I’m calling it here and now. Portal is the Game of the Year. Certainly other games will come out this year which will prove to be amazing, even in the little time we have left. Games already have come out, some of them spectacular. None of them, however, will hold a candle to the genius which is Portal. None of them will be so universally endearing to all forms of gamer. Every element of the game is engineered precisely to capture your attention, and it achieves it with perfection.

Essentially, Portal gives you a portal gun and challenges you to finish each level. The portal gun works by giving you a place to enter and a place to exit almost anywhere you choose within the game. It’s a mind-blowing concept, because the game doesn’t just allow you to pass through these portals, it allows you to see through them as well. If you fire a portal onto a wall and then fire one behind you, you can quite literally chase your own tail.

It’s important to note that Portal isn’t a First Person Shooter. It’s a puzzle game. There is a boss fight, but the focus of the game is working out how to get around the various obstacles which are in your way. The puzzles are engaging enough to keep you enthralled, and challenging enough to keep you thinking, and this is part of what makes the game so very endearing. Once you finish the game, the Bonus Maps introduce new challenges, such as “Least Portals”, “Fastest Time” and my least favourite “Least Steps” (It’s the hardest). The advanced maps make some of the levels much, much harder by reducing the areas you can portal to and caging in turrets. Both of these bonus sections are rewarding and really add to the lifespan of the game and while the sense of accomplishment you feel when you beat a puzzle that has been challenging you is great, the best part of the game comes from the cast.

Not counting the main character, “Chell” who speaks as much as Gordon Freeman, and not counting the Weighted Companion Cube who cannot speak, the only actual character in the game is GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System), the AI program which walks you through the testing. A combination between a sociopath and a bureaucrat (haha, so just a bureaucrat), she tells you what your task is in each test. Her real purpose however is providing colour commentary as you go through the game and she does it really well. The writing in this game is the best I’ve experienced since The Curse of Monkey Island, and I think they captured the idea of a “Not Quite Human” AI really well. I loved the way she thought the promise of cake was the perfect thing to motivate a person into finishing the tests you are doing and everything she says uses this style. I found her so endearing that I was playing through a second time with the subtitles on so I could make sure I caught everything I missed the first time.

The graphics in the game are excellent, and because the game uses the Source engine it scales incredibly well for older machines. This is genius on Valve’s part, because it means the game can reach a much larger user base than it would on another engine, and yet it still looks great. It has adopted a minimalist style that conveys the feel of a testing facility really well, with everything looking sterile and white; it makes any changes in the décor noticeable which helps draw focus when it is necessary.

The technology Valve use to make the portals work is phenomenal, and the physics engine is utilised to an amazing effect. They worked very hard to make sure the physics engine is maintained between the portals. A lot of puzzles within the game actually rely on the principle that the momentum you have when you enter a portal will carry over when you exit the other portal. As the game says,
“In layman's terms: Speedy thing goes in. Speedy thing comes out.”
The process is called flinging, and to give you a better idea of how it works, in one level (my favourite level actually) the game gives you an exit about 100 meters above you, and platforms intermittently about 20 meters up. To reach each platform you make a portal on the ground at your level and then jump down a hole and create another portal using gravity to throw you up the distance you need. From there, the game requires you to put portals down on each platform, effectively stepping your way up to the exit. By the time you get to this in the game you’ll have flung your way to much more than just this and it should be a second nature, but when you stand at the edge of the exit platform and look down you still feel an amazing sense of accomplishment.

The strangest thing about my love for Portal is it’s only 2 hours long. Steam unlocked the game files at 5pm on October the 10th and I finished watching the credits at 7:02pm the same day. I loved every minute of it. Of course, it’s being sold at a budget price point, about a quarter of the price of your average PC or Xbox 360 game, so it’s hard to hold its length against it. In fact, the game isn’t limited to just the one play through, and it comes with extra challenges and advanced versions of levels you’ve already completed, so it has a good deal of life beyond the 2 hours the main story gives you.

People will try to write off Portal’s bid for Game of the Year, stating it is “too short”. They’re right, really. The game is too short, in the sense that 3 seasons of “Arrested Development” is too short because you never want it to end. If anything, however, this is a testament to how great the game is. It’s so excellently constructed that you want to continue playing it all the time. The Source engine might be getting a little dated, but they’ve still made this game look ultra polished. But the key thing is, this game could look like Quake 2 and if it kept the superb level design and excellent writing it would still be an amazing game. With the graphics it has, this is the best game you will play this year. The sooner you get it, the sooner you too can be thinking with Portals.