First, a question that may occur to some of you. Why am I reviewing Episode 2 and Portal separately when they come in the same product, The Orange Box? Wouldn't it be wiser to review The Orange Box in its entirety? Well, see it would be, but the thing is I'm not a professional reviewer. I'm not getting paid to do this, and the games aren't dropped in my lap, so I just sound off as I play them, and I don't really lose sleep worrying about how my opinions affect other people's purchasing decisions. That being said, The Orange Box is a great product, even though the copies currently being sold in India do not work out of the box, which is a terrible thing to do to a paying customer, even if they can download the games legitimately with the key they obtain on purchase. Withhold the cookies from now on.

As for Portal itself, this is a game that every person who even loosely considers himself a gamer must play. It is short, can be finished in one sitting of a few hours and replayability of the main game itself is well...limited. So what's the big deal, then? What Portal does is it strips your gaming experience down to the bare bones, gives you a new mechanic to play with and polishes the progression till it's nice and gleaming. First getting to grips with using the portals and then eventually mastering it is a euphoric feeling, akin to the first time I saw bullet time in Max Payne or began abusing the Gravity Gun in Half Life 2. The game puts you through a series of 19 tests, with what's almost a perfect learning curve. Sometimes I found myself stuck for a few minutes, but there is no puzzle that basic logical thinking cannot get you through.

And when you start, there is the bare minimum presented to you - every chamber feels like a sanitised environment, with only the building blocks and elements that you need to make it through. As you progress, you begin to see cracks, chinks and other elements that hint at a dark underbelly, and towards the end...well, I won't spoil that for you. This feeling is best engineered by GLaDOS, a mechanical female voice that guides you through the challenges and appears understanding, whimsical, manipulative and menacing all at the same time, and almost without a hint of inflection in tone. The effect is all down to brilliant dialog and perfect comic timing, and even without having a face to speak of, GLaDOS is definitely one of the most memorable characters in recent times.

The much touted companion cube scene didn't have as much effect on me as I expected, though thanks to some previews, I was sort of expecting it. But for someone who went into it unawares, I can imagine that the experience would be more effective. Nonetheless, without any dialog, any animation and any character whatsoever, it was still nominated for 'Best New Character' on G4 TV. That's saying something.

At the end of the day, it's all the little things - the benign voices of the turrets, the desperately scrawled graffiti you find in tucked away areas, the brilliant ending (when's the last time you heard that about a game?) - that come together and flesh out an already solid concept that make Portal such a great experience. There's no question, you just have to play this.