I really enjoyed this at the start, and it was surprisingly a long time before you got the ability to make two portals. Even with just one, some of the puzzles were really involved. Sadly, I feel like past Chapter 5, it follows similarly with Portal 2. Get sent into an abandoned area and make a new friend; have one terrible room where you do nothing but toss white gel everywhere (this seems even bigger than the one in P2); slowly get a few more complex puzzles up to ch7; introduce a new mechanic (pretty cool); and it only has easy puzzles, feeling like they need to do another sequel just to fully utilize it. Then you get to the final boss, and yeah, it is different than the others, but it is still just as repetitive. At least the dialogue here wasn't bad.

Is Portal Mel Stories worth playing, or are there any other mods? Most seem to have complaints about getting way too complicated too quickly or just annoying humour.

this shit had me grinning wickedly from start to finish.

even on the potato graphics settings i needed to stop it lagging, its absurdly beautiful. im an absolute sucker for outdoor chambers and getting to see off into aperture's expanse, so i was eating good for the majority of the time. i also found emilia and stirling endearing, though far from perfectly written they're about as charming as fangame cores get. the story was nice, but ended far too abruptly for my liking, and the post-credits scene took a really out of nowhere tone-shift that just didnt click with me. it didnt feel like it really resolved all that much either.

as far as the puzzles go, the chambers never felt too overly complex or confusingly arranged (PS:M take fucking notes); i had a good time solving them. the new mechanics were super interesting as well, but i really wish they had gotten a chance to interact with each other or pop up in more chambers.

theres some pretty glaring issues here, but the positives are strong enough that the experience as a whole isnt majorly dragged down by its weaknesses. should be noted that i went in just looking to have fun and not much more. if i had to give advice, i'd say: set your expectations accordingly. this is a free fan-made mod (despite what the clickbait headlines about it claimed) so you'll have to make allowance for some rough edges, but it absolutely makes up for it with the good it has to offer.

Fairly fun bit of portal goodness, the humor got a chuckle out of me a few times, and the voice acting was pretty good.

I quite liked the outside sections visually, a literal breath of fresh air.
The double laser cubes were interesting, if a bit underutilized.
It was generally easy, had to go watch a playthrough for a specific puzzle with a faith plate and a power switch, but that was the sole blocking point.

The puzzle and environment designs are really well done, with them not being too challenging. While the voice acting is good I found it to be trying a bit too hard to be portal 2 (with it copying plot and jokes basically outright) and just falling flat for me.

I really do appreciate the effort that has gone into this mod over the years and the core gameplay is generally fantastic (apart from the final fight imo) but the writing leaves a little to be desired personally. It's between a 6/7 out of 10 because even though I wasn't wowed by some of the choices made but the love and passion that's gone into it is obvious and for it to be released for free is a testament to how much dedication the team had to making something to be proud of/

Honestly really fun! I think in terms of fanmade portal games Mel has a stronger story and Reloaded has better (and tougher) puzzles but this struck a nice balance between the two for me with some cool new mechanical ideas and beautiful environments. In particular the visuals, music and voice acting were fantastic; it's amazing to me that fans can come together and make a game that holds up this well next to the official portal duology. It is absolutely CRIMINAL that we get to play this for free the devs deserve their due.
However for a game called revolution it doesn't do a whole ton to differentiate itself from that duology, and mostly holds true to the same basic structure. I also really wish we got to see more of the "near the surface" environments because they were by far the most memorable part of this for me.
Overall really solid and definitely worth checking out for fans of the series and the other fanmade titles.

Portal Revolution is a full-length mod campaign for Portal 2, meant to take place between the two games. It has a surprisingly large number of puzzles, it's own plot and voice acting, and a few unique mechanics. It's solidly "okay". The new puzzles are good, but nothing to write home about. The new mechanics are interesting, but show up too late into the campaign and aren't used all that much. The voice acting is fine, perhaps a little grating, but the plot is almost exactly the same as Portal 2 with the serial numbers filed off. It's impressive for a fan effort though, and Portal is such a fun mechanic that any new content is enjoyable, and you can't beat free. I think part of the reason I'm a little let down is that a few years ago I played a different Portal fan game -- Portal Reloaded -- which was fantastic. That game introduced an ingenious mechanic that is good enough to have been Portal 3. This game is a very solid mod, but doesn't push the envelope too much. It's a bit awkwardly paced as well. I don't mind the more exploratory sections, but there's not really anything new to discover that isn't retreading Portal 2's ground. They spend an annoyingly long time before giving you the second portal as well, and overall don't really use some of the mechanics to their full advantage. If you're dying for more Portal content, and who isn't, I recommend giving it a try. But I would also highly recommend giving Portal Reloaded a try first.

