There’s a boldness in trying to stand toe to toe alongside the giants; Portal Revolution caught my attention the very moment I saw its trailer last year, and since then I’ve had my eye on it till the day on its release, and I got it easy, think about the people that were there from the beginning! Revolution has been in development for 8 years, a crazy amount of time for any game, let alone one made by fans a s a way to celebrate the series, tho in this case it makes sense when you really think about its intentions.
The most known and popular Portal and Portal 2 mods are all test chamber centered, by that I mean they don’t really venture in the aspects of the series aside of expanding on the puzzles; this is nor a jab nor a complaint in the slightest, in fact some innovate with the original concept in genius ways, and plus, it’s completely expected for them to shy away from the narrative department except for maybe a nod or two, because creating a new story in your fun little mod would be inserting yourself within Portal’s narrative, something not many would even consider as a possibility to do, because, how could they even attempt it?
The thing about Portal Revolution is that it does, it does not want to limit itself to just be a succession of puzzles one after the other, it wants to go further beyond that, it was to surprise you with its presentation and sequences beyond normal gameplay, it wants to have its own voice, one that can fit right with other two. And, listen, I’m not trying to imply or make a statement about how both of the Portal games’ narratives are unparalleled or a master class is videogame narrative —even if few games can say they have the ‘’part where he kills you’’—, they really aren’t the most impactful narratives in all of gaming, but what they are is both well executed and managing to feel important, especially in the first one, where the story melds perfectly with the gameplay, rather than being at the service of it and just an excuse for why are you shooting portals and going though puzzles. Portal is not simply a great series, it’s an excellent duology whose story is pretty much told and its gameplay basically perfected, and trying to add onto that is a herculean task that I don’t blame Valve for not wanting to take.
But Revolution doesn’t even come from Valve, it’s from a group of fans that really love the series and wanted to face all of this dilemmas, which is an even more scary prospect at that, because ironically enough, those that unabashedly love a certain work are the most prompt to make mistakes that those that recognize its successes as well as the flaws, and it’s through that mixture of both undying love for the originals and fear at failing to be lesser than them… that you get Revolution’s story line.
Stop me if you heard this before: a story about a woman is woken up by an orb-shaped hysteric robot in a room part of a giant infrastructure that is decaying and falling down with the promise of getting out if you help him, only for halfway through the adventure getting thrown into depths of the oldest parts of the facility traversing through its older and abandoned test chambers seeking to reach the top and becoming allies with another robot whose conscience was once part of a human, and reaching the original facility that’s now at the risk of collapsing because of the true intentions of the first robot you met and you and your new companion have to stop him to save the entire building and yourselves… also one of them may or may not have a British accent. First of all, wow, I’m surprised you didn’t stopped me, you sure you have played the original series before? And secondly… yeah, the game practically follows beat by beat Portal 2’s narrative, specially half-way through. It’s a real shame that hits doubly hard because even when these similarities where present from the very start, at first they felt more like interesting and even warranted parallelisms than anything else; there were a set of key differences that kept thing pretty exciting and that made this felt like a worthwhile pre-quel, one that isn’t necessary to get the story at full, but one that makes sense withing this world and this narrative, but then you encounter your first ‘’broken bridge’’, and you realize that this games that follows its inspiration even more than it seemed. Listen, I really like Portal 2… but not as much as the original Portal, not by a long shot; and it isn’t because it has a more expansive narrative, but because, unlike I said about its predecessor, it doesn’t feel like the story and gameplay work together, but instead that the story is constantly trying to find weird ways to throw you into puzzles; either by GlaDOS putting you through them because reasons I guess, Wheatley doing the same because… reasons, I guess, and then there’s Old Aperture, or as I like to call it, ‘’J.K. Simmons’ nonsensical puzzle hell’’. These moments aren’t enough to poison me in the slightest, but they represent a intrinsically problem with Portal 2’s design and how it messes with its own pace… and then Portal Revolution looks at it and says ‘’Wouldn’t be cool if I also did it? Yeah, it’d be pretty cool…’’
Roadblocks that just sorta… happen, diversions that don’t make any sense (fun fact, a chapter is fact named around said diversion!), and we even get to return to old Aperture for a much more random and nonsensical reason than ever before! It’s a moment that just happens because I guess it was cool in Portal 2 and hey, we gotta make you meet this important character and have two extra chapters before the finale somehow! At some point it just starts going through the motions and never stops from there, and I have to say, it certainly managed to remind me of Portal 2, but I’m not sure if it was for the reasons the team wanted. No joke, at some point a character just throws you into a chamber and says ‘’Well, you have to do this puzzle, why you ask?... Idk LMAO’’ and at first was pretty cute, but that moment definitively soured when the game said the same thing like another 5 times.
