Using one of the simplest gaming concepts in years, Portal has taken the world by storm with its fiendish, charming puzzle action, building on its predecessor Narbacular Drop and adding a dollop of story and a spoonful of wry humour. As PC ZONE's adoration for the game knows no bounds, and most of the team are on our 15th playthrough, we decided it was time to take a cursory glance over what the online community has created using the vast Valve SDK for the game.
Ren_Test 2 Created by one of Bethesda's Fallout 3 team, the internet won't shut up about Ren_Test 2, one of the most mind-numbingly taxing Portal maps ever created. So, take it as read that this map is so bloody brutally challenging that it makes Portal's advanced levels seem effete.
Now that we're done with that, we have to take our hats off to the designers for creating a fiendishly difficult yet fantastically designed map, recycling the ball-cube, and conniving one of the most frustrating and maddening energy-ball puzzles known to man.
This is a bastard of a map which will cause a stress migraine as you to manipulate energy balls into playing a horrible game of Portal lacrosse. Bethesda's people have made a level that's mind-boggling both in how hard and how masterfully designed it is.
New_PL_Core There are many emotions you feel throughout Portal; elation, frustration, sadness, but rarely do you feel scared or tense. This map changes all that, by adding just the right amount of energy balls, funny-shaped walls, and no-portal surfaces to make this a tricky, twitchy map that will have you constantly looking over your shoulder.
Due to the erratic nature of where the balls fly, especially once you've decided to place a few portals to energise the switches, you'll be in constant fear of getting yourself energised to death.
Our advice is to play without autosaves, for that real oh-God-I'm-gonna-die sensation throughout. A tightly made, well-textured and a well-balanced map for players of all skill levels.
Santura Santura is a great example of a map with some really solid, fun ideas put into it: made by a true Portal fan. It strikes the balance very well between making you think about your surroundings and negotiating the environment to place you in the perfect portalling position.
It didn't take long to break the map, through a misplacement of the Companion Cube, causing a disappointing reload just when I was getting into the swing of things. That weakness aside, Santura is a finely made map well worth a download.
Lost Chamber This map is another teeth-grinder which has the single most annoying puzzle in here. It requires succinct and careful placement of portals at one part to pass an energy ball around the map - and without the right timing, you're either dead or back to square one.
The kicker is that the walls are a fluorescent bloom-drenched white, making it an absolute chore to even see the energy ball that you're so trying to drop into its receptacle.
We don't expect meticulous playtesting of a map - after all, this was designed in a fan's spare time - but did this map's maker even play it through? We don't know. This isn't a bad map, but it suffers from the modder's malady of a lack of spit and polish.
The Cube Will Stab You Much like the Judge Dredd movie, cubewillstabyou makes a terrible mistake within minutes of beginning. While Judge Dredd broke the rules by showing us Stallone's stupid face beneath the mask, here our Weighted Companion Cube friend, who we love so, breaks the rules wholeheartedly by suddenly talking to us.
To make matters worse, the Cube hurts you, and growls and burbles like a demon baby as you attempt to wrestle it painfully from one side of the level to the other. The level design is bland, repetitive, at many times annoying, and doesn't feel right.
Cube Will Stab You isn't lacking in technical superiority over the other Portal maps we've played, but feels uncreative and dull. It breaks the cardinal rules of Portal, tries to be witty with its use of the voiceover and the Companion Cube, and falls flat on its face - and no-one's laughing.
G_Cake "Can you find the Gman and his chocolate cake? Only one way to find out!" squawks the chirpy description of this dire map.
Not only is every texture repeated so often it makes you feel lost and sad, but the arrangement of things is such that you will find yourself either stuck on one part for a minute before giving up, or spend two minutes to finish it. The result simply leaves you depressed and hollow.
Play this, if only to realise how good life is without games like this in the world.
TonyMap It's good to see a mapmaker with a sense of modesty. Then there's always the mapmaker who sticks his name on a wall mere seconds after you enter.
Luckily for Mr Tony, we're a fan of this one, which is a slice of classic Portal action, requiring you to negotiate buttons and really use your portal gun to its full potential to trick yourself through the level.
There are a few iffy choices regarding necessary placement of portals, but ultimately Mr Tony has done well to make his home-made level engaging, and giving it a sense of nostalgia for those of us - we imagine most PC gamers, at this point - who are done with Portal.
This is a step back in time to the first few levels, and we love it.
I found all, but Ren Test2, to be really rather boring affairs. I know you can't expect too much off the fans, but there must be some other Portal maps worth playing. Oh, and I've already played Narbarcular Drop.
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