If you're a fan of Portal - and you want more Portal - you should play this. It's a no brainer.

There are some issues, and scoring an 8 might be a hair generous. The puzzels do skew easier. There are a lot of sections which are less test chamber and more apature traversal. And the back 1/4 falls a bit flat compared to the rest.

HOWEVER, the core gameplay is rad. The story is cute. The VO is good. There are some moments that made me smile, and there are brand new mechanics to play around with.

A high end free Portal fan game that falls just a little short of being great.

Revolution has some good highpoints with the final sequence, setting, unique mechanics and some pretty tough tests.
But the reality is that the majority of the game is not that good, with most puzzles being so easy you can finish them in less than a minute, a lot of retracing your steps and bad writing.
They constantly redo moments straight from Portal 2, everything from the arcs of all the characters all the way down to badly reciting very specific jokes. It's like they were trying to do an alternate telling of the Portal 2 story, there is no originality here.

All this said, it is free.
It might not be super good but it has it's moments, and we always take more Portal content.

It's ok.

It mostly stays away from the traps most fan made Portal games fall into, so there's not really any tight timings, or pixel peeping, or overbearing fan-fiction, but it was on the easy side.

New mechanics don't really get the time for you to be really tested on them.

There’s a boldness in trying to stand toe to toe alongside the giants; Portal Revolution caught my attention the very moment I saw its trailer last year, and since then I’ve had my eye on it till the day on its release, and I got it easy, think about the people that were there from the beginning! Revolution has been in development for 8 years, a crazy amount of time for any game, let alone one made by fans a s a way to celebrate the series, tho in this case it makes sense when you really think about its intentions.

The most known and popular Portal and Portal 2 mods are all test chamber centered, by that I mean they don’t really venture in the aspects of the series aside of expanding on the puzzles; this is nor a jab nor a complaint in the slightest, in fact some innovate with the original concept in genius ways, and plus, it’s completely expected for them to shy away from the narrative department except for maybe a nod or two, because creating a new story in your fun little mod would be inserting yourself within Portal’s narrative, something not many would even consider as a possibility to do, because, how could they even attempt it?

The thing about Portal Revolution is that it does, it does not want to limit itself to just be a succession of puzzles one after the other, it wants to go further beyond that, it was to surprise you with its presentation and sequences beyond normal gameplay, it wants to have its own voice, one that can fit right with other two. And, listen, I’m not trying to imply or make a statement about how both of the Portal games’ narratives are unparalleled or a master class is videogame narrative —even if few games can say they have the ‘’part where he kills you’’—, they really aren’t the most impactful narratives in all of gaming, but what they are is both well executed and managing to feel important, especially in the first one, where the story melds perfectly with the gameplay, rather than being at the service of it and just an excuse for why are you shooting portals and going though puzzles. Portal is not simply a great series, it’s an excellent duology whose story is pretty much told and its gameplay basically perfected, and trying to add onto that is a herculean task that I don’t blame Valve for not wanting to take.

But Revolution doesn’t even come from Valve, it’s from a group of fans that really love the series and wanted to face all of this dilemmas, which is an even more scary prospect at that, because ironically enough, those that unabashedly love a certain work are the most prompt to make mistakes that those that recognize its successes as well as the flaws, and it’s through that mixture of both undying love for the originals and fear at failing to be lesser than them… that you get Revolution’s story line.

