Portal

Hats off to the incredible skills of this engineer who managed to create the heelsprings that prevent Chell from falling to her death in Portal. Wearing these carefully crafted pieces of genius to any cos-play event would ensure hero status and glances of pure jealously in equal measure. But that's not all, the creator, Harrison Krix, also has an impressive array of other real life gaming gadgets. Click inside to see more.

It's easy to miss the complex problem solving and spatial reasoning needed to complete Portal because the game is so engaging. But even though Portal will be four years old next month, its physics-based puzzles still require critical thinking way beyond today's average first-person shooter. That's probably why some classrooms, like The Evergreen School's seventh grade, have chosen to use Portal as a learning tool...

Portal was fantastic, and much of that credit lies with Valve’s creation of the universe and characters of the world. That said, as important as GLaDOS, Chell, and the Companion Cube were, the portals themselves—and the mechanics and physics of them—are what really made the game. The concept of puzzling with portals comes from Kim Swift’s Nebtacular Drop, a student project that preceded Portal by several years. After working with Valve as the lead designer on Portal she left to join Airtight Games, and has now revealed her next project: Quantum Conundrum. It’s a first-person puzzler that sounds… well, it sounds a little like Portal...

We've seen a slew of unofficial Portal films cross our monitors in recent years, but this most recent short from The Totally Rad Show host and filmmaker Daniel Trachtenberg definitely takes the, uh, sugary baked dessert...