Valve is known for making quality first-person shooters: The Half-Life series redefined how players think about the FPS genre, while titles like Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead took team-oriented multiplayer action to a whole new level. But among Valve's stable of popular shooters, one game stands alone: the mind-bending puzzler, Portal. A small-scale experiment that was squeezed into 2007's The Orange Box alongside some powerful heavyweights, the love Portal received from fans was beyond anything Valve could have imagined, winning it a full-fledged, standalone sequel. Our 12-page cover story gives you the first details on Portal 2's new gameplay mechanics, storyline, and some surprising new twists.

Other features in April's issue include a celebration of The Sim's 10th anniversary with creator Will Wright, and an interview with Yoshinori Kitase and Motomu Toriyama about the making of Final Fantasy XIII. We also talk to PopCap founder Jason Kapalka about the state of casual gaming, then grill some big name developers to find out why games don't feature more female protagonists in our 4-page feature, The Gender Gap. Additionally, it wouldn't be an April issue without the return of our irreverent doppelganger, Game Infarcer.

Hands-on previews of Alan Wake, Red Dead Redemption, and Lost Planet 2 are just a few of the upcoming games this issue covers, while reviews of Just Cause 2, Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, and the highly-anticipated God of War III round out the issue.

There are two versions of the cover this issue – the second one reverses the portals. Here's what it looks like:

And here are both versions in all their wraparound glory:

Subscribers can expect to receive their copy in the near future. If you're as excited about Portal 2 as we are, be sure to check out our Portal 2 Hub Page throughout the month for even more mind-blowing details you won't find anywhere else. Oh, and did we forget to mention it has co-op?