Recent reviews by pivotman319 (Trans Rights FTW!)

I'd like to disclose that (as of writing) I am the quality assurance lead for Portal 2: Community Edition, a Strata Source project. I do not have any association with Revolution's development (despite the mod's use of the Strata engine), and the opinions I'm providing in my review do not reflect those of the P2CE or Strata team, and are entirely my own.

There are major spoilers in this review. Feel free to avoid the plot section if you want.

Portal: Revolution is a total conversion mod for Portal 2 developed and published by Second Face Software, serving as a non-canonical prequel to the aforementioned game. The mod involves you (an unnamed female test subject) being tasked with solving a linear series of puzzles. You are guided through Aperture by a core named Stirling, whose intention is to restore a slowly-decaying Aperture to its former state.

Gameplay in Revolution is otherwise mostly identical to Portal 2's: you must solve a test chamber by using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, a mechanism lets you plant two linked portals onto specific white surfaces that can be passed through. Gameplay is divided into two phases: you initially start out with a single-portal gun, and eventually obtain a two-portal upgrade. The mod introduces several new test elements, which are:

- Schrodinger Cubes: a pair of cubes that redirect fired lasers onto another cube;
- the Gel Cleansing Field: water sprinklers that block paint from passing through;
- Electrical switches that toggle power within test chambers, and;
- Pneumatic Diversity Vents, a scrapped Portal 2 mechanic that the player can use to dispose of turrets or transport objects (or yourself) from one place to another.

The overall gameplay is the main strongarm of this modification. I feel that the new elements resonate well with the existing subset of test elements.

The overall level structure is mainly straightforward. The first half of the game involves test chambers that revolve around the single-portal gun - I found the chambers in this section to be somewhat challenging (especially as I did not possess the ability to create a second portal), but I managed to pull through mostly fine, irregardless of the circumstances.

Chamber difficulty in the second half of the game varies once the player obtains a dual-portal gun, often becoming easier or harder to navigate under certain conditions. I had trouble navigating a chamber with power switches as a giant glass wall blocked off a panel that I would have depended upon to complete it; this led me to discover a design flaw that allowed me to beat it in an unintended way by throwing a Schrodinger cube onto the end platform.

I commend the level designers for introducing new visual themes such as underground clean and overgrown mixed with forest landscapes. The behind-the-scenes sections also shine through, giving a further look into how Aperture would've looked during the events that happened prior to GLaDOS' activation.

A downside is that certain levels end up being a walking simulator; this often recurs midway through the game and becomes annoying to deal with given that the player's speed was reduced by a quarter compared to the original game. I noticed that one test chamber in Revolution was ripped off from the first Portal game (specifically chamber 12), which is disappointing.

The game starts off with the player waking up from a 36-year long suspension. Stirling, a vacuum cleaner turned Personality Sphere, guides the player through a slowly-collapsing Enrichment Center before instructing that to undo damage caused by Chell, the player must go to the Spire, a machine that alters the third dimension through teleportation. Stirling intends to restore the facility by using the Spire to bring GLaDOS back - the machine malfunctions and instead places the player into 1980s Aperture.

The player walks through the lower facility before ending up in Test Course Lambda and running into Emilia Conly, a former human Aperture employee hailing from the Artificial Intelligence division turned Personality Sphere. Conly does not immediately recognize the gravity of the current situation before learning that Aperture had become devoid of any human life seconds after GLaDOS was first activated and that Stirling plans to resurrect GLaDOS. The player and Conly work to stop them from reactivating the Spire.

The player and Conly head to the top of the Enrichment Center, before Stirling eventually decides to kill the player. Stirling is then confronted by the player and Conly, working to disable the Spire. The game ends with the destruction of the Spire's chamber, which was teleported to the moon. Conly drags the wounded player to an underground facility where they are placed into stasis.

I am underwhelmed and disappointed by its story. Put simply, it's an altered, abridged retelling of Portal 2's story with most of the humor and context stripped out. The game's ending largely ends up being abrupt and anticlimactic, ending at what I can only describe as a cliffhanger. It doesn't emulate Valve's method of storytelling well, and it shows.

The overall voice acting is okay, but I do believe there is room for improvement as the quality does tend to sort of fall off and often lose its charm. There are some serious concerns I have surrounding the writer's decision(s) to include multiple recurring button-themed "jokes" within Stirling's responses, which I strongly believe are ableist in nature:

- "You will now participate in a brain damage evaluation survey to determine just how damaged your brain is. If you believe your brain is sufficiently operational, press the button in front of you and continue the test."
- "Oh, a red button! I have to press it, because I'm just so braindead that I need to stimulate my soggy brain with satisfying click sounds and tactile feedback!"

The second example in particular is what really concerns me in particular, especially as I, a neurodivergent individual with autism spectrum disorder, find it rather offensive to throw disparaging remarks at the player simply because of how they adapt towards and interpret objects and tasks.

I believe there was an opportunity to rewrite parts of the script to be more inclusive rather than exclusive that should've been undertaken during development, and I'm disappointed that the team accepted the script as-is.

Whereas Portal 2's script is otherwise light-hearted, Revolution's script is largely devoid of the spirit that helped make the former a much more enjoyable and dynamic experience; it basically becomes a generic "defeat the big bad villain" plot.

If the Steam Store had a "Mixed" review option, I would have marked Revolution as such; I'm left with no choice but to give it a thumbs-down. There are some really strong parts to this that make it such a high-quality project, but I can't help but know that there's other parts of the mod that also fall largely short of expectations, especially with how parts of the mod end up being a walking sim, and the way its script is structured overall.

It is a genuine shame given that I would've really wanted to like this by giving it a thumbs-up, but there's obvious major flaws in it that need to be addressed. I hope the developers read through this review and consider addressing some of the issues I have with this mod.

A fluid screenshotting tool that allows for many different customisation options.

literal perfection