It’s not all too often that you’ll be playing a game that does something new; something that hasn’t been done over and over again in almost every other game. One such game is Portal, a clever three dimensional puzzler based on the incredibly popular Half-Life universe.

Portal got its beginnings when a group of students from DigiPen were invited over to Valve to show off their little project, called Narbacular Drop. Walking out of the demo room, little did the students suspect that they’d soon be hired and encouraged by Valve to further flesh out their project.

Since the inspiration behind Portal started out as a Senior game project, it’s no surprise that the game feels a bit like a technological showcase. That being said, however, Portal is incredibly fun – even if it can be quite frustrating at times. If you’re a fan of the Half-Life 2 universe and enjoy the occasional puzzle, this game is guaranteed to please.

Set in the world of Gordon Freeman, players control a female test participant, named Chell, as she makes her way through the test labs of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. The games starts out with Chell waking from a cryostasis bed enclosed in an otherwise empty cell, in an empty room. The only other form of intelligence in the room, and throughout the game, is the mechanical voice of GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System) – think of her as a female version of HAL 9000.

After being told what you are expected to do, GLaDOS releases you from your cell, and instructs you to head towards the only exit in the room. I’d better not say much more about the story line, because there really isn’t all that much to it. But, what little there is, is cleverly crafted and quite entertaining while it lasts. An added bonus to the puzzle element of the game is the humorous quality of GLaDOS’s commentary as you make your way through the game: “And remember, Aperture Science’s take-your-daughter-to-work day is the perfect time to have your daughter tested.”

Once your in the first of the 19 levels, you really get a feel for what the game is all about. All of the levels present the player with what essentially amounts to an obstacle course. The levels get bigger and far more complex as the game progresses, but the main challenge in all of them is that you need to get from point A to point B. Sounds easy, right?

Well, not really. The earlier test chambers might be quite simply, with only a small chasm to cross, or a button to press. However, as you get further along you’ll run into all sorts of trouble; for instance, you’re in a room with no immediately discernible exit. You scan the room from left to right, then again from right to left. Nothing. Then you look up and see that the ceiling is a good 200 feet high, and that in the far corner there appears to be a small ledge with what looks like a door. Great. “How do I get there,” you might wonder. The only other structures in the room include a deep pit (without an exit at the bottom) and various pedestal-like platforms of different heights in the middle of the room. The pedestals are way too far apart for you to jump them – and if you fall, you die. So, the only reasonable solution seems to be to first jump to the lowest of the five pedestals, and then, perhaps, to the next one…But you can’t jump those distances and there aren’t any ladders, stairs, elevators, or man cannons available. What do you do?

Bring on the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device! The portal gun is the essence of what makes Portal completely unique. Using the portal gun (which you get in the third level), players will be able to create an intra-dimensional portal between flat planes, allowing physical objects to instantly travel between entry and exit nodes. Portal ends can only be created on certain planar surfaces, which greatly enhances the puzzle factor. As the game progresses, the placements of portals necessary to complete a challenge become crazier and crazier, which will often lead to bizarre and confusing twists in geometry and gravity. A critical component of intra-dimensional travel is the fact momentum is preserved, or as GLaDOS puts it, “speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.” This effect is very useful when you want to launch yourself across a room.

Despite the fact that Portal is a very unique game on many levels, this only makes it all the more painful when it all comes to an end. In fact, Portal is actually quite short; an experienced played will have no trouble playing through the game in about three hours. On top of that, Portal is a puzzle game, which means that once you know how to solve a particular problem it’s hard to forget, resulting in little replay value. On a bright note, though, Portal (on the PC anyways) comes with an SDK (Software Development Kit), so expect there to be plenty of user created levels in the near future.

Portal is part of a Valve bundle package known as The Orange Box, which is available for the PC as well as the Xbox 360. The Orange Box also contains: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, and Team Fortress 2. The PC bundle retails for $49.95, while the Xbox 360 version goes for $59.95 – which I think is a rip-off, since the PC bundle provides far more value through the inclusion of the SDK. If you don’t care for the rest of the games in The Orange Box, then you can always get Portal as a standalone game through Steam. If you go this route, it’ll cost you $19.95.

BUY: The Orange Box