Stop me if you heard this before: a story about a woman is woken up by an orb-shaped hysteric robot in a room part of a giant infrastructure that is decaying and falling down with the promise of getting out if you help him, only for halfway through the adventure getting thrown into depths of the oldest parts of the facility traversing through its older and abandoned test chambers seeking to reach the top and becoming allies with another robot whose conscience was once part of a human, and reaching the original facility that’s now at the risk of collapsing because of the true intentions of the first robot you met and you and your new companion have to stop him to save the entire building and yourselves… also one of them may or may not have a British accent. First of all, wow, I’m surprised you didn’t stopped me, you sure you have played the original series before? And secondly… yeah, the game practically follows beat by beat Portal 2’s narrative, specially half-way through. It’s a real shame that hits doubly hard because even when these similarities where present from the very start, at first they felt more like interesting and even warranted parallelisms than anything else; there were a set of key differences that kept thing pretty exciting and that made this felt like a worthwhile pre-quel, one that isn’t necessary to get the story at full, but one that makes sense withing this world and this narrative, but then you encounter your first ‘’broken bridge’’, and you realize that this games that follows its inspiration even more than it seemed. Listen, I really like Portal 2… but not as much as the original Portal, not by a long shot; and it isn’t because it has a more expansive narrative, but because, unlike I said about its predecessor, it doesn’t feel like the story and gameplay work together, but instead that the story is constantly trying to find weird ways to throw you into puzzles; either by GlaDOS putting you through them because reasons I guess, Wheatley doing the same because… reasons, I guess, and then there’s Old Aperture, or as I like to call it, ‘’J.K. Simmons’ nonsensical puzzle hell’’. These moments aren’t enough to poison me in the slightest, but they represent a intrinsically problem with Portal 2’s design and how it messes with its own pace… and then Portal Revolution looks at it and says ‘’Wouldn’t be cool if I also did it? Yeah, it’d be pretty cool…’’

Roadblocks that just sorta… happen, diversions that don’t make any sense (fun fact, a chapter is fact named around said diversion!), and we even get to return to old Aperture for a much more random and nonsensical reason than ever before! It’s a moment that just happens because I guess it was cool in Portal 2 and hey, we gotta make you meet this important character and have two extra chapters before the finale somehow! At some point it just starts going through the motions and never stops from there, and I have to say, it certainly managed to remind me of Portal 2, but I’m not sure if it was for the reasons the team wanted. No joke, at some point a character just throws you into a chamber and says ‘’Well, you have to do this puzzle, why you ask?... Idk LMAO’’ and at first was pretty cute, but that moment definitively soured when the game said the same thing like another 5 times.

The roots of this insecurity also reach the dialogue a bit; I want go on a tangent for a second and praise the amazing work both VA’s put into their role and the effort behind the screenplay, everyone on board clearly wanted to make this as close to a official Portal experience it could get, and the professionality of both voice actors on their roles fits what you would say in an official game to a tea, and dialogue for the most part feels genuine and got a few smiles out of me!... However, there are still some weird oddities here and there; things like names like Black Mesa or Borealis thrown around just for fans to catch the reference instead to doing a meaningful connection or joke like in the originals, but worst of all is what they did to poor Stirling. I really liked the guy at first! Loved his introduction as a kind of more upbeat amicable GLaDOS that serves the same purpose as Wheatley, and I really enjoyed his attempts at comedy and impressions, but after a while, all of his character is… gone, and by the end of the game we are left with what I could only described as a ‘’Poor-man’s Wheatley’’. Also it has certain lines like ‘’It’s time we bring her back, isn’t it?’’ that made me roll my eyes so hard they went numb, I don’t know how else to describe it except by saying that. The second character is actually super cool tho! Don’t want to get much into spoiler territory concerning them since it’s introduced late into the adventure, but it’s super unique personality wise with what we’ve come to expect in this series but it fits naturally into the series mythos like a glove, I don’t mean it as a joke when I say I wished they were official and got even more screen time.

There seems to be this idea of ‘’If you want to make it again, you have to make it grander’’ that Portal 2 subconsciously introduced and that Revolution just decides to go on with for despite its own detriment: it never reaches the genius simplicity of the original, but also never manages the same level of wonder and surprise of Portal 2 setting wise, it’s stuck in this middle-valley, sandwiched between a monument of a game and another monument of a game, seemingly having nothing to compete with neither or lacking anything new to offer…seemingly.

Stefan Heinz, main developer behind Portal: Revolution, has stated that Portal: Revolution’s puzzle difficulty starts where Portal 2 stops, something that can be read on the game’s own Steam page, and while there’s truth in those words, when reading it you may arrive to the conclusion that it picks up from where it let off and completely expects you to have played the previous games, and even tho of course the fact that you’d play the original duology is the more sensical thing, Revolution acts as if it were a completely independent entry, and it does it with a mastery that simply awed me, and it never stopped from there. It slowly teaches you the basics little by little, and from there its uses them to unimaginable potentials; I never thought so much could be done being able to only shoot one portal, but Revolution shatters that conception and goes completely wild with it. I had so much fun in this chambers, so much joy experimenting until finally finding the insane solution, thinking outside the box in ways I could only expect from the original series and going even beyond that, using the ‘’going out of bounds’’ idea and never looking back, taking everything that was established and reaching new heights, presenting old concepts in a new life, and even introducing its own ideas like with the laser cubes, but it never gets stale, every idea and set of puzzles is used until it can’t give anything more, at which point it jumps onto next. I find the words to describe how amazingly these are designed complicated, not all are bangers, but most are, and it’s not just because they tried to make harder puzzles, it’s because they made puzzle that feel novel and creative. Also resolving them while the original compositions sound in the background is incredible, I linked one before and I really mean it, the new songs are all amazing.

