Originally a throwaway game included in the compilation package The Orange Box (featuring Half-Life 2, two expansion packs for it, and Team Fortress 2), Portal was the breakout hit of 2007. Not content with raking in critical acclaim in the form of multiple awards—including Game of the Year and Best Game Design from the Game Developers Choice Awards—it also gathered mass popular appeal in the form of internet memes, official merchandise and fan-made crafts. The source of all this acclaim? A simple, yet ingenious design, an engaging premise, a darkly funny script, and what is quite probably the best song ever played over ending credits.
You play as Chell, a young woman who wakes from stasis in the Aperture Science Enrichment Center and is instructed to test the Handheld Portal Device, a gun that shoots controlled wormholes to connect two points in space. Instructions are given via the AI, GLaDOS, a calm female voice that promises cake as it leads you through rooms filled with jets of fire, oddly polite gun turrets, and other hazards. After a point you start finding out what's behind the scenes and things only get darker—and funnier—from there.
Images:
Chell, chasing herself through walls
Your best friend in the place, the Weighted Companion Cube
Carrying a turret around, so it won't shoot
M. C. Escher would love this
GLaDOS, herself
Game trailer
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Librarians everywhere know how to give a book talk. How about a game talk, instead?
