Игрок 8401·Рекомендует·5 ч в игре

There's quite a few negative reviews here, and a lot of them are rather baffling considering what type of mod this is. If you prefer Portal 1's atmosphere and don't mind the retcons made in the second game, this is not a mod for you. On that ground alone, a lot of the negative reviews don't hold much merit, because changing the atmosphere and bridging the gap between the two games is the whole point of this mod. Portal Alive and Kicking (AaK for short) is a Portal 2 mod that brings the Portal 1 campaign stylistically much closer to the Portal 2 aesthetic. And in that, I'd say the mod is a huge success. The test chambers feel more alive with a clever use of panels, various moving parts, and improved lighting. The facility feels like a giant interconnected entity rather than a bunch of rusty old rooms, and in terms of both assets and layout, it all fits much better with the style established in Portal 2. While I love both games and actually slightly prefer the first one, I believe Portal 2 has a much more coherent style overall. A lot of great ideas that were used in full in that game weren't even conceived of in the first one. The Enrichment Center is a much different place in the two games. Portal 1 leans more into the desolate and abandoned aesthetic, while 2 is more about the vastness, modularity, and very organic, interconnected feeling of the Aperture facility. AaK does a great job at combining the two, with a much stronger emphasis on bringing in all the additions from the second game. The desolate feeling of the first game is not completely lost, though, as some aspects are retained, like the more orange lighting largely absent from the second game, or the creepy vibe of the escape sequence, showing some of the more ruined and abandoned parts of the facility. The escape really is the highlight of this mod, as that is where the changes are the most drastic. I really like the atmosphere and sound design in the piston area. It makes one of my least favorite parts of Portal into something truly unique. Speaking of sound, the mod also features its own OST, and for the most part, it's pretty good. Sometimes, though, the mixing is a bit odd, and while some areas get great atmospheric songs, others will be completely silent. The overall sound design is pretty good, with some really great moments. The biggest shortcoming of the mod is the final boss fight. AaK uses the Portal 2 GLaDOS model and essentially doesn't do anything interesting with it. She just motionlessly stares at you and rotates to face you, and it's a huge missed opportunity to give her much more expressive animations, akin to what we see in Portal 2. Instead, we get a GLaDOS that is actually more stiff than in the original game. The use of the unmodified Portal 2 model is also a bit of a weird choice if continuity is a concern, as lore-wise, her appearance is different largely because she "fixed" herself and gave herself a makeover after being a pile of scrap metal for decades. She definitely shouldn't look the same here as in the later stages of Portal 2. All things considered, though, this mod is pretty good and does exactly as advertised. Is it perfect? No. Does it change the Portal 1 atmosphere almost completely? Yes, but it's not a bad thing. After playing this game countless of times, it was nice to replay it once more in a way that feels more fresh, and more faithful to the reinvented style of the second game.

Игрок 3659·Рекомендует·119 ч в игре

When I first started porting Portal content and other source content into Portal 2 in 2011 through 2012 I never expected it would lead to this mod. I remember talking with Colossal/Weyland and as we were replacing textures and Reepblue started remaking levels as tests Weyland came up with the name Alive & Kicking. Jump forward 14 years and a few teams and project lead swaps and many of us walking away from the project, some returning to finish it up, and it is finally finished. As someone who has been part of the larger Portal community and modding scene since even before Portal released with ExitE mod, I am glad to see this mod finally released. In my opinion it is a very faithful remake of Portal in the Portal 2 style with some extra flair and design that brings it more in line with Portal 2, the team has done an excellent job bringing what started as a quasi joke between friends into a wonderfully crafted mod, looking forward to some of the post release content and glad I got to be a small part of this effort. My time with source engine has finally come to a close and what a send off it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YutEWXMgk20

Игрок 6026·Рекомендует·4 ч в игре

Basically Portal 1 in Portal 2 engine Still a good reason to beat portal for the 14th time

Игрок 2124·Рекомендует·2 ч в игре

(Originally 'Not Recommended', I think it should be a 3/5 or 6/10) Had Alive & Kicking released in 2013, its achievements would have been immortal. Had it released in 2017, it would have still been a great mod. But it released in 2026. Alas, what can one say? A&K falls off very late into the game, and disappointingly hard after the excellent Test Chambers prior to it. GLaDOS' battle, meant as the intense finale, feels like a cheap attempt to port it to Portal 2. All of the excellent particle work and music work seems to just vanish. What this does well it does well, but what this does poorly hurts, and hurts badly with how much waiting went into the mod actually getting released. And yet still, it has high notes! The input from Jeep on Chamber 17 is cool, the particles from Nova++/NovaSilisko (I was shocked to see a KSP dev worked on this!) are awesome, there's a bunch of little things that make the Test Chamber half of the game a really nice time. Play it for the bonus levels.

