Portal: Revolution, A Review by Burkody
https://store.steampowered.com/app/601360/Portal_Revolution/
Portal: Revolution is a free, standalone, community made Mod for Portal 2 create by Second Face Software that takes place between the events of Portal 1 and 2 and features over 40 new test chambers and puzzles that utilize some classic as well as new mechanics and techniques to solve and make your way through the decaying remains of the Aperture Facility. Players will again find themselves jumping from tall places to launch themselves across rooms, utilize various gels and force fields, and a few new and fun mechanics that will have you saying “Valve really didn’t make this?”. But those aren’t the only reasons why.
The mod features a fully flushed out and voice acted story taking place between the events of Portal 1 and 2. The characters you meet are quirky and fun, and are most importantly believable characters to be part of the Aperture Facility if you’ve played the other two installations. While some of the writing may leave a little to be desired, the game makes up for it with the excellent voice acting by those involved and leaves you second guessing that you’re playing a mod many times throughout the game. That being said the mod does miss some of those little quirks and details familiar to the Portal games that would bring it all the way home. The game took me about 6 hours to complete from start to finish so it’s very manageable much like the official releases.
Not only will players revisit some familiar looking environments in the official test chambers of the facility, but the behind the scenes and back rooms of the greater Aperture Facility containing their own puzzles will be a mainstay throughout the game and makes excellent use of the environment, story and near apocalyptic like setting to create these puzzles. The attention to detail in these environments will leave players dumbfounded that they’re still not playing an official Valve release.
Portal fans may be worried about the difficulty of a fan-made mod being too easy, but rest assured there are puzzles of all shapes, sizes and difficulties that will have you scratching your head throughout the game. The puzzles have a range of difficulties but none are impossible for those that may be worried or are new to the Portal universe. The new mechanics and more advanced portal tricks are introduced fluidly so the player will understand and be able to utilize them with ease.
Performance wise the game performs very well just as the official titles do. I experienced basically no bugs other than a repeated crash after taking a break and loading a quicksave that seemed to have become corrupted somehow. The game would hard-crash to the desktop seconds after loading in. This was simply resolved by loading a slightly older save. Fortunately the game seems to save at the start of every new puzzle, so having to load back a few minutes isn’t a big deal as you basically move puzzle to puzzle as you would expect in a Portal game. The system requirements are very forgiving, much like its official releases as the mod is built on the Portal 2 Source Engine. Not once did I notice any frame dips or drops to a level that was uncomfortable or even noticeable to be quite honest.
For reference, my system specs are as follows:
CPU: 13th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-13600KF 3.50 GHz (OC 5.1GHz)
GPU: MSI NVIDIA RTX 3080 12GB
RAM: 32GB DDR4 3600MHz
In-Game Resolution: 2560x1440p@165Hz
Portal: Revolution is a terrific addition to the Portal family that will have players swearing that Gabe Newell himself sanctioned, oversaw and helped create this excellent mod. Although not an official release from Valve, this is about as close as you can get and I’m all for it. Community made mods can always be a tossup but there’s nothing to fear here. It’s a grand old time and I highly recommend everyone download it. Maybe if it does well enough on steam, Valve will learn what comes after 2.
A boy can dream.
If I had to put a number beside Portal: Revolution with everything considered, it would be a solid 9/10.
***VIDEO REVIEW COMING SOON***
My entire playthrough can be found on my Twitch/Youtube (struggle puzzles and all).
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