Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Grows on you"

I never owned The Orange Box and I only have a Mac so I never played Portal until this release. This just further exemplifies what's so great about XBLA, WiiWare, and PSN. Short games that never have a dead moment and don't extend the life of the game artificially. There's leader boards to keep you playing for a while but it's those first 3 hours that completely engage you.

Portal's gameplay is physics based. You have two portals to shoot, one with each trigger on the controller. So a common example of a puzzle in this game is to shoot a portal at a surface far below where you're currently standing and shoot another portal high up on a wall. Then you jump through that portal below you and the momentum you've gained falling applies once you come flying out of the one you placed on the wall. Hopefully sending you over a large pit you couldn't otherwise cross. Puzzles also involve objects, laser vision turrets, and/or buttons or floor switches among a few other surprises.

The gameplay managed to do such crazy tricks with these portals that it was like a revelation for my eyes. I'd never seen anything function like that. That's something hardly any game has ever done (for me). But then you combine that with a simple yet fantastic, funny, and creepy story and it becomes a really rare kind of game that offers you something new from a bunch of perspectives. I won't ruin anything, but this story would only work in an interactive medium.

Presentation is very solid, obviously it's exceptional for an XBLA game but it was initially for consoles and PC. On those terms the textures are a little muddled up close but the lighting makes them look nice past a certain distance. The reflections in the portals are great. And the art direction really succeeds in every direction it take you.
The sounds are very high-techy stuff that totally work within the art direction and vision of the game but don't make the overall package pop out at you anymore, they just hold down what's there. The voice acting however is perfect. It's a driving factor to play the game further. It's funny, has meaning in the game, and fits perfectly with the visuals.

It's really well rounded and tightly knit. They aren't dragging you through unnecessary puzzles to extend the game there's a lot of purpose and fun to this game. If you like good puzzles I'm sure you'll enjoy this. While a lot of them are extensions of stuff you do early on some of them will get you to think a good amount. If you're looking for a great story I'd also recommend this to you because this is a good example of something that wouldn't make for a good movie but makes for an excellent game. Right through to the ending credits.