Игрок 4597·Рекомендует·2 ч в игре

Ah, Alive & Kicking; this game is to the Portal franchise what Black Mesa is to Half-Life: a reimagining of the original game, in the engine of the second. Now, since both Portal games were already made in the Source engine, you'd expect this game would've released faster than Black Mesa, and yet here we're, some 13 or 14 years after I first learned of it, with it getting a Steam release. Now, I didn't write that opening paragraph as a criticism of the game. Just something I found particularly amusing, as I'd been looking forward to this mod/game for ages. The idea of an updated version of the original Portal, to bring it more in line with the aesthetics of Portal 2, was intriguing back in the day, and now that I've finally played it, I must say they delivered. So, what can I say about Alive & Kicking? If you've already played the original Portal, this is basically the same game. Well, almost. There's some differences in some of the test chambers, and the later half of the game has been heavily revamped; following the same story beats, but with expanded/modified levels. The story is obviously good, albeit minimal (it's the first Portal, after all), and the graphics... Well, it's Portal 2's level of graphics. There's seriously not a lot I can say here that isn't known about Portal. If anything, this was a different way to play through one of my favourite games. Now... There is a minor complaint, and that is the soundtrack. It's not necessarily bad, but I still have the original soundtrack that was developed for the mod downloaded and well... I prefer that one. Then again, having listened to it for 13 years might've made me a bit biased. Also, I gotta recognize that some of the tracks might not have fit very well with Portal's vibes. Anyway, great game; not an exact 1:1 replica, some cool achievements that weren't in the original... Oh, and I absolutely love what they did with the Advanced Chambers; making them look as the dilapidated portions of Aperture Science from Portal 2 was a great way to further differentiate them from the main game's version. So yeah, I absolutely recommend this game!

Игрок 6126·Рекомендует·8 ч в игре

Portal: Alive & Kicking is a science-fiction first-person puzzle adventure game developed by Rhubarb & Rhubarb on the Source engine, based on the original Portal by Valve Software. Guided by an oppressive unseen robotic proctor, the player-controlled Chell learns to master the fabric of space itself across a tour of experimental trials she must escape from to survive. Portal 2 is one of the most singularly impressive sequels of all time, taking the inventive and modest original and throwing the full weight of Valve’s development studio behind it. But with this higher weight-class came a lot of fresh sets of eyes behind the scenes, resulting in a new visual direction and environmental vision. Elevator shafts at the ends of hallways were replaced with high-speed vacuum tubes, surrounded by electronic video displays, and the confined, industrial and mundane scenes from the original were heightened to vast, modular and expressive vistas in the sequel. With this artistic overhaul however came a lack of unity with the acclaimed original. “There is no logical reason we have new elevators,” said Portal 2 co-writer Chet Faliszek in a GDC 2012 presentation on the game. “Our thought always was, you don’t need to be a slave to the original. If you’re improving it, players won’t care.” But, of course, there were dissenters. Alive & Kicking was announced near-immediately after Portal 2’s launch, promising to unify the visual style between games by updating Portal 1’s campaign with the bevy of new assets. This task is almost a paradox in itself; a small indie team taking on the juggernaut-enabled art style of Portal 2 is no easy feat. Even the original Portal, despite being the culmination of a DigiPen student project, has almost ten times the number of credited developers as Alive & Kicking. Without the funding or manpower of a Valve title, perhaps it’s no surprise that the project has taken as long as it has to come to fruition. Yet, the tiny team size has also given it a creative spirit very similar to that of its source material; the voices of both games harmonize with each other much of the time, and where they diverge, some extremely interesting reinterpretations are made. In 2014, production on Alive & Kicking more or less restarted, coinciding with a push to greenlight the title on Steam’s crowd-controlled initiative to bring more indie games to their platform. An early demo was released and subsequently stricken from the record as the team went back to basics, deciding to lean further into a reimagining of the source material rather than a 1:1 replication. Meanwhile, the source-code for Portal 2 was acquired from Valve following an agreement in 2016, allowing for the coding required to retrofit various aspects of Portal 1 into the sequel’s engine, and other enhancements to be developed. From then on, much of the creative labor seems to have gone into re-envisioning the “escape” sequence making up the back half of the game. “Portal 1 feels like crawling around the cramped guts of a machine,” writes Rhubarb & Rhubarb level designer Anya Spadin in their post-mortem write-up on the Escape sequence, “While Portal 2 is much more spacious and draws more on a fear of heights. [...] Porting the original level geometry directly was, in my mind, not a viable option.” Indeed, while the initial 19 Test Chambers mostly agree with the jump to Portal 2’s art assets, requiring minimal alterations to the topology of the spaces themselves, the later segments would not cohere as readily with the shift, especially not without the overgrowth and destruction that characterized Portal 2’s more claustrophobic moments. It fell on Rhubarb & Rhubarb, then, to make a version of the Escape sequence from scratch that could properly marry the two aesthetic approaches. The end result is much stranger and more dreamlike than the original sequence really was. Spadin themself actually attributes their architectural background to what they describe as an overly rigid, sensible environment, but I have to disagree. The behind-the-scenes look at this facility amounts to a bewildering, feverish Exquisite Corpse of spaces and rooms, jammed together without plausible consideration for their functionality or navigability. The backrooms here resemble classic “liminal spaces” like the megastructure City from Tsutomu Nihei’s Blame!, the subterranean factory-scape of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, or even the Citadel from Valve’s Half-Life 2. As the player frees themselves from the clinical, ordered reality of the Test Chambers into the more disordered, expressionistic underworld of the rest of the facility, the overwhelming impression is made that they are truly not meant to be there, that perhaps no soul is. It is hostile design at its most artistically fascinating. The player’s ascent to their final showdown takes on a poetic, almost symbolic tone; a vital reckoning with chaos on the path to true independence. There were subtle tones of this in the original's Escape sequence, too, but the overriding effect of Alive & Kicking is something genuinely novel. Yet, with this creative boldness comes a certain messiness. Particular setpieces that would really benefit from visual refinement and unique animations simply don't have them, likely due to the lack of specific expertise on the part of the developers. Two of arguably the most important rooms in the game, the fire-pit and the final arena, suffer most from the gap in their current state and the flair they really demand. Without Valve's game-design pedigree or exhaustive, iterative QA reinforcing these sections’ development, occasional gameplay moments also fall short of the polish that Portal is most famous for. Puzzle/navigational cues are often overly obfuscated during the Escape, where opportunities abound for the player to simply bash their head against incorrect solutions until they manage to snatch an un-earned victory out of the situation. These moments are largely unrewarding and clumsy, far clumsier than the original ever was. On the other hand, there are moments where the player-training actually improves on the original’s shortcomings, more intuitively preparing the player for upcoming mechanics and grounding some ideas better in the experience. A handful of added player-reactive animations guide the player's eye across testing environments, and the (fantastic) dynamic original score provides newfound feedback (an idea borrowed lovingly from Portal 2). Ultimately, Portal: Alive & Kicking is difficult to say no to. A dense, energetic tribute to a puzzle gaming masterpiece, with a unique spin on its source material’s moment-to-moment emotion and visual drama, which is sure to entertain fans long enough to see it through. It has a credible attention to detail for all the subtler gags and brilliant touches that made the original shine, each one replicated or alluded to in one way or another. Moreover, it fulfills its role perfectly as a prelude to Portal 2, ending with a final punchline that begs its player for a go at the sequel. It could never truly replace Portal itself, and I doubt its developers ever wanted that in the first place, yet still, here it poses, winningly, on the shoulders of giants. (Like science!)

