Originally beginning as a fun mini-game attached to the Half-Life 2 Orange Box collection, Portal quickly won the hearts of gamers and spawned its own franchise. Portal and its sequel even have their own internet memes and merchandise and now, if you don't have it already, you get get the game for free to see what all the hype is about.

Portal 2 released earlier this year, featuring a full-fledged campaign and adding co-op features, with Steam support that allowed for cross-platform play between PlayStation 3 users and PC gamers. As one of Valve's own key properties, they're offering it to you, right now, free, as part of their "Learn With Portals," campaign which encourages the teaching of physics, math and more through use of the game.

Simply go to Steam and install away for one of the great things to come from the video game industry in 2007 - hurry, as the deal expires on Tuesday, September 20th. More importantly, you need to play it to see what led to the great video game experience that was Portal 2, a game of the year contender that we awarded with a 5/5 score.

Portal is a very unique first-person shooter, which doesn't actually involve shooting enemies like your standard FPS fare. Instead, Portal and its sequel are platforming puzzle games where the player, playing a silent protagonist stuck in a maze, is equipped only with a portal gun.

Players must work their way through a series of challenging puzzles in Enrichment Center for Aperture Laboratories, as the "villain" of the game, GLaDOS, works to taunt and test the player.

With Portal 2 becoming the critical success that it was, it's only a matter of time before Portal 3 becomes a reality, a game that Valve won't even hint upon. With still no news on a Half-Life 3, it may be a long while before it happens though as Valve is in no hurry to rush, a tradition we both love and hate. Quality wins over quantity, but really, we want to play more Portal.

-

Follow me on Twitter @rob_keyes.

Source: Steam