If you have a solid gaming PC and have already purchased Portal or the Orange Box, there is little reason to pay for Portal: Still Alive on the Xbox Live Arcade. The extra levels are available for free online, and the base game is that same as the one you originally played, except you ditch the mouse and keyboard and use a controller. It's pretty much a step down in value and control.
If you don't have a PC that can handle Portal, however, or have never played the Orange Box, this is a good way to spend $15. Sure, that's expensive for an Xbox Live game, and the 600MB+ size gives a middle finger to Arcade owners and other games that felt constrained by Microsoft's size limit. Apparently if your title is popular enough, you don't have to play by the rules.
The fun of Portal comes from the fact you can't actually attack anything; your only weapon is physics and a portal gun that allows you to create... well, portals, and then step through them. The puzzles range from the simple to the devious, and the 14 extra levels included here will certain stretch your brain. I'm not particularly talented at this kind of puzzle, so I tend to get hung up on puzzles that my friends zip through on Portal, but no matter how good you are, there will be something here that taxes your mind.
The developer's commentary makes a return, and while the new levels don't push the story forward, the are fun. It will also be fun to compare stats with your friends to see who can beat the game with the fewest Portals and in the fastest time. For PC gamers this is a somewhat criminal double-dip. For pure console gamers? This is a great buy if you've never experienced Portal.
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