It's kind of hard not to find a gaming podcast not lavishing praise on Portal as an amazing game that could possibly be game of the year.  Well last night I trudged my way through the last couple levels to finish portal.  The game is fairly short, took me about three and a half hours to complete, comprising of 19 puzzle maps you need to traverse. 

The concept behind Portal is you are an employee of a company and have to solve puzzles to get to your exit.  Early on in the game you get a gun that can create portals between two locations.  The idea is you shoot a yellow portal at a wall then shoot a blue portal at some other surface and do this to cross over hazards or to get blocks from one location to another. 

Early on the levels are very short and are very easy to solve.  I didn't feel really challenged until the last four test chambers in the game.  The game requires some basic understanding of geometry and problem solving to get through the test chambers.  By far the last level was the longest and the most tedious of them all. 

Needless to say I was not as impressed as others have been with this game.  I think it's a great idea and the fact it was originally done by two college students is great.  This game probably is better suited for someone who likes to have lot of little puzzles in their games.  Personally shooting a portal over a turret then pushing a block through another portal of that it falls on the turret isn't really all that fun.  The fact this game came bundled in with Half Life 2 makes it a nice add on for the console game but I would not pay more than $10 for this as an individual download from Steam.