Recent reviews by Mandrew

Good demo, but don't expect much. It's as long as half of HL2's first ravenholm map.

Before the actual gameplay starts, there's already a problem. "Node graph out of date". Also, every chapter is already unlocked! We already have 2 problems BEFORE the gameplay begins.

It's bad, the mod does a terrible job of guiding the player. It also has a ton of beginner traps. There's only like 2 actual puzzles in the game that don't involve going around the map searching for stuff. That's really all you'll be doing in this mod, searching. It's not like it's fun either because the environment looks bad too, nothing to admire, basically, speaking of which...

I'm not going to sugarcoat it, it's amateurish, keep in mind though that I'm not saying this to be rude or dishearten the creator, it's just the best word I can think of to use in this situation. The maps are riddled and filled with misaligned textures, poorly placed props, general inconsistencies and bad brush work.

There seemingly is none, there is NO dialogue with the exception of turrets. The goal is to escape a heavily abandoned Aperture. There's also a boss fight, but there is NO leadup to the bossfight whatsoever, you just come across it. Who is the boss? Does it have a name? Can you really call it an antagonist if it hasn't been hurting you up until the point you meet it?

The mod has seemingly nothing going for it. There is basically no story, nothing redeemable in the gameplay, and was evidently not playtested. As I said in my Forbidden Testing Tracks review, I don't want it to be bad and I wish it were good, same applies here. If the mod had one competent designer or even playtester, this could've been way better and if not that, a lot of the problems could've been resolved.

The most fun you can have online, now infested by bots. #FixTF2

This review does contain spoilers.

With the introduction of CSM, the levels have the potential to look beautiful, and they definitely do. The level of detail is great and definitely is the best looking Portal 2 mod.

The voice acting isn't bad or great, but good enough to get the job done. The dialogue itself is mostly fine, but I can't help but feel that some of the jokes were just forced.

The story attempts to stay true to the Portal/Half-Life universe, it wasn't particularly engaging to me until we met up with Emilia, even then, it wasn't super engaging until we started going against Stirling.
The ending was super anti-climatic though and was disappointing, the last conversation they had about them both wanting the best for Aperture did actually interest me but then it got interrupted by the all the sudden teleporter explosion. There wasn't like a "Wow!" moment like at the end of Portal 2 where you're holding onto Wheatley on the moon, or in Portal where you can SEE GLaDOS get absolutely destroyed after incinerating her cores. I think the problem is that there wasn't any build up to the teleporter explosion which leads to it just happening out of nowhere along with you not being able to actually see the effects of what you've done.

The mod has plenty of new concepts and creative puzzles. The use of the Schrodinger Cube was amazing. My only problem with the gameplay is that the pacing can be very slow at times and it does tend to drag on.

Despite the mod sometimes dragging on, the overall quality of the mod is excellent and if you're looking for new Portal 2 content, definitely give this mod a try.

It's not very good, I played through a bit and I couldn't finish it because of how badly it guides the player.


The mod's level design is just bad, the mod does a poor job of introducing many of the mechanics, such as weird random spark things that launch you. How are you supposed to just know that it launches you without any proper introduction? I've seen people get stuck on that part because they had no idea what to do or where to go.

Some Portal 1 Styled cleansers don't have the particles it needs, meaning, they look incomplete. These particles are important because they tell you where you can shoot through, their lack of existence hurts gameplay.

The mod lazily copies areas from the games, such as random hallways to use for its own areas. Some are even meant to tie in with the original.


It's very bad because of the level design. The mod does a bad job of directing the player to where they need to go and doesn't feel playtested. Not only that, but there's many confusing puzzles and hard-to-execute type areas that go beyond what notorious mods like Portal: Prelude have to offer.


It's not very good. Its detailing is low and does not meet the standard that a Portal 2 mod should have. Am I asking for something to be exactly like Portal 2? No, but what I'm asking for is a mod that looks good. Many of the levels have bad brush work which is reminiscent of new map makers.

Why are there Combine Turrets from HL2 in this mod? It makes no sense, they play the portal turret lines, but they feel out of place because the combine style just plain clashes with Portal 2's style.

There's assets that just clash with the original style. In the VERY beginning, there's a fully Portal 1 textured bed which looks clean and shiny which doesn't fit well with the table and toilet models that are all rusted up and old looking.

There are countless examples of assets that clash, and I don't want to be super specific.


It's bad in some areas, I shouldn't hit like 170 fps on a Ryzen 7 5600g & rtx 3060 in a source game. Ideally, the fps should always stay near 300 (or above) at all times in a source game. I don't even think the 170 result is accurate from the fps counter because it feels very choppy in those areas.


It's not very good, most of it is just text to speech from 15.ai or something, it sounds bad and the audio quality is low too. However, the voice actor for the core is actually quite decent.


I haven't finished the mod, so I'll have to go off of what I've seen from gameplay videos/streams. The story attempts to tie in with Portal 2's story, but it still doesn't make sense, it assumes that Chell is the daughter of Cave Johnson which is undoubtedly false, this is one of many debunked fan theories that this mod clings to. You also play as Chell's sister, Rachael it seems (not canon, but an interesting idea).


The voice acting I suppose and there are very rare instances of good looking areas. The mod has really interesting ideas and concepts, but the execution is poor.


I don't want this mod to be bad and the mod wouldn't be held up to a higher standard if it weren't on steam. There is one thing though, this mod can be easily salvaged unlike other catastrophic projects like Hunt Down The Freeman, it's possible to fix this mod. Had this mod had at least one experienced level designer, it would've probably been much better received.

