But seriously, shizzle aside, the Portal demo blew our minds. In the demonstration, Newell walked us through the concept. I'll back up a step. If you've played or heard of Humanhead's Prey, then you know the game offers organic portals throughout a giant sentient alien ship. The portals are dimensional doors into different areas in the ship, and they're graphically and conceptually well implemented and work seamlessly. They're also stationery. In Portal, a seemingly independent game that ships with the PC version of Half-Life Episode 2, and the bundle of Half-Life 2, Episode 1, 2, and Team Fortress 2 on Xbox 360 and PS3, players use a tool that creates portals on the fly. Yes -- a gun that creates instant openings through walls that transport you in the bat of an eye to another place.

Seems simple enough, but how is Valve applying the design into actual gameplay? I'll use Valve's examples. Say you're in a room and you can't jump over the giant 10 foot chasm in front of you, but you need to get to the other side. Easy! Whip out the portal gun, aim it at a spot on the floor on the other side of the chasm, and then create a portal on your side of the chasm. Then walk through it. It's like an Easy Bake Oven recipe. For-snizzle.

Now that you have the idea, apply the concept to multiple floor puzzles. How do you get from floor one to floor four? Let me introduce you to my little friend, the portal tool! Now introduce objects, such a boxes or keys, that can be ported to open more complicated doors, and you've got something else to talk about. Lastly, and just for the fun of it, create endless loops of portals for mind-bending fun. The examples we witnessed were of a soldier falling infinitely through a continuous loop of portals in floors and ceilings. And people chasing each other in circles through portals in walls. It's all really wild shizzle, we must say.