It's a goddamn shame that Valve has decided to make Portal and it's science heavy setting into their defacto "Test Our Software" game series now. I mean it's been 13 years since the last new game that tries to capture what Portal is as a puzzle game. Instead, we've gotten The Lab, a tech demo with all sorts of stuff to show off vr, and this, a 30 minute experience to get you to be aware of what the Steam Deck can do.

The good news is that everything here is still remarkably Portal. The writing, the comedy, the look, the lore, it's all there and it's borderline necessary if you want to go out of your way to know every inch of officially released material like an encyclopedia.

Gameplay wise it's also shockingly in depth to go over all the stuff the Steam Deck can do while still being a fun game, vs The Lab which is mostly just a bunch of fun experiences that require you to be in vr for them. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, nothing incredible, but the jump from Valve making The Lab to making Half Life Alyx did a very good job of telling them to make video games to show off tech stuff over just tech demos that do the job in a familiar setting.