The roots of this insecurity also reach the dialogue a bit; I want go on a tangent for a second and praise the amazing work both VA’s put into their role and the effort behind the screenplay, everyone on board clearly wanted to make this as close to a official Portal experience it could get, and the professionality of both voice actors on their roles fits what you would say in an official game to a tea, and dialogue for the most part feels genuine and got a few smiles out of me!... However, there are still some weird oddities here and there; things like names like Black Mesa or Borealis thrown around just for fans to catch the reference instead to doing a meaningful connection or joke like in the originals, but worst of all is what they did to poor Stirling. I really liked the guy at first! Loved his introduction as a kind of more upbeat amicable GLaDOS that serves the same purpose as Wheatley, and I really enjoyed his attempts at comedy and impressions, but after a while, all of his character is… gone, and by the end of the game we are left with what I could only described as a ‘’Poor-man’s Wheatley’’. Also it has certain lines like ‘’It’s time we bring her back, isn’t it?’’ that made me roll my eyes so hard they went numb, I don’t know how else to describe it except by saying that. The second character is actually super cool tho! Don’t want to get much into spoiler territory concerning them since it’s introduced late into the adventure, but it’s super unique personality wise with what we’ve come to expect in this series but it fits naturally into the series mythos like a glove, I don’t mean it as a joke when I say I wished they were official and got even more screen time.
There seems to be this idea of ‘’If you want to make it again, you have to make it grander’’ that Portal 2 subconsciously introduced and that Revolution just decides to go on with for despite its own detriment: it never reaches the genius simplicity of the original, but also never manages the same level of wonder and surprise of Portal 2 setting wise, it’s stuck in this middle-valley, sandwiched between a monument of a game and another monument of a game, seemingly having nothing to compete with neither or lacking anything new to offer…seemingly.
Stefan Heinz, main developer behind Portal: Revolution, has stated that Portal: Revolution’s puzzle difficulty starts where Portal 2 stops, something that can be read on the game’s own Steam page, and while there’s truth in those words, when reading it you may arrive to the conclusion that it picks up from where it let off and completely expects you to have played the previous games, and even tho of course the fact that you’d play the original duology is the more sensical thing, Revolution acts as if it were a completely independent entry, and it does it with a mastery that simply awed me, and it never stopped from there. It slowly teaches you the basics little by little, and from there its uses them to unimaginable potentials; I never thought so much could be done being able to only shoot one portal, but Revolution shatters that conception and goes completely wild with it. I had so much fun in this chambers, so much joy experimenting until finally finding the insane solution, thinking outside the box in ways I could only expect from the original series and going even beyond that, using the ‘’going out of bounds’’ idea and never looking back, taking everything that was established and reaching new heights, presenting old concepts in a new life, and even introducing its own ideas like with the laser cubes, but it never gets stale, every idea and set of puzzles is used until it can’t give anything more, at which point it jumps onto next. I find the words to describe how amazingly these are designed complicated, not all are bangers, but most are, and it’s not just because they tried to make harder puzzles, it’s because they made puzzle that feel novel and creative. Also resolving them while the original compositions sound in the background is incredible, I linked one before and I really mean it, the new songs are all amazing.
But Portal Revolution is not just a collection of test chambers, it tries to be more than that, capping things off with a final boss fight, once that forces to repeat segments, that doesn’t pose much of a spectacle, and that feels derivative story-wise… honestly it’s sad to see how it perfectly fits the rest of the game’s story…Revolution wanted to be a lot, and calling it a failure is both a lie and a disservice, the fact this is even real is worth of praise, and the moments where it shines and where it’s puzzles really hit, it achieves peaks that face the originals, and I’d say in some cases even surpasses them, and that alone makes it worth a recommendation! If only it was more consistent in that regard, instead, I leave wishing it wasn’t so scared, that it didn’t love Portal 2 so much, that it kept innovating, that it yearned to be even more unique, because at the end, that’s the true spirit of Portal.
