A short review for a short game!

Aperture Tag is a Portal mod that mixes up the usual formula by replacing the Portal Gun with a paintball gun, which is able to shoot the blue and orange gels introduced in Portal 2. It's really cool in theory, but in execution it leads to very easy puzzles in the first half and a bunch of cheesable parts in the second half. Turns out there aren't many approaches you can take with gel-based gameplay only, more than often it only boils down to "color this ramp orange" and "color this jump-pad-looking tile blue". Still, I believe the devs tried their best and it shows in the second half, where my enjoyment of the puzzles went up a fair bit with their more "innovative" nature.

Overall my highlight of the game was the narration though, Nigel is a great narrator and his voice is very pleasant to listen to; finding him slacking around in various locations on the screens in each room was also funny. Unfortunately I found the dialogue to get progressively more unfunny towards the end and the ending in general felt rather cheap to me. If you can live with that, Aperture Tag is still an entertaining and unique fangame. I'd recommend picking it up during a seasonal sale if you're interested, since 5€ for a mod can be quite the turnoff.

The biggest critique here is obviously the voice acting and dialogue, Nigel just isn't a funny character, and the references to the actual Portal games only felt annoying to me, "for the people who are still alive," where have I heard that one before...
But, I do like the rest of the game. I do feel that a lot of the puzzles fall into the issue of not really feeling like puzzles but instead a series of events, there still were highlights though, Test Chamber 7 and Chapter 4's Chamber 8 were my favorite chambers. Seeing the older Portal maps, that were also seen in Portal 2, was disappointing for the game's length, but at least they took a different spin with them, since you no longer have a portal gun. So, it's not bad, it's just pretty underwhelming compared to the livelihood of Portal 2.

Aperture Tag is the Portal spin-off I never knew I needed. Portal 2 brought to us a new and quite dynamic puzzle element, coming from old Aperture were the Repulsion and Propulsion gels, (the "blue" and "orange" ones respectively) these added a whole new layer to the mechanics of that game and the design in testing chambers, being able to fling yourself at high velocities and end it all in a high jump to get to a far off surface really added a new level of variety and passed to cement itself into the rest of the chambers going forward. This feature was heavily inspired by Tag: The Power of Paint which was a small game made as a project carried by a group of students at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, in that game you also use the ability to paint surfaces to do practically the same you'll later do in Portal 2, and that's also where I guess this mod got the inspiration for its name.

Aperture Tag opens up as your usual Portal story, although with tidbits more of lore here and there (which I'd argue isn't its strongest fort), you meet another Personality Core, Nigel, which has way more of a meta personality as it a bit less miserable albeit less funny than the main game's Wheatley. And then, past all that, you head onto the premises to take on some good ol' puzzlin'. This time though, instead of a Portal Gun you encounter a Paint Gun.

So, by now it's obvious that paint is the name of the game, with your newly-adquired Paint Gun you're meant to solve puzzles akin to the main game with the powers of repulsion, propulsion and the Source Engine, as you use the attributes of the different gels to get through the levels, you're also dealing with the physics engine and seeing more optimal ways of doing the things you'll do because you have the frankly overpowered power of flinging yourself everywhere you could, I was almost able to cheese some of the more open tracks because of this and, while I haven't looked at the speedruns, I'm pretty sure someone else has exploited them further, but that just says how fun it is to be jumping around and doing all these tricks, it helps that the chambers oftentimes also require you to have to shoot cubes or other objects mid-flight to get them to move from a button. I'd say the puzzle design in this one is interestingly polished, not enough to Valve levels but it's still pretty good, it only suffers from some lack of intuitiveness in some chambers where they make you do some maneuvers that I simply could not imagine ever being used officially so I had to look 'em up.

Only downsides with this mod would be that it kinda gets drawn out for a bit when not a lot of new interesting mechanics get introduced (besides the red death barriers or the new grills that limit which type of gel you're able to use) and the fact that you actually have to pay to play it, which is a very big discussion around this game and while I think they should be allowed to put a price on it if Valve allows it, the quality and duration of the mod leaves to be desired based on price. The reception would've probably be a bit more lenient if they didn't have to pay for the experience.

Leaning on the weaker end of Portal mods, this game still provides a cute little experience centered around a very fun & new mechanic. The puzzles feel mostly in line with the franchise; however, I personally would have liked to see the parkour aspects of the paint gun more utilized. The writing is... certainly there. I found some of the dialogue cute, but most of it ended up falling flat for me. Mainly, the main core, Nigel, he's a fun character but just maybe not as colorful as the cores you'll find in other portal games, fan or official. Overall it's a very lovable experience; however, for the $5 price tag, I think you'll find more enjoyment out of "Tag: The Power of Paint"—the free title that inspired both this game as well as Portal 2's gel mechanics. 

depois de ver as reviews do mod na steam, decidi comprar na promoção e tirar as minhas próprias conclusões.

o que eu acho: é um mod bom, mas o preço não condiz com o que ele oferece. demorei 4 horas pra chegar do começo ao fim, e a maioria das fases são meio bagunçadas e confusas, deixando difícil de entender por onde começar.

sobre a mecânica dos géis, vi várias pessoas reclamando dos puzzles serem muito fáceis, que era só usar o gel laranja pra correr e o azul pra pular em todas as fases. e... não, não diria que é tão fácil assim. o mod soube variar bastante o uso de cada gel, te bloqueando de usar um ou outro (ou os dois) em lugares específicos, te forçando a pensar diferente.

também vi alguém reclamando de uma sequência meio frenética lá pro meio do final do mod, e acho que a pessoa simplesmente nem tentou, porque o jogo te ensina tudo o que precisa antes disso acontecer e dá pra terminar tranquilo em uns 5 minutos de tentativa e erro no máximo.

enfim, as minhas únicas reclamações são sobre a duração curta, a organização das fases e a falta de um botão de carregar saves (só tem como carregar o último save). recomendo comprar só se tiver na promoção e ter algum trocado na carteira da steam.