There's quite a few negative reviews here, and a lot of them are rather baffling considering what type of mod this is.

If you prefer Portal 1's atmosphere and don't mind the retcons made in the second game, this is not a mod for you. On that ground alone, a lot of the negative reviews don't hold much merit, because changing the atmosphere and bridging the gap between the two games is the whole point of this mod.

Portal Alive and Kicking (AaK for short) is a Portal 2 mod that brings the Portal 1 campaign stylistically much closer to the Portal 2 aesthetic. And in that, I'd say the mod is a huge success.

The test chambers feel more alive with a clever use of panels, various moving parts, and improved lighting. The facility feels like a giant interconnected entity rather than a bunch of rusty old rooms, and in terms of both assets and layout, it all fits much better with the style established in Portal 2.

While I love both games and actually slightly prefer the first one, I believe Portal 2 has a much more coherent style overall. A lot of great ideas that were used in full in that game weren't even conceived of in the first one. The Enrichment Center is a much different place in the two games. Portal 1 leans more into the desolate and abandoned aesthetic, while 2 is more about the vastness, modularity, and very organic, interconnected feeling of the Aperture facility.

AaK does a great job at combining the two, with a much stronger emphasis on bringing in all the additions from the second game. The desolate feeling of the first game is not completely lost, though, as some aspects are retained, like the more orange lighting largely absent from the second game, or the creepy vibe of the escape sequence, showing some of the more ruined and abandoned parts of the facility.

The escape really is the highlight of this mod, as that is where the changes are the most drastic. I really like the atmosphere and sound design in the piston area. It makes one of my least favorite parts of Portal into something truly unique.

Speaking of sound, the mod also features its own OST, and for the most part, it's pretty good. Sometimes, though, the mixing is a bit odd, and while some areas get great atmospheric songs, others will be completely silent. The overall sound design is pretty good, with some really great moments.

The biggest shortcoming of the mod is the final boss fight. AaK uses the Portal 2 GLaDOS model and essentially doesn't do anything interesting with it. She just motionlessly stares at you and rotates to face you, and it's a huge missed opportunity to give her much more expressive animations, akin to what we see in Portal 2. Instead, we get a GLaDOS that is actually more stiff than in the original game. The use of the unmodified Portal 2 model is also a bit of a weird choice if continuity is a concern, as lore-wise, her appearance is different largely because she "fixed" herself and gave herself a makeover after being a pile of scrap metal for decades. She definitely shouldn't look the same here as in the later stages of Portal 2.

All things considered, though, this mod is pretty good and does exactly as advertised. Is it perfect? No. Does it change the Portal 1 atmosphere almost completely? Yes, but it's not a bad thing. After playing this game countless of times, it was nice to replay it once more in a way that feels more fresh, and more faithful to the reinvented style of the second game.

A Portal 2-ified Portal is something I've always wondered about, and have always looked forward to seeing, whenever it might come, and whoever it might come from.
I wasn't too vexed by the time it took to make this mod -- It is the first of its kind, after all.
After playing through twice, however, its execution leaves a lot to be desired.



I'll start with the positives:

🟢 The graphics are mostly great. It's what you'd expect from a Portal 2-ified Portal.
🟢 Retconning Chamber 01 to the sequel version, far better for teaching beginners.
🟢 Chamber skips seem relatively untouched.
🟢 Making the Companion Cube required for the first ball catcher puzzle is an interesting choice, and it makes sense.
🟢 The rare faint Aperture Science jingle + Cave Johnson audio from the PC monitors backstage is pretty neat.
🟢 The ambient music of the piston section was nicely foreboding.
With GLaDOS reminiscing about attempting to murder you, this music recontextualizes the vibe from WTF-haha to something slightly more hair-raising.



Now, the negatives... and I'm sorry to say that they are abundant:

🔴 What happened to the swinging lamp in the relaxation vault!!!
In Valve-ian game design, they always made up for downtime with interactive elements. Taking away one of these toys is just mean.

🔴 Making me wait for GLaDOS to end her lengthy monologue before I can exit Chamber 02.

🔴 Not that many cameras in Chamber 05???
This is literally the chamber where she lies about not monitoring you.
The excess of cameras was the entire point of establishing her to be a liar.
In the original, seeing that final camera watching me from the other side of the glass as GLaDOS admits to lying was a core memory of mine. And it was destroying that final camera which felt like payback. It's the little details that matter, guys.

🔴 The music in the turret chamber is super pitchy and grating, whenever you grab or knock down one. To the point where it gave my partner a headache.
I know you're trying to mimic Portal 2, but it takes a very honed-in skill to make electronic whining sound good.

🔴 There's an achievement called "Get Stuck", so I decided to get stuck behind the sliding door in the Chamber 17 incinerator room.
I did not get the achievement, nor was there a failsafe for getting me out.
Keep in mind, this sliding door is opened by putting the cube on the button. A physics prop. Which can be knocked off the button.
For a game with an achievement about getting stuck, you'd think those bases would be covered here.

