I’ve only dipped into Valve’s omega bundle The Orange Box long enough to play through Portal‘s narrative. And it doesn’t take long with Portal to figure out that everything we’ve heard is true:

1. It is short.
2. It is awesome.

Really, there’s more game there than I expected. Finishing the story opens up advanced and goal-oriented versions of some of the later levels. I didn’t have much trouble with the standard rooms, but the advanced stuff has me mumbling “how the fuck” and wishing I’d spent more of my developmental years working on spatial visualization. And the goals, like finishing a level in the least amount of time or using the fewest portals, is challenging to the point of being unreasonable.

I’ll get around to the Half-Life goodies and Team Fortress 2 at some point, but Portal is clearly the breakout star here. I just wish it ended the way Aaron suggested: with your character giving the portal gun to Gordon Freeman. Would have made every future HL release a must-buy.