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Portal is one of the three games in the compilation package The Orange Box from Valve Corporation. Along with the game Team Fortress Two, and the game Half-Life2 and its expansion packs Episode One and Episode Two, the entire package is only $50. Half-Life 2 and its first episode have been available for some time, so buying the entire package is not practical for everybody. Luckily anyone who wants to buy Portal on its own can buy it for twenty dollars. The game is available on PC and Xbox 360, but can only be bought for the Xbox 360 with the rest of The Orange Box.

The story of Portal is intentionally minimal. The player wakes up in the Aperture Science Incorporated testing center without being told anything about their past or their environment. Guided by a mysterious computer voice (identified as GLaDOS in the credits), the player is given a portal gun and told to run through the testing center while completing a series of puzzles using the portal gun, allegedly as a way to product test the gun. Soon it becomes apparent that there is something unusual with the testing center and GLaDOS.

The main attraction of the game is the portal gun. The gun creates two portals, one orange and one blue that are connected to each other. The player can look and walk through, or send other objects through either one of the portals. The portals can be created on any surface and placed at any distance. This can let the player perform a variety of tricks, like place one portal at the end of a long room and the other portal at the other end of the room and walk through the portals to reach the other side instantaneously. The player can also put one portal on the ground and one on the ceiling and fall through the two infinitely.

The two portals do not even have to be facing the same way. One portal could be put on the ceiling and the other on the wall, so when the player walks through the wall they immediately start to fall from the ceiling. Or one portal could be placed on the floor and another on the wall so the player can fall through the first portal and come out upright a few feet away. Traveling through the portals takes no time at all; it feels just like walking through a door.

The purpose of the gun is to complete puzzles such as moving blocks onto faraway switches, or cross gaps that cannot be traversed normally. The puzzles are never impossible, they usually can be solved quickly, but at the same time, the answer is never quite obvious.

The graphics are nice and somewhat realistic, though not particularly memorable. Most of the game takes place in the testing center which is filled with nothing but white walls, brown walls, and the occasional office. The rest of the game takes place behind the testing center and looks like a large boiler room with hydraulics. But it's a realistic looking boiler room.

An enjoyable and unexpected component of the game is the computer voice GLaDOS. At the beginning of the game, she acts like an instructor or an announcer over PA system, stating instructions, announcements, and safety precautions that are both humorous and morbid in a pleasant monotone. Then when the player figures out something is wrong and tries to escape, GLaDOS becomes more personal, using persuasion, threats, bribes, and lies in an attempt to slow down the player. She tries to sound more like a person in an effort to convince the player to stop, but fails at imitating humanity, making her funnier. She also has a strange affinity for cake which makes her more endearing.

The biggest problem with Portal is that the game is really short. It only takes about two, maybe three hour,s to complete Portal. And there is not much incentive to play the game again. The first two thirds of the game, the part that takes place in the testing center, is just an extensive training exercise on how to use the portal gun by puzzles. The puzzles are not very malleable; there is usually only one way to complete them. There might be a couple of variations on how to solve one or two of the puzzles, but nothing drastically different. Since the puzzles do not change every time Portal is played, there is little challenge in playing the game again.

Then there is last third of the game when the player runs around the rest of the building. There the puzzles are not presented in such an obvious manner. There are a couple more unusual ways to solve a puzzle, but that part is over fairly quickly.

Portal is a fun little distraction, but not really a complete game. Maybe it will get its own expansion packs that will extend the game to a suitable length. Until then, it is nothing more than an enjoyable break from playing Half-Life 2.

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