Portal, by Valve, is an engaging and innovative first person puzzle-action game. The game’s key mechanic is the portal system, namely, gateways that teleport things in one portal and out the other. With the game’s “Portal Gun,” you’re able to create these portals, colored orange or blue. Then you tag them onto walls, ceilings and floors to solve puzzles and traverse the game area, while avoiding hazards.The portal mechanic, the game’s key feature, is quite interesting and bears a lot of potential for merely playing around with it. For example, you could tag your orange portal on one side of a hallway, and tag the blue portal across from it on the other side of the hallway and, by traveling through these, continually chase after yourself. If you tag a portal on a wall, and then the other at the bottom of a pit, you can jump into one and get catapulted across the room when you exit via the other.
This mechanic, combined with the game’s pervasive and delightfully warped sense of humor makes it a joy to play. However, if the game has one shortcoming, it’s that it’s perhaps a bit too short, easily beatable within an evening. However, considering it’s packaged with four other games, that’s a forgivable offense, when money is taken into account.