Portal's brilliance and wit make it an excellent game that's innovative, challenging, and entertaining in many ways.
Portal gives no background to its story or world, and it doesn't have much of a developed plot. Throughout the game, though, it becomes apparent that the girl controlled by the player is a test subject for a gun that shoots portals. This concept carries the story alongside an odd computerized voice, apparently named GLaDOS, who talks to the player throughout the entire game. GLaDOS' lines offer up countless witty moments that often forced me to laugh out loud. The humor is about as clever as it gets, and though GLaDOS remains a mystery right up to the game's finale, its voice makes for a surprisingly brilliant villain.
The concept of Portal is that, as mentioned before, the player is given a gun that can shoot portals, hence the game's title. Eventually, the gun is able to shoot two portals that link together, allowing the player to navigate around rooms with relative ease. This concept of a portal gun is marvelously executed through the work of the game's fantastic level design. The objective is always to simply reach the end of the level, but to activate the platform that takes the player through the final gate, switches must be held down by weighted cubes, energy balls must find a place in receivers, and the player may very well have to come up with a creative way to fling himself or herself up into the air or across a large gap. Portal's level design offers just about every imaginable use of this concept of a portal gun, creating a brilliant and thoroughly enjoyable game.
With such brilliant level design comes plenty of challenges. The game's concept calls for oodles of potential challenges, and Portal makes use of seemingly every single one imaginable. The portals create a rock solid element on which to build the game's many challenges, which include figuring out how to launch the character across a room, directing balls of energy to their receivers, and many more that I would rather not spoil. The game's obstacles are almost always challenging in some way, but I found them all to be doable with a bit of thought and close observation of a level. Solving each of Portal's puzzles is simply delightful and satisfying; I know I felt very accomplished after figuring out how to pass a few particularly challenging scenarios. If the main story isn't challenging enough for you, though, there are also advanced maps and extra challenges available to tackle, and these bring on the game's true degree of difficulty.
Despite all of Portal's brilliant achievements in its concept and level design, though, it is a painfully brief experience. The main story takes a maximum of 3-4 hours to complete, and though there are six advanced maps and plenty of extra challenges, they do not substantially extend the game's longevity. To pay any more than $15 for the game would only be worthwhile for people who have already played it and enjoyed it enough to the point where they simply must own it. I still find it to be a wholly worthwhile game despite its shortness, though.
I couldn't run Portal on very high graphic settings because of my computer's capabilities, but I have seen it on consoles before and it certainly looks sharp at maximum graphical potential. The game's look fits its mood well with plenty of black and white, setting a dark but futuristic sort of tone. The game also sounds great, even aside from the witty and hysterically computerized lines from GLaDOS. The portal gun makes a cool noise when it is fired, the portals themselves make a sort of mystical sound, and the turrets that show up every once in a while also sound believable. These turrets also speak, and they actually sound quite creepy as they say things like "I see you" in eerie robotic voices.
Portal is a simply fantastic game. Despite the apparent lack of length, the brilliantly executed concept and phenomenal level design make it a blast to play. The level of challenge also makes the game engaging, and oh so satisfying when the game's obstacles are overcome. Portal is easily worth a purchase at $10-15, but if you're about to pay any more than that, make sure you've played it before so you know if you like it or not. But I don't see why you wouldn't like it, because its brilliance and wit make it a simply excellent game.
Positive:
+ Extremely witty sense of humor
+ Creative and marvelously executed concept
+ Brilliant level and puzzle design
+ Challenging but doable
Negative:
Short. As in painfully short.
9.5/10