The Orange Box was released this past Friday for the X360. As a selection of five titles all produced and developed by software powerhouse Valve, the main draw for many will undoubtedly be the ability to finally play Half Life 2 and it's subsequent episodic gaming on a console for the first time- not being a PC gamer, myself included. There is of course, more, as also included on the disc is the renowned multiplayer-fest Team Fortress 2 and Portal, a spiritual successor to Narbacular Drop, and the game I played and completed last night to much delight.

Beginning in the overtly-clinical Aperture Science laboratories, the story starts with you waking up from a cell, as with all good stories, your memories in tatters. From here and through the voice of a computer AI governing your every move, you soon learn that you're to take part in a series of tests. Armed with the subsequently found portal gun -a device that allows you to create portals in space, this is where the majority of the gameplay lies, and where the game naturally gets it's title from. Controlled entirely from a first-person-perspective and set largely in corridor-based mazes, your job is to reach the end of each of the nineteen chambers, in an idea that's seemingly very inspired by the notion of "guinea pig". Your new-found 'gun' allows you to move about the 3D space at your leisure, with you able to create both exit and entry holes to the portal. What follows is a somewhat inhumane endurance of traversing the chambers by solving the puzzle(s) in that room, where early levels involve only teleporting crates to act as lever weights, and later levels demanding you think about momentum between the holes and the scenarios around you.

As you progress, levels become more sinister and taxing, with obstacles such as toxic waste and even robot sentries standing in your path, slowly making the game more difficult with each chamber. The lone notion of this sinister, dark, even doom-laden experiment however is reinforced numerous times throughout the game. With the environments so disturbingly white and clean there's a slight shock to be had from discovering that you are indeed not the first person here, and obscure wall markings of madness and paranoia make a rather interesting distraction from both the game mechanics and the art direction as a whole. This idea is emphasized further with the fantastic mini plot-twist that takes place within the final chamber, and the closing half hour of the game is at a complete contrast to the previous three hours, the game ending both fantastically eerie and surreal at the sametime. For a game that seemingly needs no story whatsoever, it is appreciated, and as a drive, a focus, it certainly helps. While not noticeable at first, there is, very much, an enemy or two in this game as you'll soon discover.


At anything from two to four (or more?) hours playtime, Portal certainly isn't a game with much depth or even lifespan. As a title however, it's surprising how much thought and production has gone into the game overall- certainly more than many contemporary full-price games. Similarly there's more innovation and fresh thinking in these four hours alone than many first-party titles, making this game an absolute must. With the game's ending fresh in the mind however, it is slightly difficult to go back to the game again, but also because, well, you know how to solve these puzzles. As an adventure into gameplay mechanics and physics on crack however, that first play of Portal is awe-inspiring, special, and more importantly, memorable...there was cake.