I’d nonetheless rely Portal as considered one of my favorite video games, however reality be informed I have never been again to it for some time. Having performed it numerous instances because it launched, I really feel like I’ve merely wrung it dry. Positive, it is enjoyable to drop again in to listen to GLaDOS’ withering putdowns or simply get pleasure from its normal ambiance. However I do know most of its beats off by coronary heart, and I may clear up its chambers with the lights turned out.
Or not less than, that is what I believed.
Portal Randomized is, by Valve modding group requirements, extremely easy. It takes Valve’s traditional puzzler and provides a bunch of various variables that may happen in its check chambers. For instance, it would fill the room with lethal neurotoxin, supplying you with simply seconds to resolve it. Or it would rework the chamber flooring right into a roiling lava pit that it’s important to cross by hopping between rocks. The one that basically threw me is arguably the best of all, a randomiser that blinks the lights on and off each few seconds. Merely making an attempt to get via the second chamber, which adjustments the exit of a hard and fast portal each few seconds, is extremely troublesome with this added disorienting impact.
Given Portal’s famously meticulous craft, throwing in a bunch of randomisers like this may appear to be sacrilege. However I believe the specificity of Portal’s design is exactly why it really works. Very like Grand Theft Auto 5’s chaos mod, including these goofy random results to a recreation that’s so intensely authored and equally acquainted might help you understand it in an entire new mild. I nonetheless get pleasure from vanilla Portal, however it would not excite me any extra. With this although, I discovered myself having fun with the problem of its puzzles yet again.
At present, Portal Randomized is barely playable as a demo, which gives the primary two chambers to experiment with. However this is sufficient to talk the potential within the concept. What it wants now, aside from to be completed, is 2 issues. First, it wants much more variables. There are fairly just a few already, however maximising the variety of results is what’s going to rework it from a enjoyable novelty into one thing extra important. Second, it wants some normal tightening up. One spherical I performed spawned a zombie outdoors of Chell’s sleeping enclosure, and the zombie managed to break me via the glass, which wasn’t preferrred.
In any case, I believe Portal Randomized is a wonderful concept. Valve’s puzzler has seen loads of incredible mods in its time, comparable to a latest mod that turns it right into a psychological horror. My favorite, nonetheless, stays Portal Reloaded, which provides time-travel to its spatial shenanigans, and is the closest we have come but to a bona-fide Portal 3. Sadly, an precise Portal 3 appears unlikely to occur, despite the fact that the sport’s author Erik Wolpaw nonetheless needs to make it.
