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Recent reviews by MCgamer

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Showing 1-10 of 12 entries
6 people found this review helpful
6.6 hrs on record
This one's a bit hard to write. Did I enjoy this mod? Heck yeah; there are tons of really clever and well designed puzzles and it puts a really unique spin on the Portal formula. Would I RECOMMEND this mod? No. Let me explain:

PREFACE: I'm a bit obsessed with Portal, having a combined 200+ hours across all games, mods, community test chambers, and console ports. Having played much of what the community has to offer, as well as having a great understanding behind good game design and puzzle mechanics, I can typically guage quite well when a game is doing puzzles right, and when it gets it wrong. Having just recently 100%ed Portal and replayed Portal 2's main campaign with PSMove, I've been taking the time to revisit the community mods that surround the game. I actually never beat this one until now, though it's been sitting in my Steam Library for several years, so I basically went in blind.

That being said, there's a lot to love and a lot to hate. Aperture Tag attempts to be the first "real" fan expansion of Portal 2, taking advantage of Steam's infrastructure for official mods to provide a paid, more on that later, and thus more premium package. Even going so far as to introduce new voice acting and an original soundtrack to the fan creation, something modern Portal 2 mods are expected to have. Although this is one of the first Portal 2 mods, I WILL be comparing it to both it's predecessor and successors.

The level design is decent to start with, comparable in difficulty to Portal Stories: Mel's "Story Mode", and features several testing tracks and even a recycled chamber from Portal 2 Main, which actually reuses a familiar puzzle in a very clever way as your toolkit has changed. While the early chapters all feature fairly simple and somewhat boring levels, followed by a difficulty spike so substantial they had to add a skip sequence button, the chambers in Chapter 4 are actually quite clever and some of the best I've played in a mod. It's not Portal Revolution level perfection, but it's pretty darn close. It almost feels like the final levels were the original mod and all the earlier stuff was slapped together as a way of padding time for a paid mod and expanding the tutorial to introduce the new toolkit. That toolkit, the Paint-Gun, able to summon seemingly infinite amounts of propulsion and repulsion gel at will. The device works simple enough but has occasional issues when placing gels as you're moving on them, causing problems on certain time-based levels. When it works it works, but it lacks polish.

The music is decent, no surprise as it's composed by Harry Callahan who basically lives and breathes everything Portal, but the music seems to have these weird bounding boxes where it's either too quiet or too loud. This is probably due to the physical speakers placed around being actual locations and making the music a literal object as opposed to scoring, which is neat in theory but feels more like lazy Hammer editing than "immersive". Visually, the mod is a mess. Even Thinking With Time Machine, which came out months before this and was free, had better looking levels. And it's not so much the sets as it is the textures and lighting. The maps are incredibly bland and feel more like boxed frameworks than actually levels, feeling like an old GMod map more-so than a polished Portal test-chamber. I KNOW I had my settings maxed out, but the game just doesn't look as good as it should, especially since you have to pay for it.

If you play a lot of Portal mods like I do, you'll know this is the only paid mod on steam, costing half the price of either entry in the main franchise at MSRP, and a half the price you'd pay to get the collection on sale. Of course it makes sense to be lower, but the fact that it's not something like $0.99 and is instead a full five bucks makes this not worth it for anyone when not on sale. Not to mention the mod is both bloated AND lacking in content. They introduce a great way to merge the paint gun with Surfing but only use it a couple of times. Thank goodness for workshop support, allowing the community to pick up the slack of a community mod.

So onto the final recommendation... I can't. I mean, if you're a huge Portal fan, there's fun to be had, and if you've really exhausted everything else, you're bound to end up buying this anyway, just wait for a sale. As for everyone else, the puzzles are decent but the difficulty spikes are ridiculous. There are also moments outside of the testing area where your next move isn't telegraphed well and where the correct solution doesn't feel like you're solving it correctly. Yeah, the entirety of Chapter 4 is a blast and very well put together, but everything leading up to it is just a slog but introduces critical elements that I doubt the average player would be able to grasp without it.

If an update were to be made for this mod, I'd hope for the addition of more advanced chambers utilizing the Surfing mechanic, re-evaluation of the earlier chambers, fix the buggyness of the gel gun, add challenge modes (specifically time trials for surfing maps), and switch to the Strata branch of Source to automatically fix the loading issues.
Posted February 9.
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7.4 hrs on record
FYI, play time is due to my second playthrough. First was blind, second was achievement hunting.

Portal Revolution truly is a revolution. Whilst it's well understood that we won't be seeing another mainline entry into the Portal franchise, the fans have really outdone themselves in keeping the franchise alive. Long-story-short, Portal Revolution is a fun, well-written, well balanced, beautiful looking extension of Portal 2. Well worth the weight, as they say.

Gameplay is about what you'd expect; more testchambers and thus more puzzles, with the major difference being that you actually play through about half the game with only control of the first portal. That's not to say it dumbs down the puzzles, but that it builds some incredibly clever puzzles around taking away some of the control that players had come to expect, effectively flipping the formula on its head as a means of "shaking things up a bit", which is a welcome change of pace. Later chambers also introduce some new and interesting mechanics which feel well balanced and never come across ass "gimmicky". Save for some slight bugs you can encounter here-and-there, the game feels like a new mainline entry from Lord Gaben himself. I've played pretty much every major Portal 2 mod out there, and this is BY FAR the best one. I even liked it more than Portal 2 itself, though I can recognize the lack of certain quality-of-life features that Valve typically has, but all-in-all, I can't recommend this game enough.

