly freeing, and it leads to some of the most imaginative gameplay in any genre, not just the first person puzzler, a category that Portal practically invented by itself. Jumping in and out of walls and floors, maneuvering energy balls into generators, and dropping boxes onto turrets is an exercise in quick thinking and timing.

While solving puzzles, you are taunted, encouraged, threatened, and lectured by GLaDOS, the only speaking character in the game aside from a few turrets and one of the best written characters in a videogame in a long time.

The rogue computer is reminiscent of a malevolent HAL 9000 or SHODAN crossed with the dry wit of a comedian, and the expertly acted voice that ping pongs from threatening to manic serve as a perfect complement to the puzzles.

If anything, the writing sometimes overshadows the gameplay, especially in earlier levels, where once the basic concept of portals is grasped, the difficulty stays at an unduly low level for too long. Valve purportedly tested Portal over and over again to make sure players never got stuck, but this diligence may have paid off too much, and most gamers will find themselves wishing that Portal was a little harder.

Bonus maps and challenges similar to the achievements available on the XBOX360 add both time and difficulty to the game for those willing to attempt them, but Portal still suffers from being short and easy. With the exception of GLaDOS’s monologues, the graphics and sound are sparse.

Whether this effectively recreates the feeling of a test chamber or simply annoys you depends on your aesthetic sense as much as it does the game. For what it’s worth, the clean white walls and gray and white tiles benefit from The Orange Box’s updated version of the Source engine, which adds motion blur, depth of field, and other fancy things to keep the game looking fresh, if not appealing.

The music fades into the background as you concentrate alternatively on GLaDOS and the puzzles, and it sets the mood well, but the ambient soundtrack pales in comparison to the song that plays over the end credits.

Composed by nerd and humorous songwriter Jonathan Coulton, the song became an instant classic, and whistling the tune in a room of gamers can elicit an impromptu performance. Full of black humor and a few in-jokes, the credits are a perfect example of what makes Portal great.

This small addition to The Orange Box, now available as a standalone game on Steam, tries something different, succeeds wildly, and earns itself a place in gaming history. It is a must-buy, and while even the bonus maps and a second playthrough may only last you a few hours, user created maps are already available. Either way, Portal is a classic that no gamer should pass up.

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Though Portal is only one-fifth of the Half-Life 2 collection The Orange Box, it’s arguably the best part of the package, and certainly one of the most memorable gaming experiences of its year.

As Portal begins you wake up in a sterile cell, surrounded by surveillance cameras and bullet-proof glass. Feeling much akin to a lab rat, you are greeted by a female synthetic voice that politely starts giving you instructions and informs you that a portal will be opening shortly.

Said and done, an orange-rimmed, flickering oval appears out of the blue on the wall in front of you. Not having a great many options, you step through the portal out into a hallway, and take an elevator to the first testing chamber.

The first few testing floors mainly serve as an introduction to portal technology, and after passing through a few of them, you will be rewarded with the very premise of the game: the portal gun. With this handy tool you can create your own pair of portals that will let you bypass large distances.

In through one portal and out through the other, no matter where it is. With you becoming better equipped to navigate the chambers, they become increasingly complex and dangerous as you go on; all while the computerized voice gives you occasional advice and cheers you on.

Though it may share the first-person perspective and the graphics engine (and even the actual game world) with Half-Life 2, Portal is not a shooter – it’s actually tricky to label by traditional means, but we would call it a puzzle/adventure game. The portal technology itself is a lot of fun to use.

Not only do objects move through portals, they also retain whatever physical properties, such as velocity, that they had when going in. If you place one in the ceiling above you and one on the floor right below your feet, you will be falling forever, or until you decide to move one of the portals.

If you place them on walls opposite of each other, you can look through one and get an illusion of endless distance, seeing yourself from behind, looking through a never-ending series of smaller and smaller portals. Fun as the portals are though, this wouldn’t amount to much more than a gimmicky and well-done puzzle game if there weren’t more to it.

After awhile, the dryly humorous synthetic voice that guides you along develops into a great character of its own right, and as you make your way through the chambers, the game will take on a more psychological and slightly disturbing nature.

You will come to notice cracks in the polished façade of the sterile, science-lab like rooms you pass through – signs that others have been there before you, and that some things may not be what they seem.

If there is a downside to Portal, it is that it’s short. At 5-6 hours or less depending on your puzzle familiarity, you can readily complete the game in one sitting. However, brilliant writing and design make it feel just right, and it seems to come to and end just about when it’s supposed to. Adding on more hours wouldn’t really have served to make the game any better.

It should say something about the quality of Portal though, that even with its modest length, it would make the Orange Box worthy of purchase by itself.
Half-Life? You’ve played other games like it.
Team Fortress? Been there.
But we dare say that you have never played a game quite like Portal before. It may only be a couple of hours long, but they will rank among the most refreshing and witty hours you have invested in gaming for a long time.

So do yourself a favour and give it a shot. If you’re anything like us, you will find that trigger-happy little robots who attempt to kill you on sight, as well as weighted metallic cubes with pink hearts printed on them; are both eminently lovable.

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