But Portal Revolution is not just a collection of test chambers, it tries to be more than that, capping things off with a final boss fight, once that forces to repeat segments, that doesn’t pose much of a spectacle, and that feels derivative story-wise… honestly it’s sad to see how it perfectly fits the rest of the game’s story…Revolution wanted to be a lot, and calling it a failure is both a lie and a disservice, the fact this is even real is worth of praise, and the moments where it shines and where it’s puzzles really hit, it achieves peaks that face the originals, and I’d say in some cases even surpasses them, and that alone makes it worth a recommendation! If only it was more consistent in that regard, instead, I leave wishing it wasn’t so scared, that it didn’t love Portal 2 so much, that it kept innovating, that it yearned to be even more unique, because at the end, that’s the true spirit of Portal.

Also, the finale is really weird, aside of the kind of jarring final boss, it doesn’t feel like there’s a proper ending it just sorta—

Reminds me of Portal 2 in the best ways, and also the not-so-best ways. I appreciate what they tried to do!
Even if what they ended up doing was just, copying Portal 2 again.
To be fair, there's clearly a lot of effort and a lot of love put into this, and I liked the new additions to the puzzles (I wish that the portal cubes and the pneumatic tubes were used more!) and I also did like the voice acting and the characters! It really does retread that same ground that Portal 2 did, but it also didn't try to add a bit more to it's characters to try and differentiate itself. There's some cool fanon that could have happened, but alas, it ends up being nothing too special.
But it is fun! and I'll happily give it a recommend based on that alone.

I don't want to dissuade people from playing this game because there is a lot of quality here. But despite its appearance as a highly polished portal game/mod, the actual puzzling out feels a little half-baked. A lot of the solutions have to do with rethinking your understanding of cube replacement/respawning, not to mention the lack of a real game changing new mechanic. The closest things were the power switch and the new laser cubes. These both were very good additions, but there weren't enough puzzles concerning them where I could feasibly feel tested by their mechanics. There is a pretty high difficulty spike midgame punctuated by really long walking sections, which is the worst when considering the last, unfortunately easy, test chambers. The story is generally lackluster, and feels like a retread of a lot of what made Portal 2 so interesting. It ends really abruptly, which also sours my experience a little bit. For a (free!) fangame, I can recognize the work and quality that was put in, but I did not gel with a lot of this game. I may have been spoiled by Portal Reloaded to be honest.

I wouldn't say this is our Portal 3 like a lot of the Steam reviews seem to imply, but Portal Revolution is easily one of the better Portal mods I've played outside of a few issues.

I particularly enjoyed just how much some of the new mechanics added to the Portal formula. I don't wanna go into too much as to not spoil things, but some of the later mechanics feel like they could easily be in a Portal game without many questions.

Inversely, I was super happy to see how the game utilized having a single portal to work with. Those earlier levels are a true charm as it utilizes a single portal to its utmost effect with some decently challenging puzzles. Nothing that feels like it needs to be thought about for ages, but pretty good.

It's also a surprisingly great looking mod that really pushes the Source engine hard. Thanks to a lot more focus on the surface levels of Aperture, the vegetation seriously adds to the visual fidelity. A lot of moments that felt quite picturesque both in scale and finer details.

However, there are a few things holding it back from greatness. Most notably is the writing which, while obviously not to be expected as the same quality as Portal itself, felt like a considerable step down. A lot of the jokes simply don't land, and you don't get any memorable moments save for the finale.

Puzzle difficulty also wasn't entirely up to par. Two puzzles were seriously challenging, while all other puzzles were anything from a minute or two to get to a mere time obstacle to progression. Didn't feel too bad in practice, but a tad annoying.

Given that it's free though, I'd suggest giving Portal Revolution a shot. It isn't too long and if you aren't jiving with it, you can always walk away without any investment.