Also, the finale is really weird, aside of the kind of jarring final boss, it doesn’t feel like there’s a proper ending it just sorta—
The most known and popular Portal and Portal 2 mods are all test chamber centered, by that I mean they don’t really venture in the aspects of the series aside of expanding on the puzzles; this is nor a jab nor a complaint in the slightest, in fact some innovate with the original concept in genius ways, and plus, it’s completely expected for them to shy away from the narrative department except for maybe a nod or two, because creating a new story in your fun little mod would be inserting yourself within Portal’s narrative, something not many would even consider as a possibility to do, because, how could they even attempt it?
The thing about Portal Revolution is that it does, it does not want to limit itself to just be a succession of puzzles one after the other, it wants to go further beyond that, it was to surprise you with its presentation and sequences beyond normal gameplay, it wants to have its own voice, one that can fit right with other two. And, listen, I’m not trying to imply or make a statement about how both of the Portal games’ narratives are unparalleled or a master class is videogame narrative —even if few games can say they have the ‘’part where he kills you’’—, they really aren’t the most impactful narratives in all of gaming, but what they are is both well executed and managing to feel important, especially in the first one, where the story melds perfectly with the gameplay, rather than being at the service of it and just an excuse for why are you shooting portals and going though puzzles. Portal is not simply a great series, it’s an excellent duology whose story is pretty much told and its gameplay basically perfected, and trying to add onto that is a herculean task that I don’t blame Valve for not wanting to take.
But Revolution doesn’t even come from Valve, it’s from a group of fans that really love the series and wanted to face all of this dilemmas, which is an even more scary prospect at that, because ironically enough, those that unabashedly love a certain work are the most prompt to make mistakes that those that recognize its successes as well as the flaws, and it’s through that mixture of both undying love for the originals and fear at failing to be lesser than them… that you get Revolution’s story line.
Stop me if you heard this before: a story about a woman is woken up by an orb-shaped hysteric robot in a room part of a giant infrastructure that is decaying and falling down with the promise of getting out if you help him, only for halfway through the adventure getting thrown into depths of the oldest parts of the facility traversing through its older and abandoned test chambers seeking to reach the top and becoming allies with another robot whose conscience was once part of a human, and reaching the original facility that’s now at the risk of collapsing because of the true intentions of the first robot you met and you and your new companion have to stop him to save the entire building and yourselves… also one of them may or may not have a British accent. First of all, wow, I’m surprised you didn’t stopped me, you sure you have played the original series before? And secondly… yeah, the game practically follows beat by beat Portal 2’s narrative, specially half-way through. It’s a real shame that hits doubly hard because even when these similarities where present from the very start, at first they felt more like interesting and even warranted parallelisms than anything else; there were a set of key differences that kept thing pretty exciting and that made this felt like a worthwhile pre-quel, one that isn’t necessary to get the story at full, but one that makes sense withing this world and this narrative, but then you encounter your first ‘’broken bridge’’, and you realize that this games that follows its inspiration even more than it seemed. Listen, I really like Portal 2… but not as much as the original Portal, not by a long shot; and it isn’t because it has a more expansive narrative, but because, unlike I said about its predecessor, it doesn’t feel like the story and gameplay work together, but instead that the story is constantly trying to find weird ways to throw you into puzzles; either by GlaDOS putting you through them because reasons I guess, Wheatley doing the same because… reasons, I guess, and then there’s Old Aperture, or as I like to call it, ‘’J.K. Simmons’ nonsensical puzzle hell’’. These moments aren’t enough to poison me in the slightest, but they represent a intrinsically problem with Portal 2’s design and how it messes with its own pace… and then Portal Revolution looks at it and says ‘’Wouldn’t be cool if I also did it? Yeah, it’d be pretty cool…’’
Roadblocks that just sorta… happen, diversions that don’t make any sense (fun fact, a chapter is fact named around said diversion!), and we even get to return to old Aperture for a much more random and nonsensical reason than ever before! It’s a moment that just happens because I guess it was cool in Portal 2 and hey, we gotta make you meet this important character and have two extra chapters before the finale somehow! At some point it just starts going through the motions and never stops from there, and I have to say, it certainly managed to remind me of Portal 2, but I’m not sure if it was for the reasons the team wanted. No joke, at some point a character just throws you into a chamber and says ‘’Well, you have to do this puzzle, why you ask?... Idk LMAO’’ and at first was pretty cute, but that moment definitively soured when the game said the same thing like another 5 times.
