Portal (Spoilers!)

Portal is a PC videogame developed by Valve, the same company responsible for the Half Life series of games. Portal was released in a bundled videogame package called The Orange Box, along with two other Valve titles: Half Life 2: Episode 2, and Team Fortress 2. Portal takes place in the same Universe as Half Life 2, but it is not disclosed when the events of Portal take place with respect to the events of Half Life 2. Portal, much like the original Half Life, takes place mostly inside a large research facility, with very little chance to see outside. This allows Valve to keep the story of Portal completely separate from Half Life 2.

Portal is a hybrid style of game, combining the genres of First Person Shooter and Puzzle game. In Portal, you have control of an advanced piece of technology that enables you to fire an energy beam at a wall and produce a portal on that wall. By producing a pair of portals on different walls, one can travel between these two locations by walking through the portal. The game requires you to navigate through different rooms and buildings, using the portals to traverse obstacles and solve puzzles. To understand why you might be required to do this, you need to know the story of Portal.

In Portal, you are awoken from a long sleep in an unfamiliar laboratory owned by Aperture Science. The only sign of life is the synthesized voice of an intelligent computer called GladOS. GladOS gives you the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (ASHPD), and asks you to test the experimental device by working through a series of obstacle courses. Between GladOS's discourse, the increasing danger of the obstacle courses, the mysterious absence of other people, and the disturbing red handwriting written on the walls of the hidden areas of the research complex, you soon realize that GladOS is trying to kill you and you must find a way to escape the building. After escaping the confined area of the obstacle courses, and working your way through the abandoned research complex now controlled by GladOS, you eventually find GladOS's central computer building and have a final confrontation with it.

Valve is scheduled to release a sequel to Portal this Summer, which after the popularity of the first game is planned to be a much larger game, with more levels, features, and online multiplayer capability. It's a game I'm looking forward to playing very much.