2/10. Dreadful. Fucking Dreadful.

My eyes actually hurt now, that's how irritating this was to look at. Nvidia really thought "Ah yes, sharper image + more shadows + overly bright lighting = Better game" like the absolute tools they are.

On top of the nauseating visuals and frame choppiness (I have a 3070 ti so that's ridiculous) this mod introduces actual bugs, most notably, moving platforms just... not doing what they're supposed to do, and falling asleep.

They even think they're being slick and hip with the secret 'Nivida processors sent to Black Mesa and Aperture' easter egg, fuck off. Fuck off with the nvidia cube as well, low-effort advertisement in a shitty mod for a great game you've desecrated.

I can't give it a 1/10 as, at its core, it's still Portal, an incredibly fun atmospheric, comedic puzzle game. Having said that, dear god just play the original Portal, not this RTX horseshit. Pay no heed to the upcoming Half-Life 2 RTX as well, it's likely to be just as shit.

Edit: I think my original comments were a bit too reactionary, so I've toned it down. Some of my original sentiments still remain, however.

I don't understand this has prompted the defensive reaction it has. It's worth remembering when going in:

This is a free, novelty tech demo for high end Nvidia GPUs

- Yes, it will run like crap on anything less than a 3080 with the bells and whistles on.
- Yes, the textures were all modified to prioritize showcasing that tech over original art.

But it neither replaces the original game nor costs anything. I'm sure a modder will make a new version of the textures that both works with the tech and looks closer to the original.

It's fun. If you can run it, give it a shot.

I've seen a lot of comments (and video essays) that — whether intentional or not — give the impression that this project was iill-conceived or done without any heart, and I can agree that some visual changes don't maintain the original visual identity and atmosphere.

However, despite being attached to Nvidia, this really is a small team "mod." Prototype projects like this don't generate revenue and were likely justified with an advertising fund. The labor required likely wasn't huge, as this was one testbed for their upcoming "Remix" technology, but the effort of creating a whole game's worth of uprezzed assets probably still made this a very 'inefficient' use of that advertising fund.

What I'm saying is that this wasn't comparable to Fortnite's switch to UE5, as a recent comparison I've seen. That game and the engine are Epic's main business now. Nvidia is a hardware engineering group that needed a showcase project running quickly. Critique it as you will, but keep that context in mind.

Portal is EXCELLENT.

The performance on the other hand? NOT great. But was a cool refresh for a game this old.

But I still get cake.

I was playing with the DLSS set at ultra performance so I don't know how much benefit I was really getting out of the RTX with some of the low resolution but at least it ran at 60fps or more. I suppose there was some cool lighting and reflections but I didn't really take that much notice of it to be honest. Maybe it will be more jaw dropping if I get something better than a 3060.

As for the game itself, I've never been that enamoured with the first Portal. It had cool ideas that I thought were better developed in the more well rounded sequel. The humour is funny but it was ruined by the internet. Still, as a game you can finish in an hour or so, it's decently fun time.