The roots of this insecurity also reach the dialogue a bit; I want go on a tangent for a second and praise the amazing work both VA’s put into their role and the effort behind the screenplay, everyone on board clearly wanted to make this as close to a official Portal experience it could get, and the professionality of both voice actors on their roles fits what you would say in an official game to a tea, and dialogue for the most part feels genuine and got a few smiles out of me!... However, there are still some weird oddities here and there; things like names like Black Mesa or Borealis thrown around just for fans to catch the reference instead to doing a meaningful connection or joke like in the originals, but worst of all is what they did to poor Stirling. I really liked the guy at first! Loved his introduction as a kind of more upbeat amicable GLaDOS that serves the same purpose as Wheatley, and I really enjoyed his attempts at comedy and impressions, but after a while, all of his character is… gone, and by the end of the game we are left with what I could only described as a ‘’Poor-man’s Wheatley’’. Also it has certain lines like ‘’It’s time we bring her back, isn’t it?’’ that made me roll my eyes so hard they went numb, I don’t know how else to describe it except by saying that. The second character is actually super cool tho! Don’t want to get much into spoiler territory concerning them since it’s introduced late into the adventure, but it’s super unique personality wise with what we’ve come to expect in this series but it fits naturally into the series mythos like a glove, I don’t mean it as a joke when I say I wished they were official and got even more screen time.
There seems to be this idea of ‘’If you want to make it again, you have to make it grander’’ that Portal 2 subconsciously introduced and that Revolution just decides to go on with for despite its own detriment: it never reaches the genius simplicity of the original, but also never manages the same level of wonder and surprise of Portal 2 setting wise, it’s stuck in this middle-valley, sandwiched between a monument of a game and another monument of a game, seemingly having nothing to compete with neither or lacking anything new to offer…seemingly.
Stefan Heinz, main developer behind Portal: Revolution, has stated that Portal: Revolution’s puzzle difficulty starts where Portal 2 stops, something that can be read on the game’s own Steam page, and while there’s truth in those words, when reading it you may arrive to the conclusion that it picks up from where it let off and completely expects you to have played the previous games, and even tho of course the fact that you’d play the original duology is the more sensical thing, Revolution acts as if it were a completely independent entry, and it does it with a mastery that simply awed me, and it never stopped from there. It slowly teaches you the basics little by little, and from there its uses them to unimaginable potentials; I never thought so much could be done being able to only shoot one portal, but Revolution shatters that conception and goes completely wild with it. I had so much fun in this chambers, so much joy experimenting until finally finding the insane solution, thinking outside the box in ways I could only expect from the original series and going even beyond that, using the ‘’going out of bounds’’ idea and never looking back, taking everything that was established and reaching new heights, presenting old concepts in a new life, and even introducing its own ideas like with the laser cubes, but it never gets stale, every idea and set of puzzles is used until it can’t give anything more, at which point it jumps onto next. I find the words to describe how amazingly these are designed complicated, not all are bangers, but most are, and it’s not just because they tried to make harder puzzles, it’s because they made puzzle that feel novel and creative. Also resolving them while the original compositions sound in the background is incredible, I linked one before and I really mean it, the new songs are all amazing.
But Portal Revolution is not just a collection of test chambers, it tries to be more than that, capping things off with a final boss fight, once that forces to repeat segments, that doesn’t pose much of a spectacle, and that feels derivative story-wise… honestly it’s sad to see how it perfectly fits the rest of the game’s story…Revolution wanted to be a lot, and calling it a failure is both a lie and a disservice, the fact this is even real is worth of praise, and the moments where it shines and where it’s puzzles really hit, it achieves peaks that face the originals, and I’d say in some cases even surpasses them, and that alone makes it worth a recommendation! If only it was more consistent in that regard, instead, I leave wishing it wasn’t so scared, that it didn’t love Portal 2 so much, that it kept innovating, that it yearned to be even more unique, because at the end, that’s the true spirit of Portal.
Also, the finale is really weird, aside of the kind of jarring final boss, it doesn’t feel like there’s a proper ending it just sorta—