I might nonetheless rely Portal as certainly one of my favorite video games, however reality be instructed I have not been again to it for some time. Having performed it numerous occasions because it launched, I really feel like I’ve merely wrung it dry. Sure, it is enjoyable to drop again in to listen to GLaDOS’ withering putdowns or simply get pleasure from its basic environment. But I do know most of its beats off by coronary heart, and I may resolve its chambers with the lights turned out.
Or no 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 take a look at 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 you need to cross by hopping between rocks. The one that basically threw me is arguably the only of all, a randomiser that blinks the lights on and off each few seconds. Simply attempting to get by way of the second chamber, which modifications 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 seem to be sacrilege. But I feel the specificity of Portal’s design is exactly why it really works. Much like Grand Theft Auto 5’s chaos mod, including these goofy random results to a sport that’s so intensely authored and equally acquainted can assist you understand it in an entire new mild. I nonetheless get pleasure from vanilla Portal, but it surely does not excite me any extra. With this although, I discovered myself having fun with the problem of its puzzles over again.
Currently, Portal Randomized is simply playable as a demo, which offers the primary two chambers to experiment with. But 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 a lot extra variables. There are fairly a couple of already, however maximising the variety of results is what is going to rework it from a enjoyable novelty into one thing extra important. Second, it wants some basic tightening up. One spherical I performed spawned a zombie exterior of Chell’s sleeping enclosure, and the zombie managed to wreck me by way of the glass, which wasn’t excellent.
In any case, I feel Portal Randomized is a superb concept. Valve’s puzzler has seen loads of incredible mods in its time, similar to a current 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. Unfortunately, an precise Portal 3 appears unlikely to occur, though the sport’s author Erik Wolpaw nonetheless needs to make it.
