Portal

Portal is a perfect cocktail of game design: equal parts genre-redefining physics and an unforgettably dastardly villain, with a few dashes of brilliantly balanced difficulty, all shaken up and poured out into a beautifully etched glass like the ones you get at a hip, expensive NYC bar. Its concept: you’re trapped in a facility run by a maniacal robot and must use a gun that shoots portals to escape its labyrinthine halls.

With such a groundbreaking set of physics on display, Portal smartly starts you off slowly, giving you ample opportunity to sort out just how to link its portals together to traverse rooms. But by the time you reach its ending, the difficulty ramps up, requiring you to consider momentum and turrets and more while trying to escape. And as the story unfolds and you get more ensnared in it, you’ll feel that slight pulse of anxiety as you try to solve its puzzles, as you know what will happen if you don’t. There are very few games that play this well and present such a clear-minded thesis that it follows from start to finish. — AM