Portal

Portal is my favorite puzzle game of all time. Utilizing superior physics that revolutionized gaming, it was both challenging and entertaining.

The central conceit revolves around a special gun that can create portals in walls, allowing the player to immediately travel from one window to another. The game is a series of puzzles the player must solve to reach a reward at the end. Besides being challenging, the game includes some very humorous elements.

Some have complained about the brevity of the gameplay, but this game was originally part of a 5-game compilation called The Orange Box, and Portal was deemed by many to be a minor inclusion in a collection that included the highly anticipated Half-Life 2. Portal was a surprising success.

However brief the gameplay might be, it is of high quality. And I have to say the ending (song) is my favorite of all time.

Portal is a work of genius, hands down. Only genius can use cake as a philosophic standpoint, argue to kill an inanimate object, and give you sufficient reason to love things out to kill you (much less call them cute). Further more, what kind of game is this? is it a first-person-shooter? a puzzle game? a comedy? It is (more or less) all three...

Without giving too much away, you play as a character (later on named Chell) that receives a device capable of producing portals. These portals allow you to travel across a room, walking in one portal and out the other instantly. You are guided through an expanse of testing and experimentation by a computer known simply as "GLaDOS", or Generic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. Things are not quite as they seem while you make your way through the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.

This game is worth the attention, and probably the most inventive thing I've seen out of the gaming world in my life. Get it. Now. =)

Brilliant, gorgeous, and one of my favorite games in this genre.

In short, the game is perfectly made, and even more so at its age.

At the same time, an interesting plot is combined with interesting and even challenging logic puzzles.

There is humor that dilutes the intense thoughts after the level.

The game is atmospheric, it has references, and after completing it, a pleasant impression remains.

And since the game is based on logic levels, you can replay it several times as soon as you forget (after a couple of years, calmly).

Be sure to play it. It's pretty fast, but very memorable...

You go through different rooms solving puzzles; it kinda is that simple, but it really isn't. Where are you? Why are you held prisoner? And who is the disembodied voice guiding (taunting[?]) you along? Excellent dialog and dark humor are enough to propel you through challenges that range from fun to tough-as-nails.

Puzzle games and first-person shooters: never been a big fan of either, but both are combined here into a mind-bending journey through a high-tech lab. The portal gun itself is a fun game mechanic, but it's really all you have to make your way past machine-gun robots, lasers and electrical fields. There's also a companion cube which, oddly enough, becomes sort of a sidekick.

Technically there's running, shooting and a boss fight; but in the end, it is unlike any video game I've ever played and it is a must for anyone who can get their hands on it. It is short, but I can hardly consider that a negative - because as soon as I finished, I started over and did it all again. Twice.

I wasn't a person who enjoyed puzzle games much, due to there not being enough innovation in any of them. Then I played Portal and I was truly blown away. Yes, the game's length is something that should be considered, even being completable in one or two sittings, taking only three hours. But its what it does in that time that really seals the deal. The portal gun is an incredibly well-designed and very interesting concept, and you'll be hard-pressed to not muck around it at least once in the campaign. Throughout the game, new concepts such as turrets are added in to make more a challenge. The humour is great, with GLADoS' dialogue being written nice, but the game also knows where to stop itself, a large reason why the game is so hilarious. The game looks pretty good for a 2007 game. It's not bad looking by any stretch of the imagination, and you shouldn't be playing this game for its visuals. To rap things up, Portal is a must-play due to its unique take on the first-person shooter genre, and while you might be scared of its short length, picking it up in the Orange Box is a brilliant idea.