Portal

Overview

Portal is Valve Software's first commercial puzzle game, to be released in a package along with Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2. Portal is developed by a new batch of Valve employees, Digipen graduates led by Kim Swift who made an innovative puzzle game called Narbacular Drop as their final project. Portal takes the ideas and gameplay of Narbacular Drop and expands upon it - a spiritual successor of sorts. It's been confirmed by Valve that it takes place in the Half-Life universe, and that it is set around a similar time during Gordon's travels through the canals in early HL2.

The Orange Box box art containing Portal.

Only single-player mode is available at this time, but Swift has mentioned that there are a lot of interesting multiplayer possibilities, leaving speculation open to the fans for later dates. The final game was released on October 10th for the PC (via Steam) and on the Xbox 360 (via Orange Box). A PS3 version came out on December 11th.

Story

Portal places you in the shoes of Chell the new test subject for the company Aperture Laboratories, tasked with testing an experimental weapon called the "Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device," or ASHPD. This gun creates portals on almost any surface, an ability the player must use to get to the end of the level, avoiding obstacles such as machinegun turrets and energy balls.

Weapons

The ASHPD is also capable of gravity gun-esque physics manipulation, so that you can pick up objects and drop them through the aforementioned portals, however unlike the gravity gun, the ASHPD is not able to 'punt' objects. The game presents myriad interesting puzzle and logical opportunities, given that any horizontal or vertical plane can be used to create a portal, resulting in somewhat mind-bending possibilities.

Reception

The game is purportedly 1.5 to 2 hours long, which has said to be disappointingly short for a game. Several trailers and gameplay videos have been released if you wish to see this gameplay in action, however the levels featured in these trailers were never included in the final game, as they were seen as too easy for even the simplest of levels.

Requirements

Minimum:

 1.2 GHz Processor, 256MB RAM, DirectX 7 graphics card, Windows 2000/XP/ME/98, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection, CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive

Recommended:

 2.4 GHz Processor, 512MB RAM, DirectX 9 graphics card, Windows 2000/XP, Mouse, Keyboard, Internet Connection, CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive