Portal (Xbox 360 Version)

Ironically, Valve don't usually make very different games these days. They all run on the Source engine and anyone could notice the huge similarities between, say, Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike: Source. Despite this, even though they all run with a lot of similarities, they're all GOOD. Valve just do what they do really well, and it's enough because the products are always damn enjoyable games. Yet Valve have outdone themselves again, as with Portal they have shown an ability to not only have another good game on the Source engine, but also something completely different.

Portal is a puzzle game. It's not a shooter, it doesn't have multiplayer, there are no zombies and there are no counter terrorists. It IS in first person, but it wouldn't be the same if it wasn't. You begin the game waking up in a holding cell, as an unknown character (well, a Mexican woman with yellow eyes) and are set along a path to begin a chain of puzzles which, ultimately, will all revolve around opening the next door to the next area and to the end of the test where you will apparently be served cake and given 'grief counselling'. To do this, as the name suggests, you use portals. The main tool of the game is the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, and when you have the fully upgraded version given to you about a 1/10 of the way through the game it is able to shoot two different types of portals onto any flat, white surface: one blue and one orange. Go through one portal, and you'll come out the other. While this is a simple concept, this evolves into a huge number of different uses, the most difficult of which being the 'momentum' technique. This involves jumping off a ledge into a portal on the floor, which will gain enough speed to launch you through another portal and onto a ledge you couldn't otherwise reach. Of course this done using Valve's standard modified version of the Havok engine.

But with all this, Portal is just a puzzle game with a new mechanic, albeit with something that's hardly been touched before. What sets it apart is the environment. Sure, on the surface it is just a set of white-walled rooms, filled with buttons and doors and 'Emancipation Grills', but the way the AI character GLaDOS starts off guiding you through the areas but slowly becoming more sentient-sounding and eventually all-out sinister, and the chilling markings on the wall from previous test subjects writing things such as the iconic line 'The Cake Is A Lie', and the reality of the Enrichment Centre when you leave the test area; all these things make it not just a small side-project of a game but a full game in its own right. It's memorable, and even though you learn just about nothing of who your character is, or who made the Enrichment Centre that your tests are in, the mystery of these things is what sticks with you enough to have a real impact on the player.

While Portal has the features of a high-budget and well written game, it is still a short experience of about two hours. However, seeing as this is amongst the giants that Valve have released such as Half-Life 2, this is a gem, and probably one of the best puzzle games ever released. 9/10.