Игрок 6244·Рекомендует·8 ч в игре

★★★★☆ 15-летний долгострой, начавшийся ещё во времена Steam Greenlight За последние 15 лет эта банальная идея давно была воплощена как минимум двумя авторами в мастерской Portal 2. Считаю ли я это концептуально-безыдейным? Возможно. Вы не получите нового опыта (за исключением закулисья в главе побега). Это всего лишь обновление оригинальных тестовых камер (это стоит практически на одном уровне с текстурпаком) - у вас уже есть готовый лэйаут, геймдизайн, левел дизайн - всё что оставалось авторам сделать - новый артпасс - и это не удалось сделать без проблем. Плюсы: 1) Крутые обновлённые модели (радио, приёмник и пускатель энергошаров, створки). 2) Супер-крутые закулисья после побега. Это качественно и интересно выполненные локации, только ради которых стоит скачивать этот мод. А так же усложнённые камеры. 3) Новый саундтрек. Минусы: 1) Заявленной особенностью мода является исполнение уровней P1 в дизайне P2. Однако, часто архитектурные принципы правил декорирования нарушаются и в итоге не соответствуют ни P1, ни P2. Это ок для обычного мода, но это слабость конкретно для этого мода (по причине - первая строчка этого предложения). 2) Фоновый звук энергошаров раздражает и просто сводит с ума. Хотелось взять и вырезать эту ужасную музыку. 3) Баги. Даже после 15 лет разработки мода я умудрился наткнуться на разные баги — например, текстурные артефакты, неработающие кнопки и т. д. ИТОГ Рекомендую однозначно. Я дважды прошёл главу про побег — и считаю, что это лучший дизайн и визуал закулисья в стиле Portal 2. За это можно простить все недостатки мода.

Игрок 6559·Не рекомендует·2 ч в игре

i want to like this but seeing the "2011-2026" in the credits absolutely shocked me, this really does not feel like a product that was 15 years in development and honestly more just gave me "i downloaded this from the workshop" vibes than it feeling like a full standalone game. the release for this has all sorts of bugs, quick saving is broken and softlocked me, some ui elements straight up have broken text, some of the doors when i played had broken area portals, etc. the BTS section felt confusing to me and unclear in some spots, which is a shame because it looked pretty cool. the ending itself also just feels insanely underwhelming and unpolished, glados barely has any animations and it just feels really quiet there sound design wise compared to most other parts of the game and it just feels unfinished. it is a cool concept but it just feels like it couldve been executed way better. when the maps are good they are good but it just doesnt feel like its in a great spot entirely which is a shame, i sadly dont really see a reason to play this over the original at least at the current moment.