I hope the creator does get more experience and perhaps could make a remaster or something for this mod, because it could be good and it still has potential.


I still can't recommend this yet, but the creator has solved a few problems like hl2 turrets existing and added some signages indicating what the orb launcher (not to be confused with the energy ball launcher) things do, which is that they launch you. It's definitely an improvement over nothing at all. There's probably more fixes, but I don't want to look for every little thing (especially since I didn't finish it).

I'm happy that the creator is attempting to improve the mod and listen to feedback.

I feel inclined to speak in defense of Portal: Prelude, yes, I recommend it. I wish I could play the updated version without the RTX features, but oh well.

First of all, we can definitely see that Portal: Prelude is not very liked at all, this definitely contrasts with the mostly positive reviews it has on moddb and that it was in third place for the mod of the year competition in 2008. So what changed? Portal: Prelude raised the bar for Portal mods for its time, being the only good quality Portal mod to exist. This explains why it's liked on Moddb, and I can confidently say that if Prelude released on steam during this time instead of moddb, it would have mostly positive or mixed reviews, even today.

Now, that's why people liked it at the time, but what changed? Why do players dislike Prelude now? I believe it's because players have learned to like more puzzle based gameplay, which Prelude does not offer very much of (though in the new version, they've made some minor puzzle additions/changes). We have Portal mods like Rexaura, Portal Pro and even Gamma Energy that are more puzzle based and don't require you to be skilled with HL2/Portal movement. We also have like the thousands and thousands of test chambers created by the Portal 2 Community, which are undoubtedly the majority of the player base for the Portal series nowadays. Portal: Prelude was massive for its time and there was nothing to compare it to, but now we have many things to compare Prelude to whether that be the thousands of maps created by the Portal 2 Community, or mods that do a better job at being puzzle based than Prelude does.

Before I explain why I recommend Prelude, I must state that I am a bit biased. I've been playing Prelude since 2009 or 2010 (I can't exactly remember), so consequentially, I have a lot of nostalgia for this mod. Young me did truly enjoy Prelude at the time, despite being very bad with HL2/Portal movement, but whenever I did complete a level, it felt like a huge accomplishment and I was joyful, reaching the end felt really good for me too. Nowdays, I'm pretty good with movement for HL2/Portal so now it's a pretty easy mod for me to complete.

Now why do I still recommend it? I'd argue that Portal: Prelude's lack of puzzling actually makes the mod more replayable, why? Because being able to perfect your movement and accomplish a challenging task is fun. If these were real puzzles, it wouldn't be as replayable since you'd already know the solutions. Portal: Prelude definitely breaks rules that are established within the Portal Community, which is making a puzzle that's easy to execute but challenging to solve (which I completely agree with), but I'd argue that a mod that breaks this rule adds extra spice to the mod. I've played this mod to death, and if these were just simple puzzles that I could easily fly through just because I remembered the puzzle solutions, I wouldn't have played it so much. The challenge made it that much more replayable for me when I was younger.

HL2VR Mod is not finished and is in its beta stage.

First of all, as a standalone game, it's decent, but for a mod, it's great. It's not that great because hl2 wasn't made for vr, so I definitely recommend you to play the game as intended first, this is precisely why it's great as a mod, especially because it's not very buggy and seems to be the only reliable way to play hl2 in vr.

The weapons are fun to use, They've also made the weapons more realistic, for the ar2, you actually need to swap the magazine instead of having a single pellet change which is a reasonable change. The weapons have the +1 system.

Vehicles can be a pain, but you can definitely get used to them.

While there's a lot of positives, I do believe there's not enough. You should be able to open doors manually by their handle and I'd also like to be able to manually open ammo crates and take the ammo.

It's great, but I found myself getting lost a lot.
The choice to carry Wilson (the defective turret) with you throughout the entire game is clever and it's like carrying the gnome from hl2ep2, but more fun and rewarding.
For the Aperture sections:
Unfortunately the Aperture levels barely feel like Aperture/Portal, I understand that this is an hl2 mod and liberties had to be taken, but still, many things that wouldn't contradict hl2 mapping could've been easily changed.

The puzzles are really not well made and it feels as if the game wasn't playtested. The puzzles are bad because the things you need to complete the puzzles are barely noticeable. Instead of questioning "How did I not notice that?", it's more like "How was I supposed to notice that?". It's hard to tell what object or thing is part of a puzzle because it feels like that anything could be part of the puzzle. When you activate a button, you will rarely realize what the button does.

As for the neighbor himself, I know his AI was hyped up a lot, but I didn't care for it even if it was cool in theory. It was slightly disappointing that all he does is place cameras and bare traps as part of the "Advanced AI". He could not exist in the game and it really wouldn't be much different. He's more of an annoyance rather than in obstacle in some cases especially since he isn't part of any puzzle.

There are these weird abilities you get through like dreams or whatever. For some reason, they are part of beating the game when they should be like a bonus instead. They are so hidden that it doesn't even feel like it's part of beating the game, one last thing is that you won't have a clue on how to solve these puzzles. You'll probably only know to complete the platforming puzzle but if you manage to fail a jump and fall all the way back down, you have to basically restart the entire thing.

The intro was solid and the ending was amazing. But hated the maze-y levels (as well as very unobvious stuff that you may come across by accident), other than that it's good fun and the communication system is kind of cool.