Portal Review

Portal - The Flash Version
Available online, Adobe Flash required.

http://portal.wecreatestuff.com

This is a spin off based off of Valve's highly successful Portal game, available through The Orange Box for the XBox 360. Valve also created the Half-Life Saga.
Portal is all about getting from the entrance of a room, to the exit. Simple enough. Now add in portals, allowing teleporting from one place to another. Pretty sweet.
In the game, you use the portal gun that shoots yellow and blue portals. Once both colors are set up on walls, you can "walk" through yellow, and come out through blue; vice versa. Easy to use. Okay, now add in obstacles such as pits, moving platforms, un-portal-able walls, sentry bots, force fields of various types, cubes, buttons, switches, doors, electrified floors, and even Gravity. That's when it all gets complicated.

The game design is simple, almost sidescrolling--without the sidescroll. Its a concoction of platformer, advernture, and puzzle, and its "father" from the 360 also incorporated first person shooter to the list.

In the Flash version, everything from the 360 version is simplified into a nice package. Not too easy, not too difficult. Its easy to pick up online anytime you're on a computer. The levels progress at a good pace, slowly getting you adapted to the type of thinking that's used in solving the puzzles. Once you're ready, then it starts to escalate, quickly challenging even the most talented Portal-shooter.

Just like it's "father", the end of the game leaves you sputtering for more, so you go back and replay it again. The beauty of it, you can solve each room in a different way. If you're skilled enough, you can even use what is called "portal stepping."

I highly recommend this game, for newbies, as well as for experienced, 360-Portal veterans looking for a way to feed the Portal craving. This game is enjoyable even if you haven't played the "father", but I recommend playing both to get the full experience of the Portal idea. Join the cult.

Oh, and Portal: Still Alive for 360 is coming out soon.