What a delight the Portal fanbase is. I’m so glad there’s a community out there that not only loves Portal as much as I do, but actively makes entire games as free mods. Huge kudos to the team that made this. Their dedication and love of Portal was crawling all over this game.

As a Portal game, it was really solid. It’s impossible to hold yourself to the standard that is the masterpiece of Portal 2, but this game did a good job of maintaining the spirit of the series. Technically, it ran smoothly and I had no hiccups aside from some weird freeze lag, but I’m not sure if that was my hardware or if it was the game itself.

The puzzles were overall well designed with just the right amount of challenge. There were some that I feel as though I completed “wrongly” because I couldn’t figure out the right way, and the fact that there even was a way to cheese a puzzle is indicative of poor design, but there were only a couple of these instances. The new mechanics were also refreshing even though they weren’t utilized until the end.

The story had heart and good humor to it, though the ending left a bit to be desired. Overall, this scratched that Portal itch and I’m so grateful there are people out there making things like this. I definitely can forgive its flaws because of the fact it was a free, community made mod.

71/100

Something I don't think enough people give Portal 2 credit for is it's construction of Aperture Science as an almost mythological space. An endless labyrinth of structures built one on top of the other, stretching down into the depths of the earth, slowly decaying more and more. Futuristic chambers that endlessly deconstruct and reconstruct themselves sat next to retrofuturistic 1960s kitsch from the company's early days.

The Aperture Science of Portal was a shabby, abandoned science lab run by a mad AI. In Portal 2, it was an entire world. Huge caves full of industrial pipes and girders stretching out seemingly forever into the mist. Shifting mazes of gantries and rooms that seem designed to trap you within the facility.

Portal: Revolution gets this, and builds upon it, taking you through yet more parts of Aperture Science, learning new nuggets of information about this place that fit seemlessly into the pre-existing lore and in places fill in some questions about what happened between the two games.

This is far and away the best story mod for Portal 2 that I have played. It may be as close to another Portal game as we'll ever get (it took me around 7.5hrs to complete and packs that time with plenty of story). From the atmosphere to the humour to the puzzle design. There's little that this mod doesn't get right about the Portal universe, even if at times the jokes don't quite land or the puzzles feel a litte bit too hard for anyone who hasn't put as much time into this franchise as me. But then again, who's going to be playing this other than people like me?

But the name Portal: Revolution suggests something grander than the ambitions of this mod. A revolution this is not. For all of this team's fantastic work replicating what Valve has done in the past, they fail to replicate what Valve always does in the future: Revolutionise their games.

There has never been a Valve sequel that wasn't swinging for the fences. It's probably the reason why they make games so infrequently. If you can't truly reinvent a franchise, why bother?

But Portal: Revolution does not reinvent Portal, it simply iterates on the ideas that Valve laid down in Portal 2, pushing some mechanics further and introducing some new ones that fit seemlessly into the puzzle-solving ecosystem of the portal games. There are some really smart spins on the puzzle design of Portal 2 here and I don't want to diminish the fantastic work this team has done by suggesting that they should have done more. What they achieved here is truly work they should be proud of. But why they called this mod Portal: Revolution remains a mystery to me. For my money, they should have dropped the "R" (the one at the start of "Revolution" not the one in the middle of "Portal".)

Perhaps my biggest gripe with this mod is how slow it is to start. The first few hours of the game are spent on puzzle chambers where the player only controls one portal. This makes for some interesting puzzles but wears out its welcome some time before the second portal is finally introduced. Perhaps worse than this is that the few new mechanics that this mod has to offer are not introduced until hours into the experience and others not until the third act. As a result, many feel like they don't quite reach their full potential even if the puzzle design is generally great.

The narrative as well doesn't fully pick up steam until the end of the first act, but once it does it is a pretty engaging story that fleshes out the mythos of Aperture Science in interesting ways and introduces you to some fun new characters. While it is a tad predictable, there are some twists and turns which feel in keeping with the franchises themes and sense of humour. Meanwhile, the voice cast - while not reaching the heights of Stephen Merchant, Ellen McLain and J.K. Simmons (an unbelievably high bar) - hold their own well and deliver lines with some not bad comedic timing.

Portal: Revolution is the kind of modding success story that only comes around every once in a blue moon. The convergence of talent and genuine passion that really only a mod can give you. A game that deserves to stand alongside the game it was built upon, if not on equal footing then at least in the same limelight. If you're a fan of Portal, you owe it to yourself and the Aperture Science Enrichment Center to play this Interactive Experience.