"Theres a hole in the sky... through which things can fly!"

Portal is the first of it's kind. And hopefully, many more will follow.

From the makers of the esteemed Half life series comes Portal. In this game, you wake up, get a gun that makes holes in the fabric of reality, upgrade that gun, learn some new tricks, be taunted with the final reward of cake, attack a giant AI, and completely destroy the laws of Physics along the way. A typical Saturday. And guess what? You don't even get to eat the cake. It's a loading screen.

Gameplay: 10/10 This type of gameplay has never been seen before. However, for a pioneer on the technology, it is a great game. Make a portal, make another portal, walk through said portal, come out of of other said portal, badda-bing, badda-boom. Of course, cubes, companion cubes, turrets, rockets, incinerating energy balls, and pretty much anything else you can think of flys through these portals. See what I mean by "Never been done before"?

Controls: 10/10 How can it be any simpler? Mouse buttons create portals, run with w s a d, jump with space, pick up and use with e, and pause with Escape. That is all you need to complete the whole game. Simple? Well it has to be, considering how tricky the game is at times.

Story ?/? There is no story. You wake up in a testing facility, are told what to do and how to do it, machine trys to kill you, and there you go. It is funny what GLaDOS says over the course of the game, especially about the companion cube. Also, there are references to Black Mesa labs from Half-life 1. In one of the rooms, if you look through a window, there is a power point presentation going on about how your lab is better and should get all the grants (and with what happened at Black Mesa, maybe it shouldn't have gotten those grants). So there you have it.

Replay value 10/10: One of the greatest features of portal is that you can import maps from other sources, such as portalcake.com. This gives this game near infinite replay value. Also, there are harder versions of all the levels, and many bonus maps. As you can see, you can never stop playing Portal. The cake says so.

Overall 10/10: This is one of the Greatest games of all time. No questions about it. Whats there not to love? However, if you are one of those people who hate Portal, lucky for you there are 4 other games on The Orange Box, 3 Half life games and Team Fortress 2. Well, thats it. I've wasted enough time, I have to get back to Portal!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/05/07

Game Release: Portal (US, 10/09/07)