Portal

Reviewed by Lewis Denby (August 04, 2008)

For a game that toys with such an inventive idea, it gets it miraculously spot-on in one attempt. The whole thing is strikingly intuitive, meaning that within ten minutes you've grasped the fundamental concepts of the whole thing, and your progression is simply down to your thinking power. Solutions are often abstract or lateral, but never illogical, meaning there's a sense of reward for every one completed. The difficulty and complexity curves are handled brilliantly, with the introduction of the portals themselves coming a while before you get your hands on the fantastic portal device, and the puzzles themselves always a logical progression from the previous one. It's always fast-paced, always interesting, and always stupendously entertaining.

Reviewed by bigcj34 (July 04, 2011)

Valve doesn’t just do original game-play. The game-play may make a game good, but the experience and overall package make it great. Valve have created a breath of fresh air using many ideas from Half-Life. The protagonist remains quiet and can only be seen through portals, and the ambience of a science facility draws many parallels to Black Mesa.

Reviewed by JEFFARGH (October 12, 2007)

A woman fires an obtuse, pale weapon in to a pit, jumps down roughly two stories, pops through a hole in her original level, and is propelled to an elevated platform. In the android supervisor’s Microsoft Sam-esc voice, “fast stuff goes in, fast stuff comes out.” Such is Valve’s new game, Portal, part of their Half-Life 2 Orange Box compilation.

Reviewed by southy787 (April 30, 2008)

Portal, the hidden gem nestled within the treasure chest of The Orange Box can now be purchased as a standalone title, allowing a whole new wave of gamers the opportunity to revel in one of the most innovative productions the industry has seen in a long time.

Reviewed by Suskie (September 22, 2008)

So get this: I’ve got a friend who has never played Portal yet can still recite the game’s maddeningly catchy end credits song, word for word, along with his two nerdy buddies – I might be one of them – who like to sing the tune in public places just to freak people out. He’s cited the mechanical GLaDOS, the closest thing Portal has to a main character, as one of his all-time favorite villains, and has even brought up HK-47 (of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic seri...