Downloaded it, played it, beat the main storyline in three hours. Brilliant game, though simple and short.
It may get me into Steam, also, as opposed to my two prior Steam games where finding out they were Steam after the fact (having bought them in a store) got me out of the games. It remains to be seen if this breaks me of my pathological aversion to purchased downloaded no-hardcopy content…
Did this game make anyone else nauseous during the course of their play? It happened to me on several occasions when you have to use portals to get into really strange and akward places.
The kinds of portals where you end up upside down or something and have to get reoriented, then it turns out you messed up the jump or something and have to do it again.
For maximum fun, shoot two portals side-by-side into the floor, then stroll into one of them. 
I never got nauseous though.
Oh, I definitely did that. 
Ther was also the attempts at getting the achievement (On the 360, never have played Portal on the PC) of falling a very long distance. Never did get it.
WTH? I got to the Portal page and there’s no indication anywhere of where/how to download the game.
It’s still the 24th… did they close the giveaway early?
The download doesn’t come from the web page.
It will show up in your steam control panel under a list of uninstalled games if you’re logged in to the web page.
Than you just click that from the steam control panel to download/install.
I’ve got it, but I’m not going to bother installing it because my computer is a dinosaur and will probably have problems running even a fairly non-resource intensive game like that.
But when I eventually get a new one, I can have it then. (And I’ve got the Orange Box for 360, so I’ve played the game before anyway.)
Just set up the portals so you’re falling perpetually without intervention, and go do something else for 10 or 15 minutes. Personally, I used the deep pit near the end of level 18, but anywhere with tiled floor and ceiling should work just as well.
The one I can’t figure out is the long-jump one (over 300 feet, I think it is?). I’m not even sure where in the game there’s an open space long enough for that.
Did you figure it out?? I too just heard about the giveaway and can’t find the download page anywhere. I can download the free demo if I search for “Portal”, but nothing about the full game. I’ve checked the website and from within Steam itself. sigh
Well, apparently you have to buy(?) this Steam thing first – I’ve only ever played Portal on a gaming console (Xbox I think?), so I have no idea what this is about.
Steam itself is a free download.
I’m wondering the same thing. I don’t see it on the page anywhere, and when I search for it, it says $29.99 (although there is a free demo of something called Portal: First Slice.) Dang.
If only there were a way to go through walls in this game…
I would always build up some sort of forward momentum and would eventually land on the ground before falling for a long enough stretch.
I don’t remember if I did that one either, but it probably takes doing a perpetual falling setup, then quickly opening a portal near the top of a vertical surface, therefore shooting you horizontally with all the previously built up momentum.
I got the long jump in some huge rusty room.
Damn, I really need to play this game again.
That’s not it… There’s a terminal velocity in the game (though not implemented the same way it is in real life), and most long-jump setups already include a fall long enough to reach it.
Oh, that counts? OK, then, I think I know where it might be possible… That big room shortly before the end, with the turret-alcoves all around the walls?
Yep. I’ll try to explain it, but understand this is coming from long-term memory.
On the front wall (i.e. the wall with the door you enter from) and back wall (i.e. the wall with the door you leave through) are two angled panels that can have portals shot on them. (I can’t recall if they’re right over the doors or not.)
Now, I can’t remember if you start from the front or the back of the room (I think front), but your goal is to eventually have a portal on both these panels and you will be shooting across the room continuously in a nice semi-circular arc.
The problem is, the room is very long. There is no way you will have enough momentum in the beginning to get all the way across the room, even jumping down from the highest alcove, and this is where the difficulty (annoyance?) of trying to achieve this comes in.
First get yourself to the top alcove above the first panel. Shoot one portal at that panel, this will be your main exit portal. Now jump as far as you can over this panel, and shoot a portal at the floor where you will land. If you aim right, you will now come rocketing out of the angled panel. Since the panel is angled, the exit portal will give you a vector in the forward momentum direction, and you will be landing beyond your current entrance portal. As you fall, shoot another entrance portal (i.e. same color as your previous entrance portal) where you land, and you will once again rocket out the angled panel’s exit portal. (The reason you move further each time is your exit portal is elevated in relation to your entrance portal, thereby the downward vector of momentum is larger than the upward vector of momentum.) Repeat the process of shooting a new entrance portal each time you fly out the exit portal until you can finally shoot one to the angled panel on the opposite side. If everything lines up correctly, you will now be infinitely looping through this room via the two angled panel portals.
It’s a pain in the butt because you have little margin for error.
I just played through it again.
Short, but good. It was far better the first time through, though, which makes me hope desperately that Portal 2 will be just around the corner!
The ending credits are absurd. I haven’t enjoyed credits like that before.
I was extremely impressed with this game. I blogged on the subject at Wordplay Guild: The cake is a lie - Thoughts on Portal, and on Art - it’s a writing blog, so don’t be surprised with the slant I take!