If you’re an Aperture Science employee and didn’t receive the memo, you’ve probably been fired. Thankfully, the Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC that allows you to create and share your own created test chambers does not require you to enter in your employee credentials. All you need is a Steam account, and if you have one of those, you can get straight to the high flyin’, portal shootin’ mayhem as the DLC is now available for download.
According to Mr. Johnson’s company memorandum, “You are not mentally ill and you did read the memo just fine. It was real. You should be designing test chambers, right now and at all times, or by God I will fire you.” But if you’re like me and are creatively handicapped, any sort of level designer is an intimidating thing to delve into. Don’t worry, Cave understands our stupidity: “Some of you are incapable of designing a test chamber, whatever the motivation. You’re only getting marginally better results than a dog would. Worse, actually. A dog designing even a substandard test chamber’d be pretty damned impressive, let’s not kid ourselves.”
Good news though, if you suck at making your own test chamber, you can participate in the Perpetual Testing Initiative by testing the levels of other players. You can easily browse hundreds of user-generated chambers and test them out. A “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” method lets you sort out the ones that have essential design flaws or were difficult enough to piss you off to the point that you just want to thumb them down out of spite.
You can check out the video below that gives an in-depth look at the slick Portal 2 creation tools. The DLC allows players to easily manipulate the chamber’s environment and even decide the trajectory of the player when they skyrocket off of a launcher. Designing ways to reach that adorable little Companion Cube has never been so easy, or so fun.
Published: May 8, 2012 01:57 pm