A couple of months motivate, I slathered my love for Portal 2 all over bit-tech. I waxed lyrical how it’s probably the ideal comedy game ever made, how cleverly it introduces new parts to Portal’s spatial conundrums, and how splendidly it expands upon Aperture Science as a put. It is miles as ideal a sequel as you would possibly possibly maybe probably probably be ready to hope for to 1 in all the most unique and ingenious video games ever made.
As a minimum, that’s what I believed.
Whereas I actually mediate Portal 2 is an wonderful game, my one criticism of it’s some distance that it doesn’t bring one thing basically new to Portal’s puzzling belief. Sure, it adds extra puzzle parts fancy lasers, light-bridges, and varied ambiance-affecting fluids. Nonetheless these are quite minor iterations upon the identical belief. They don’t have that identical “wow” component you accumulate whereas you shuffle through one in all Portal’s portals for the first time, gasping as you instantaneously transition from one level in put to 1 other.
Nonetheless I also idea this wasn’t a magnificent criticism of Portal 2, on yarn of I didn’t mediate it that you too can factor in to rekindle that moment of astonishment. Then I played Portal Reloaded, which has made me tumble in love with Portal’s puzzling in a total new procedure, and made me realised that Valve barely scratched the surface of Portal’s puzzling ability.
Portal Reload is a standalone Portal campaign. Taking put at some stage within the cavernous confines of Aperture Science, it facets the identical check-chamber constructing and wry, calmly sadistic humour of the 2 legit video games. Nonetheless it no doubt makes one important addition to Portal’s mechanics, adding a third portal you too can put on the earth.
This Portal works otherwise from the blue and orange portals already featured within the game. Whereas these portals are for engaging straight away through put, this new, green portal enables you to step seamlessly through time. Namely, it enables you to shuttle between the demonstrate and future versions of the impart identical put, with a twenty-300 and sixty five days gap between them. Level to Aperture Science is all vivid and brilliant and new, whereas future Aperture Science is soiled and crumbling and overgrown.
Taken on its hang, this impress is frigid, nonetheless not that impressive. What you’re actually doing is engaging between two deem photos of the identical puzzle chamber, one vivid new, the opposite ancient and inclined. It’s how Portal Reloaded makes use of this premise to construct conundrums that makes it probably the most vivid puzzle game I’ve played within the last few years.
Portal Reloaded’s puzzling is defined by two key suggestions. The first is that whereas you growth an object within the demonstrate, that motion will by mirrored within the future. Whenever you growth an object within the future, then again, its demonstrate identical would possibly possibly maybe not be affected. The second rule is that demonstrate objects can not be taken into the future, as this violates the laws of causality. Future object, then again, can also additionally be brought motivate into the demonstrate.
Reloaded makes use of this belief to construct some actually brain-frazzling puzzles. To present a fairly easy instance from the game itself [MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW IN THIS PARAGRAPH], one puzzle requires you to position a cube on a button to bring down an elevator, then put a cube at on a button on the conclude of the elevator to start a door. Solving this puzzle requires you to position the demonstrate cube in a put the put you too can attain it from the elevator, then settle the future cube, bring it during the portal, and put it on the demonstrate button. At this level, or not it’s a must to pass to stand on the elevator, then to find up the demonstrate cube. This causes the future cube to straight away pass from the button within the demonstrate, to the put within the future the put you moved the demonstrate cube to. This allows the salvage to return up, and for you to total the puzzle.
If that description has grew to alter into your brain into jelly, have in mind that right here is a easy instance of Portal Reloaded’s puzzles. Later puzzles enormously magnify the complexity, letting you put time portals your self, and introducing ideas fancy using time portals to propel your self over gaps. One of its slyest facets is that the demonstrate and the future versions of the chambers stop not at all times match precisely. Windows within the demonstrate would possibly possibly maybe probably probably be shattered within the future, whereas lacking flooring within the future would possibly possibly maybe probably probably be intact within the demonstrate. These variations start up new pathways which can maybe maybe probably be every an additional headache and a soft nudge against the acknowledge within the puzzle.
Playing Portal Reloaded, you too can truly feel your hang mind looking to wrap itself around the belief that of pondering in four dimensions, the nuances of trigger and impress, how the demonstrate and the future direct. It’s simply vivid, to the level the put I rep myself wishing that Portal 2 had this belief, that I could possibly maybe probably return in time and insert the mechanic into Valve’s sequel. It’s practically unfamiliar how shut Valve skirted against the premise themselves. Portal 2 is basically constructed upon the premise of seeing Aperture Science in a pair of time slices, the analogue past and the destroyed future. It edges so shut to Portal Reloaded’s revelation that I strive against to mediate Valve neglected it.
It’s also charge noting that, past its phenomenal belief, Portal Reloaded is a well-made game otherwise. The diminutive fable it weaves is attention-grabbing, and it efficiently mimics Portal’s hang save of humour, albeit without the command performing expertise of Stephen Merchant and Ellen McClain. The ideal exact criticism I actually have about it’s some distance that it’s very quick. Then again, the present Portal turn into also a fleeting affair, and Portal Reloaded is entirely free, so it would settle the most curmudgeonly soul to criticise it for that.
Anyway, whereas you’re even rather in Portal, or not it’s a must to fully play Portal Reloaded. It’s the closest component to Portal 3 that we’re ever probably to accumulate, a mod that splendidly innovates on Portal’s premise, bringing one thing actually new to Valve loved puzzling sequence.