The presentation is incredibly well done, with tons of new environments and a heavier focus on puzzle-solving on the surface, having far more sunlight and overgrowth giving much of the game a warmer and more natural feel, as opposed to Portal 2's aggressively cold chambers, though that's here too. The music is decent, though not too memorable; it serves its purpose but there are a few bangers in there. The several chapters have a distinct style to them as well as major shifts, allowing for a well-paced narrative with environments that shift with where you are, making the separate areas feel more special, though still connected.

On the technical side of this, Portal Revolution serves as the flagship introduction of the Strata engine, and is a welcome upgrade over most Portal 2 mods, the difference being quite noticeable. I was able to run the game completely maxed out at a smooth 60 from start to finish on GTX 1050 Ti, including FXAA, and it looks BEAUTIFUL. The refraction in glass, the textures on the wall, the sheen on half-polished floor, everything looks just as good, if not better, than its inspiration. The game also loads SIGNIFICANTLY faster than any other Portal 2 mod and even the base game itself. Having just replayed Portal 2 and Portal Reloaded, the difference was so staggering I'd just hold my position on my mouse and keyboard, anticipating the next chamber, and then, I'm there. Especially since the game has to reload every time you die, having the faster loading times makes this a substantially smoother experience. This makes me incredibly excited for Portal 2 Community Edition, another mod made in the Strata Source branch, as well as hoping for previous mods to be ported to it as well.

TL;DR
Game good; go play.
Posted January 31.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
0.1 hrs on record
First of all, for anyone still wanting to download this DLC, you can get it for free on Steam by hitting the "Install" link on THIS PAGE: https://steamdb.info/sub/32032/
Alternatively, it's available as a paid DLC for Portal 2 on PS3 using the PS Move, which is how I played it, thus the short playtime recorded here.

Portal 2's Perceptual Pack, also known as "Portal 2: In Motion", is a DLC expansion pack for Portal 2 that adds 7 new single-player test chambers to play through. In addition to the new way to control the game, it adds new gameplay mechanics such as "portal surfing" (rotating and moving already placed portals), "one-to-one" (moving the held item without moving the player or camera), and the ability to squash and stretch a specific cube-type which has multiple clever uses I won't spoil here. Unfortunately, I can't review the multiplayer as I don't have a second Navigation controller but it claims there is a multi-player component.

In terms of the quality of the chambers themselves, most of them are tutorials for the new mechanics. That's not inherently a "bad" thing per se, portal 1 is almost entirely tutorial, but it means that once you've gotten past the first half of the chambers, there's barely anything to do afterwards. I will say this, some of the puzzles were REALLY clever, having that "ah-ha" moment when it finally clicks, but the introduction of new puzzle elements just to use them once or twice leads to the pack feeling really short and lackluster. I beat all 7 chambers in what felt like 20 minutes and was definitely no more than 30. Now, I AM a portal veteran, having over 130 hours between both games, 100% achievements on Portal 1, and an unknown amount of time spent on various mods and external lore, so it's possible that less obsessed fans would get more out of the pack, but the absurd price of the proprietary Sixense camera at $199.99 MSRP for a 720p webcam and the $10 price tag for the DLC on PS3 really makes the pack seem like a terrible deal no matter how you look at it.

Would I recommend it? Yes, it's a decent enough level pack and officially licensed by Valve, so it's the closest we've got to a Portal 3, but I'd only recommend it for those who already have the PS Move as playing through the PS3 has decently responsive controls, especially for aiming, but I'd have a hard time recommending ANYONE go out and buy a Senz3D webcam as I cannot confirm the ability to play through the main campaign on PC with it, though it seems unlikely given the separation of applications.

What I really wish for, is just more chambers. The tutorials setup some great mechanics, you just need more time to appreciate what these new elements could lead to. Given modders have found a way to use Portal 2 on PS3 to side-load BSPs, I'd love to see some fan-made maps with these new mechanics in mind. Though it's over 10 years since this released and it's unlikely anyone even remembers the thing.
Posted January 22.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
1 person found this review funny
13.4 hrs on record
Help, I've completed the game and got all achievements, what do I do now?
Posted October 14, 2023.
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1 person found this review helpful
23.3 hrs on record (7.2 hrs at review time)
Already completed the game and felt as though there wasn't enough content, then I look over and find I've played for over 7 hours and realize that I probably more than got my money's worth. At least there's a randomizer mode so I can have infinite puzzles, though the random 15X15s are virtually impossible half the time.
Posted April 11, 2023.
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1 person found this review helpful
22.3 hrs on record (4.7 hrs at review time)
What other game allows me to dress as a flamingo then bash people's skulls in with a lead pipe? Seriously... Only other game I can think of is Hitman 3, so long as you've got the content from 2.
Posted September 7, 2022.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
89.9 hrs on record (77.1 hrs at review time)
C'est Bon!
Posted October 30, 2021.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
117.3 hrs on record (94.3 hrs at review time)
About 100 hours in and I'm still finding fun crap to do.
Posted November 11, 2020.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
7.1 hrs on record
I highly recommend this game for it's combination of fast paced combat and constructing abilities. It is a great game to kill time with and a fun experience for casual creators and competitive gamers alike. At first this game looked a little boring but after a few minutes of playing I was hooked on the action. I do not reccomend this game for people who are looking for a super realistic experience but if your okay with unrealistic physics then play away. There are plenty of maps to use and many new one from the comunity so your experience will always be fresh.
Posted March 1, 2017.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
68.5 hrs on record (33.9 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
I love this game so much. There are pleanty of workshop items to enhance your game. I think a cool feuture to add whould be a arcade machine maker with resizable Monitors, shapable Boards, image Textures, arcade Controllers and, moving Parts. I know thats kind of alot but it would be cool.
Posted February 16, 2015.
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Showing 1-10 of 12 entries