Portal: Still Alive • Eurogamer.net

Portal writer Erik Wolpaw has left Valve

"You want your freedom? Take it."

Valve writer Erik Wolpaw has left the famous Bellevue, Washington studio as of today.

Here's a thing.

Before Portal, there was another game. Designed by a handful of students at DigiPen Institute of Technology, Narbacular Drop wasn't much to look at: it was brown and buggy and the word 'Narbacular' doesn't actually mean anything at all. But it had something incredible going for it. It had portals.

VideoVideo: Portal Stories: Mel isn't Portal 3, but it could be

The icing on the cake.

Holy mother of mod, Portal Stories: Mel is awesome. Developed over the course of four years, this fan-made mod for Portal 2 is a standalone game of such quality that it could almost be mistaken for a true sequel to the much-loved series.

GLaDOS voice in new Guillermo del Toro film

Pan's Labyrinth director a fan of Portal.

Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro has revealed the first trailer for his new monster movie Pacific Rim, which stars GLaDOS voice actress Ellen McLain as a robot AI.

Brink dev bellows Portal praises

"Greatest" design "we're ever likely to see."

Few people will praise Portal higher than lead Brink writer Ed Stern.

Portal sells nearly four million

Excluding Steam.

Hours after releasing Portal 2 on Steam, creator Valve has announced predecessor Portal has sold close to four million units.

But Portal has likely sold substantially more copies. As GameSpot reports, the four million figure excludes digital download sales from Steam.

Portal launched in 2007 as part of the superb The Orange Box compilation.

She's still not even angry.

Narbacular Drop

John Walker corners Kim Swift about the game that spawned Portal.

Kim Swift sprang to fame as the project lead on Valve's wonderful first-person puzzler, Portal. It was a game that managed to be brilliantly clever, incredibly funny, and yet accessible to a wider gaming audience. It's with this philosophy that Swift begins her new job heading up a team at Airtight Games. We took this chance to look back over the path that took her here, beginning with the game that inspired Portal, Narbacular Drop.

Portal: Still Alive

Piece of cake.

Last week I reviewed BioShock. Today, I'm reviewing Portal. Tonight I'm gonna party like its 2007. It's foolish to complain though, since it's actually quite refreshing to see that the best games of twelve months ago are still a formidable commercial presence in an industry so often fixated on the next big sexy shiny thing rolling down the conveyor belt.

Portal, for anyone just emerging from a long stay in a dank Mexican prison, is a first-person puzzle game based on the Half-Life 2 game engine and featuring a story that takes place in the same world as Gordon Freeman's adventures, even if the crossover is limited to background details and vague allusion.

You're a test subject in the Aperture Science laboratory. There don't seem to be any other people, but you're guided through a series of test chambers by the mostly soothing tones of GLaDOS, the facility's AI computer. She introduces you to the concept of portal technology - the ability to create wormholes in space-time that allow you to walk through a solid surface and emerge somewhere else. Using this mind-bending concept, your task is to navigate each chamber and reach the elevator to the next section.