Nowadays, we’re seeing more and more mainstream video games which are guaranteed sales through hype and promotion, yet turn out to lack any innovation or uniqueness.  These games survive the short run, but are doomed to be lost in time, forgotten. For a console game to become critically acclaimed, it seems the trend to: 

Every blue moon, a game comes along which makes us question what makes a console game great, a game which asks us why we like it so much, and we can’t quite answer. A game that gives us a chance to prove to our peers: ‘Video games can be an art form, not just mind rotting, addictive running ‘n’ gunning for losers.’ Valve’s response to this was the phenomenon that was Portal.

When Valve released a bundle of five(!!) very different First Person Shooters called The Orange Box for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2007, it gave two much improved continuations, Half Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2. As well as this, it offered the rest in the Half Life 2 series: Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 1. Both Team Fortress and Half Life are regarded as two of the finest game series in their respective genres, and were both unique in their own right. However, neither was as unique as the other game in this package. 

The concept for Portal is so simple. You have a firearm which can fire portals at surfaces, such as walls, ceilings and floors. There are two portals: Orange and Blue, and whichever you go in, you come out the other, like a wormhole. The entire game is solving puzzles using your state-of-the-art portal gun, and your objective is cake (or is it???). It is a rare example of an idea which sounds a little gimmicky on paper, but when executed perfectly, it could be something very special.

And it could not have been executed better. The whole ‘portal gun’ concept holds out perfectly, and though it’s easy for even the most open-minded gamers to give it a miss, I can assure you that once you pick it up, you will refuse to put it down. The pacing of the game is wonderful, although the difficulty curve wouldn’t hurt to be a bit steeper considering the game’s length. You begin waking up in your cell (which has no door), at an 'Aperture Science' laboratory, where a portal appears and leads you to the start of a series of testchambers, which serve as the game’s levels.