Judging by my previous Portal based mumblings, you might have worked out that I have indeed purchased the now infamous Orange Box and have partaken of the game called Portal.

To start with, here’s the grade I give it: [10/10]. Now that we’ve established that it’s a very, very good game, we could discuss why. In fact, since I wrote this first little segment of text I have in fact played Portal a few times, including once on the commentary mode, just because it’s so good, before coming back to finish this writeup.

To bring those who’ve never heard of Portal up to speed, the premise of the game is simple: You wake up as a test subject in a laboratory of some sort and are tasked to go through each test chamber using Portals, little dimensional gateways that take you from one place to another in the blink of an eye. You eventually retrieve a Portal gun which allows you to fire Portals around as you see fit.

But why is this game so good? What warrants this game getting a perfect score? To be honest, pretty much everything. It’s all there. Graphics, sound, gameplay, replayability, extra bits added on that give you a few different challenges, they’re all in place, being excellent, as we’d come to expect from Valve. But what Valve have also included are 4 other key features which make the game stand out. It’s time to go all geeky, so if you don’t give a gubbins about Portal then don’t click below. Otherwise, join me through the Blue Portal…

The first thing Valve have included is innovation. It’s been a long while since I’ve played a PC game where I’ve been genuinely amazed at how it works. I’ve peered through portals, fired portals into random places just to see what would happen, dropped things through portals into other portals, essentially I’ve messed about like a child with a new toy. Which, in a way, I am. The puzzles in Portal are so well designed and so clever that it’s a joy to play them. It’s a refreshing change to the regular First Person Shooter approach of ‘run around, point, shoot’. Whilst this is clearly a tried and tested formula, it’s just nice to have a first person viewpoint where I’m not gunning things down and blowing things up. Granted, there is some violence involved, via gun turrets that try to shoot you, but you have no choice to use your non-violent Portal Gun to stop them trying to kill you.

The second important inclusion is humour. Presumably Valve realised that the game couldn’t be too serious, else it’d end up being a somewhat deep and meaningful affair, so to make it a little more light-hearted they injected some comedy into it. If you’ve played the game then you’ll know that the main source of amusement (and also a strange sense of unease) comes from GLaDOS, the machine that controls the test centre you’re in and who speaks to you in a bizarre, faltering, disembodied voice. It’s clear from the start that GLaDOS isn’t quite psychologically stable and as you get further and further into the game you do feel a tad concerned about where this is going, because your only guide is quite clearly a mentalist. Humour also comes from elsewhere, such as the polite yet murderous gun turrets that chat to you as a friend, not a target, and the growing awareness that cake is somehow important in the Portal world. It’s important in mine too. Hhmm, cake.

The third thing is a sense of place. It’s hard to describe but when you’re playing you do genuinely feel a little bit closed in by all the walls, you do start to wonder who is watching you from behind that frosted glass window, it just feels right. There are quite a few things put into place that give you a sense that you belong in this world, the main one being the clear signs that someone else, another test subject, has been here before you. Throughout the test chambers you’ll sometimes run into secret rooms which have fevered, insane scribblings on the wall, or sketches of GLaDOS’s cameras. In one hidden place you’ll find a calendar from 1983, which makes you wonder just how long these tests have been going on. Again, it sets the scene a little further and adds some more mystery and confusion to your surroundings.

Finally, the fourth thing, the most obvious thing, is… the weighted companion cube. Aaaww, look at it’s little heart. A friend to you at one part in the game, plus a friend (or possibly more) to the poor soul who ventured through the test chambers before you, the weighted companion cube has become a surprise hit ‘character’. Credit indeed to Valve who have managed to create a character out of a box that only appears in one section of the game.

Without a doubt, Portal is the game of the year for me. I enjoyed every moment of it and am eager to see where Valve go next with it. I’m also intrigued to see how they fit the Portal storyline into the Half-Life world.

I’ve read on forums and the like that people are asking for a multiplayer version of Portal. I’m not sure this would work, given the context that the Portal game is in. There’s no reason for people to be killing each other with portals, it’s a refreshing non-violent concept and I hope it stays that way.

Thing is, knowing the good folk at Valve, they’ll probably do something we least expect, like add the ability to create 10 portals or something daft, which would not only mean that everything would be a lot more complicated but it’d also mean that my brain may well turn to mush and begin to pour from my ears.

Now I’d like to remind you that I cannot speak, but if I do speak, please, disregard my advice.