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Portal is a title that sends gamers back to a day of humor that they thought was lost in the ages, prior to slapstick, one line, in your face like a can of mase comedy antics. Portal offers a multi-level assault on the brain, not only through puzzle challenges but through the dialogue based GlaDOS system that monitors the performance of the player as they advance through the levels. Anything from simple mockery of human inferiority to accidental slips about disposal of the player upon completion of a task.

The gameplay itself is really direct, take blue portal gun and open up doorways, figure out how to guide through the level via the single portal gun until you reach the end, this of course may include setting off triggers, tricking triggers or just being inventive and testing the limits of luck and plumetting into a portal only to come out from the upper wall at a blistering pace. Play further and obtain the orange portal gun, not only are players able to make entrances but they can make exits where-ever they pretty much feel they wish to do so. In this the game gets a bit more complex, players are soon left to figure out how to navigate around active sentry bots, over walls with minimal interia to throw them over and with the epic decision of how to depart from their beloved companion cube that they go through such tough perils with.

One of the most rewarding sequences is the final stage, I wont go so far as to spoil it but I will say that for those that had enough patience to go through the game without spamming portals everywhere as if this was the eliminator in american gladiators, that  it will deliver a worthwhile experience that probably hasn't been had in ages. For those who were so busy trying to time attack a game not in the time attack mode, well thats a pretty large loss but it is doubtful that the user in that case would recognize the quality of the humor employed.

Portal is an absurdly short title at around 4 hours of total play time on the first run, but it has a certain attraction to come back, not just for the challenge tasks or the custom maps which are still in need of a large quality upgrade but for the simple novelty of toying with these levels.

Will there be more to Portal in the future? One could say that, there are functional commands to unlock limited multiplayer gaming, but overall the game stands in a league of its own right now.