🔴 No Black Mesa projection slides in the backstage section... Why?

🔴 Turret "ambushes" in the backstage section aren't really ambushes anymore.
They seem like they've always been there now, regardless of GLaDOS's involvement.
In the original, it was a real "Oh, S#&%!" moment when all the doors opened in the big turret room, and the battle music kicked in.
It really felt like a last ditch effort from GLaDOS to prevent you from reaching her as you drew closer, and it added to the insane memorability of those set-pieces.

🔴 The eyes of GLaDOS and her cores have an insane amount of bloom & saturation.
I felt like I was inside of an amateur SFM video when I got to this part.

🔴 GLaDOS only has an idle animation...
Unfortunately, I think this is where the common "15 year development" complaint becomes heavily validated. What happened here, guys?

🔴 Boss music is obnoxiously loud, and kind of ill-fitting.
After I incinerated the curiosity core, the blaring klaxon from the boss track COMPLETELY drowned out the punchline from GLaDOS's "Two plus two is (whirring) ten... IN BASE FOUR".
That's honestly egregious. GLaDOS's lines make up so much of the fight's flavor. Come on.
Not to mention, why go for such a loud theme? The lowkey vibe of the original was great at building tension and getting under your skin. It felt insidious and noxious, like the neurotoxin coating the inside of your lungs.

🔴 Cores are much louder than GLaDOS, even when far away.

🔴 Very poor telegraphing of where cores go after you hit her.
In the original, each core had a tractor beam help guide the player and keep the pace going.
This is supposed to be the most climactic part of the game, so every lil bit helps first-timers.
In Alive & Kicking, they just... zip straight up to a metal claw above the arena.
No animation here, just a linear path from GLaDOS to claw.

🔴 Progression of core position difficulty is terrible for first-timers.
Earlier in this review, I praised the retconning of Chamber 01 for more intuitive tutorial design.
It seems like they've gone the opposite way here by making the first core you knock off GLaDOS be positioned high up in air, identical to the anger core's position in the original.
It only gets worse, as the final core you have to grab is constantly moving around the arena. This didn't feel difficult to me, so much as it just felt tedious. I can only imagine how infuriating this could be for less experienced players.

🔴 "In case of implosion, look directly at implosion"
In Portal 2, this sign was placed to ensure players wouldn't miss the awesome implosion animation the developers made.
In Alive & Kicking, the developers cleverly subvert this by not having GLaDOS implode at the end.

🔴 Chell has no animation while being dragged back to Aperture.
Or maybe it's just rigor mortis...

🔴 The memorable credits screen was replaced with an interactive one... with no indication that it's interactive.
Unless you move your mouse early, chances are you're going to miss some names before you find out. I feel sorry for those credited who aren't in view of the camera's starting angle.



Well, those are my major criticisms of the game.
I do have minor gripes, such as not being able to throw objects with M1, but I consider those "Portal 2-isms" and I can understand staying mechanically consistent with Portal 2's engine.
I hope at least some of these criticisms will be addressed, I unfortunately just don't see this as an okay stand-in for Portal 1 right now.

That being said, if you're already well acquainted with the Portal games, it can't hurt to see how this tickles your fancy. It's free, and of similar length to the original.

Ah, Alive & Kicking; this game is to the Portal franchise what Black Mesa is to Half-Life: a reimagining of the original game, in the engine of the second. Now, since both Portal games were already made in the Source engine, you'd expect this game would've released faster than Black Mesa, and yet here we're, some 13 or 14 years after I first learned of it, with it getting a Steam release.

Now, I didn't write that opening paragraph as a criticism of the game. Just something I found particularly amusing, as I'd been looking forward to this mod/game for ages. The idea of an updated version of the original Portal, to bring it more in line with the aesthetics of Portal 2, was intriguing back in the day, and now that I've finally played it, I must say they delivered.

So, what can I say about Alive & Kicking? If you've already played the original Portal, this is basically the same game. Well, almost. There's some differences in some of the test chambers, and the later half of the game has been heavily revamped; following the same story beats, but with expanded/modified levels. The story is obviously good, albeit minimal (it's the first Portal, after all), and the graphics... Well, it's Portal 2's level of graphics. There's seriously not a lot I can say here that isn't known about Portal. If anything, this was a different way to play through one of my favourite games.

Now... There is a minor complaint, and that is the soundtrack. It's not necessarily bad, but I still have the original soundtrack that was developed for the mod downloaded and well... I prefer that one. Then again, having listened to it for 13 years might've made me a bit biased. Also, I gotta recognize that some of the tracks might not have fit very well with Portal's vibes.

Anyway, great game; not an exact 1:1 replica, some cool achievements that weren't in the original... Oh, and I absolutely love what they did with the Advanced Chambers; making them look as the dilapidated portions of Aperture Science from Portal 2 was a great way to further differentiate them from the main game's version.

So yeah, I absolutely recommend this game!