Portal Prelude

[The Wooster]

I did a search on this and found absolutely no one has mentioned this game yet.

Portal Prelude is the unofficial prequel to Portal. It was released a couple of days back and is entirely free for those who own a pc copy of portal. I think you might also need a copy of Half life 2 as well as the game uses some of it's assets.

The game is largely very professional, clocking in with a playtime just a little bit shorter than the original portal, but it does have few caveats. The story, which is entirely new, was obviously penned by someone who doesn't use English as their first language and the game features no voice acting, instead the developers opted to use one of those text to speech services so the dialogue, which isn't particularly funny to begin with, sounds particularly stilted (and not in a good way like GladOS) The game also suffers from a few balance issues with some puzzles making bastardly hard solutions more obvious than simpler, more elegant ones. It really highlights how effective Valve's extensive beta testing really is.

That being said the game gives you another five or so hours of portal completely free and while it's not up to Valve's efforts it's still very good. It makes a perfect companion to the 'Portal Flash Map pack' released earlier this year.

Download the install file here [http://www.portalprelude.com/]

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Nice, people are making home brewed portal games now?

 

[GenHellspawn]

clocking in with a playtime just a little bit shorter than the original portal

That being said the game gives you another five or so hours of portal completely free

So it took you more than 5 hours to beat Portal?

 

[The Wooster]

clocking in with a playtime just a little bit shorter than the original portal

That being said the game gives you another five or so hours of portal completely free

So it took you more than 5 hours to beat Portal?

So it took you less than 5 hours to beat portal and the bonus missions and challenges. I'm sure you're super hardcore.

 

[Knight Templar]

Nice, people are making home brewed portal games now?

Yep, valve knew we would do this kind of thing, thats why they worked so hard on everything.

Because we would test it in ways they didn't think of.

 

[TheSear]

I really really want this game, while I've played and completed portal and all the challenges etc I don't own the game :/ I done it all on a friends pc so yeah I'll have to get it sometime.

 

[Blind0bserver]

So it took you less than 5 hours to beat portal and the bonus missions and challenges. I'm sure you're super hardcore.

Ah, that's what you meant. That kinda threw me off, too. That bit aside, I've found Prelude to be kind of unforgiving with several of it's puzzles, most of which seeming to require near perfect execution to get past. It get's pretty aggravating after a while, I'm not going to lie, but if you have the patience, you should give it a look. After all, a mod doesn't cost you anything but your time, so it's still worth a look.

 

[redivivus]

It took me five hours to finish Portal because I didn't want it to be over, and I've gone back and just mucked around with it because Portal is fun.

This is glorious news! I will eat pancakes to celebrate!

 

[smallharmlesskitten]

Pity i only have tf2

 

[Caliostro]

clocking in with a playtime just a little bit shorter than the original portal

That being said the game gives you another five or so hours of portal completely free

So it took you more than 5 hours to beat Portal?

So it took you less than 5 hours to beat portal and the bonus missions and challenges. I'm sure you're super hardcore.

Portal is about 2 - 3 hours long... Not counting the "extra" lvl 18,which I was stuck on for a good while, yeah, I played through the game twice in about 6-7 hours, including extra challenges, and listening to the Developer's commentaries the second time around... I can end the game in about an hour now if I skip listening to GlaDoS... The "pro-speedrunnners" can probably end it in less than half an hour... Some of the speedruns on youtube are mad...

As for the topic, that seems interesting, however, the superior story and characterization were part of the reason I got so hooked to portal. But I might take a look.

 

[Sir_Montague]

Hey thx for the link

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Played it already. Not impressed.

Room 1 is simply a rotational trick. Room 2 is a pixel perfect speedy thing comes out. Didn't get any further because I switched it off in frustration.

It's ok I suppose, but no better.

 

[GenHellspawn]

I'm starting to wonder why a prequel (which is supposed to come before the first one) has harder puzzles then the original.

 

[GenHellspawn]

*Double posted, sorry*

So it took you less than 5 hours to beat portal and the bonus missions and challenges. I'm sure you're super hardcore.

I never bothered with the bonus content because the game was too average to make me want to complete it again. Although, I am still super hardcore.

 

[The Wooster]

So it took you less than 5 hours to beat portal and the bonus missions and challenges. I'm sure you're super hardcore.

Ah, that's what you meant. That kinda threw me off, too. That bit aside, I've found Prelude to be kind of unforgiving with several of it's puzzles, most of which seeming to require near perfect execution to get past. It get's pretty aggravating after a while, I'm not going to lie, but if you have the patience, you should give it a look. After all, a mod doesn't cost you anything but your time, so it's still worth a look.

The problem is quite often the more elegant solution to the problem is pretty obsure so players end up doing things the 'wrong' way which is bastardly hard. Like the room with the four turrets in the corners. I never did figure that one out. I just reloaded until i managed to knock them all over with a camera.

 

[Iron Mal]

I'd hate to be the cynical one here (but I'm going to be) but I think Portal should remain a 'one off' (like most puzzle games, it's only good for one play through) or it may find itself sharing the same fate as Command and Conquer, great and genius with the first game, the next one or two will also be pretty good (a little better or worse, not much variation) but eventually it will get to a point where even the hardcore fans will have to admit fault (seriously, CnC Generals was the worst of them all and we will probably say the same about 'Portal 2: episode 3'...well, everyone except the Valve fanatics of course).

 

[c0rruptioN]

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7c2QyOnJYWM

i made a video of the ending fight in portal prelude if anyone would like to see, pretty cool fight actually.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

The problem is quite often the more elegant solution to the problem is pretty obsure so players end up doing things the 'wrong' way which is bastardly hard. Like the room with the four turrets in the corners. I never did figure that one out. I just reloaded until i managed to knock them all over with a camera.

Took me a while as well, basically line yourself up before you portal then immediately fire an orange over the back of the far left turret and fall back through the blue. Then pick up the turret and knock the others over.