Portal

If you only play one video game in your life, it should be Portal. Its a non-violent puzzler has plenty of action and brain bending to keep you interested, and lots of wit and heart to keep you entertained. I personally do not know a single person who started this game without finishing and loving it, including friends who rarely, if ever, play Xbox or other games. Portal will warp your mind to think in an extra dimension, and for that you will love it.

The bottom line:

Complexity: MEDIUM

Learning curve: LOW

Play time: Usually 10-12 hours altogether

Players: 1

If you like:

• Puzzles
• Humor
• Challenge

you will like this game.

More on how things breaks down, after the break.

Concept:

You take control of a woman who is being held captive in a scientific facility as part of some kind of study. Outlining the parameters of each phase of the test is GLaDOS, an AI whose personality falls somewhere between a passive-aggressive phone operator and 2001's HAL. The crux of the test is a gun that fires portals, one blue and one yellow. You project these portals onto any compatible surface (most are) and you can step in the blue door and out the yellow, or vice versa. The surprise of how this plays out is most of the fun, so I won't spoil it by saying anything more than like all good puzzle games, Portal has a simple mechanic that leads to some fantastically devious puzzles and very satisfying solutions.

Gameplay:

The game is a First-Person Shooter minus the shooting. For those of you not familiar with the lingo, that means you'll be looking out of the protagonists eyes, in this case down the barrel of the portal gun. The game does a fantastic job of easing players into the rules and mechanics of the world and the puzzles, meaning that just about anybody can pick up and play Portal. The puzzles scale nicely in difficulty, so before you realize it you'll be an expert with the portal gun and the mental acrobatics necessary to operate it. And that is not an exaggeration, the puzzles demand the player to think so far outside the box you'll be looking at the world in a whole new way, but since the game takes you there one step at a time there are few, if any, frustratingly difficult puzzles. Most people don't get stuck for more than a few minutes, and I have never seen anyone fall into angrily wandering the game looking for the next path or solution, as is all too common in this genre.

No word of warning:

Typically we put a few cautionary words here to warn those whose tastes might disagree with our endorsements, but with Portal there really isn't anyone who needs to stay away. I'd recommend this game to anyone, young or old, gamer or non-gamer. (Really, I don't have to recommend it to gamers, they already know.) If you can get some time to sit down with Portal, you won't regret it.

PS: Alright, so that might not be entirely true. Portal is a puzzle game, so it assumes you like to think. 

So, if you don't like:

• Thinking

this might not be the game for you. Not that I'm judging, but that's not something I would admit if I were you.