Best Portal 2 Mods

Summary

• Mods like Portal: Revolution & Portal Reloaded add new stories, characters, and mechanics, enhancing the Portal 2 experience.
• Portal Stories: Mel offers a standalone mod with a fully voiced story, 22 levels, and 6 hours of playtime.
• The Cleaning Game provides a satirical total conversion mod where players become a cleaning robot in a unique story.

Valve’s Portal games have a strong community, and there is a lot of user-generated content for both games. The most popular form of modding in Portal 2 is the creation of community maps, which are shared simply through the Steam Workshop. There are some more involved mods for Portal 2, though, that add their own stories, mechanics, and characters to the game.

After so many years without a sequel, players may be craving a little more substance than single community maps can provide. For players looking for a more in-depth way to change their Portal 2 experience, these mods all do more than add single testing chambers. From changing the visual style of the game to adding new game modes, these are the best mods for curious Portal 2 players to try.

1

Portal: Revolution

Mechanical Revolution

Portal: Revolution is a fan-made prequel to Portal 2, set between the events of the first and second games. The mod features all new characters and story, and over 40 puzzles that aim to build on what Portal 2 established, rather than starting the player back at square one.

The mod uses a custom version of the Portal 2 engine, which allows for unique mechanics to be implemented that weren’t possible in the base game. It’s one of the highest-quality community mods for Portal 2 and one that every fan should play.

2

Portal Reloaded

The Third Portal

What if there were three portals? That’s the core concept of Portal Reloaded, which puts players in the shoes of a new test subject on a forgotten testing track. The player is soon given the triple-portal device, which adds a new green portal. These new portals allow the player to travel in time to a future version of their current area.

There are 25 new puzzles to solve using the new portals, and the mod makers created some interesting dynamics for the time portals that will make even long-time Portal 2 players stop and think. The mod was also subsequently updated to include 20 co-op puzzles, where one player controls the regular portals and the other player controls the time portals.

3

Portal Stories: Mel

Meet Mel

Portal Stories: Mel is a highly polished standalone mod for Portal 2. The mod tells the story of a personality core called Mel, who awakes after a long slumber to find the aperture facility in its current state of disrepair. The mod tells a fully voiced, custom story that makes for a fun continuation of the Portal universe.

There are 22 levels in the mod, and it has around 6 hours of total playtime, making it a very robust offering for a community-made mod. The mod is standalone, and players only need to own Portal 2 to install it, it can be played via its separate executable on Steam.

4

Portal: Forbidden Testing Tracks

Forbidden Knowledge

Portal: Forbidden Testing Tracks takes a few ideas from other community mods, adds a few of its own, and brings them all together in a custom story featuring a new test subject called Rachel. The fully voiced story takes place over more than 30 new maps, and that’s only the beginning of what’s new in this mod.

As well as the portal gun, players have access to a paintgun for gels, a time manipulation device, a gravity gun, and a matter-dissolving ray. There are also a host of new static objects, turrets, and cube variants. All of these new elements are combined into some unique puzzles that Portal 2 fans are sure to enjoy.

5

Aperture Tag: The Paintgun Testing Initiative

Tag! You’re It

• Creator: Odd Time Studios / Aperture Tag Team
• Steam Link: Aperture Tag

Unlike all the other mods on this list, Aperture Tag: The Paintgun Testing Initiative isn’t free to download. While it is a community-made mod for Portal 2, it’s a separate purchase on Steam, though it’s regularly priced down to a couple of dollars. For the purchase price, players do get a new fully voiced character and a total reworking of Portal 2‘s gameplay.

Aperture Tag does away with the portal gun, replacing it with a paintgun that puts Portal 2‘s gels in the player’s hands for the first time. The mod features 27 puzzles using the new mobile gel placement mechanic to create some interesting new puzzle ideas. The mod also comes with its custom version of Portal 2‘s level editor, allowing players to create their maps for the paintgun.

6

Thinking With Time Machine

Echoes In Time

Thinking with Time Machine introduces an interesting twist on the Portal 2 formula. As well as the portal gun, players have access to a Time Machine-created clone of themselves to help solve puzzles.

Players can control the clone, record the clone’s actions, and play them back using the datapad device, letting them do things like retrieve objects from otherwise inaccessible areas. It’s a little bit like playing co-op Portal 2 in single-player.

7

The Cleaning Game

Cleanup Crew

The Cleaning game is a wholly unique total conversion mod for Portal 2, built from the ground up using custom assets. Players are no longer a test subject in the aperture labs, but a humble cleaning robot tasked with cleaning up after human office workers. While this might sound like a waking nightmare, that’s kind of the point.

The tone and story of The Cleaning Game is deeply satirical and fans of Portal 2‘s satirical humor, or players who enjoyed The Stanley Parable, will find a lot to love in this mod.

8

12 Angry Tests

While this list has focused on mods as opposed to workshop maps, the map series 12 Angry Tests deserves a mention. It’s a great starting point for players who want to explore the potential of workshop maps on Steam. 12 Angry Tests is a series of workshop maps tied together with a story that makes it almost as compelling as the larger community mods.

After being fired for poor performance, a sentry turret swears revenge on the player character, leading to this series of 12 anger-fueled tests. It’s a rare and well-thought-out map series among workshop maps that are often one-offs.

9

Aperture Reshade

Photorealistic Reshade

While players won’t find many Portal 2 mods outside of Steam, there are several reshade options available on Nexus mods. Aperture Reshade might be the best of the bunch, depending on players’ tastes.

This mod adds a photo-realistic effect to the game’s visuals, with enhanced bloom and color correction for more realistic and modern-looking lighting effects. Without an associated texture pack update, a reshade can only go so far in enhancing the visuals, but Portal 2 still looks pretty good for its age, and this mod only enhances that.