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Portal Stories: Mel is out now (free Portal 2 mod, SP campaign with 22 levels)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/317400/

Portal Stories: Mel is a community made, free modification for Portal 2 based in the Portal universe.
It tells the story of Mel, who meets a new personality core and faces an undiscovered threat to the Aperture facility.

1952, in the early years of Aperture: Science Innovators, Cave Johnson’s scientists experimented with whatever they wanted. Not everything worked as it should have though, but that wasn't going to get in the way of the progress of Science! Mel unfortunately took part in a faulty test called the Aperture: Science Innovators Short-Term Relaxation Vault, falling asleep for years. When she finally wakes, there is a fake Cave Johnson telling her she needs to escape the facility and a new device called the Aperture Handheld Portal Device, her mind races with questions. “Who is this imposter Cave Johnson?” “What happened to the facility and its staff?”

"What happened to me?"

Main Features
  • 22 levels, with an estimated gameplay time of ~6-10 hours
  • Custom Story with 350 separate in-game voicelines
  • Over an hour of custom music with the Free soundtrack included
  • Huge amount of custom assets
  • 27 steam achievements
  • Standalone mod (You do not need Portal 2 installed to play)
  • Free to Play (You must own Portal 2)
  • Logic based puzzles, not execution based puzzles

http://www.pcgamer.com/portal-stories-mel-is-huge-and-challenging-and-free/

As a Portal player, I'm a bit more fond of the types of puzzles without searing laser fields and acid pits: I like to experiment freely without worrying about dying and having to start over. Many of the puzzles in Mel, however, are of the more fatal type, to be approached carefully and methodically. Gels, cubes, lasers, switches, turrets, and force fields are the main tools and obstacles you'll face in the sprawling and complex levels. Naturally, you'll engage in a showdown with a malignant A.I. near the end of the game.

As far as voice-over work goes, one actor provides a pretty good Cave Johnson impersonation, and another voices Virgil, the personality core who accompanies you through the majority of the game. I didn't find the humor particularly effective, and much of Virgil's dialogue feels like overkill as it's based around him encouraging you to find a way out of the facility. You'd be doing that anyway, right? At the very least, it's done with a lot of enthusiasm and an obvious fondness for the Portal series.

Surely worth a try. More Portal won't hurt.
 
J

JeremyEtcetera

Unconfirmed Member
Is there any way to donate to the modding team? This would be one of the good reasons to keep the 'pay for mods' system steam used to have.
 
Started playing this and i'm about an hour into it.

The humour doesn't really work, at all. The Cave Johnson impression is very good, but you can tell they tried to impersonate Cave's way of talking and kinda went over the top with it and missed the subtlety.

The new voice that speaks to you, which i'm guessing is Virgil (not far enough where he says his name), is kinda weird as he has some odd German/Swedish accent, can't tell. Doesn't really work either i'm afraid.

However on the plus side, there's totally new environments and the puzzles are not like Portal 2 for the most part, there's a lot more thought involved and it's definitely tougher than the main game which I appreciate.

This is definitely worth checking out, just mute the music.
 

Grinchy

Banned
This is really awesome, but it's very hard. Once you get to the numbered puzzles that go up to 14, the difficulty ramps up to a level the series has never seen before. I always wanted a more difficult Portal game, but I'm getting stuck on each one every time.

It really makes you think outside the box and try some techniques that have never been needed before. I'm still avoiding any guides or anything, but it's getting tough now that every puzzle is making me feel stupid.
 
Had to look up a guide for one of the puzzles. Made me feel so stupid lol. This is pretty tough so far. Or maybe I got rusty :p
 

Grinchy

Banned
I finally got to chapter 4 earlier today. I still haven't looked up any puzzles. Once I figured out a few of the tricks that were needed on earlier ones, the rest became much more manageable.

This one I'm on now is pretty hard, though.
 

Agremont

Member
I learned of its existence from Scott Manley the other day. Very good and quite challening. And it's free! Great stuff!

Started playing this and i'm about an hour into it.

The humour doesn't really work, at all. The Cave Johnson impression is very good, but you can tell they tried to impersonate Cave's way of talking and kinda went over the top with it and missed the subtlety.

The new voice that speaks to you, which i'm guessing is Virgil (not far enough where he says his name), is kinda weird as he has some odd German/Swedish accent, can't tell. Doesn't really work either i'm afraid.

However on the plus side, there's totally new environments and the puzzles are not like Portal 2 for the most part, there's a lot more thought involved and it's definitely tougher than the main game which I appreciate.

This is definitely worth checking out, just mute the music.

I agree with the humour criticism. They haven't "got it" like Portal's writers have for sure.

Virgil has got a Norwegian accent btw.
 

Trouble

Banned
I just finished this. Overall pretty impressive for a fan made mod. Level design was generally pretty good, but there were one or two that I felt were too hard. One where the only way I found to solve it was to cheese popping a portal while going through one. I really hope that wasn't by design, because I generally abhor levels that require using glitchy behavior (looking at you, Infinifactory workshop creators).
 
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