Portal 2 fans can now enjoy a brand new version of the game, completely free for owners of the original on Steam.
15 years after the release of the original game, Portal 2: Community Edition is a new community-maintained version of the game on Steam that comes with a lot of improvements and updates.
While many of the updates in this version will benefit map makers and modders more than anyone else, there’s a good reason to switch over to this version of the game if you’re a fan of the series.
There’s a lot going on here under the hood, so I’ll break down what exactly is added in Portal 2: Community Edition that sets it apart from the original game.
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As the store page teases, the new Community Edition offers significantly more capabilities compared to the original game, such as “a brand-new scripting system, an improved Hammer map editor and significantly increased limits”.
To put it simply, Portal 2 mods will have a lot more potential in the Community Edition over the original, allowing for larger mods, more features, new graphical effects, and other changes to make the experience a lot more fruitful.
Portal 2: Community Edition Is One Of The Most Significant Portal Releases In Years
A great example of this is one of the mods currently trending on the Steam Workshop for this game: Half-Life 2.
Yep, you read that right. You can actually play the entirety of Half-Life 2 in Portal 2 now thanks to the changes present in the Community Edition (you’ll need a copy of Half-Life 2 installed, though!). So you can go through the campaign but with a Portal gun, opening up plenty of new gameplay opportunities.
“A fully-fledged addon system and a new standalone campaign system lets creators publish anything ranging from simple material and model replacements to entire total conversion mods/campaigns either as standalone add-ons or entirely on the Steam Workshop, free of the limitations of the badly-aged Portal 2 DLC system that once severely strained the mod ecosystem,” reads the description on the Steam store.
This will also apply backwards compatibility to mods for the original Portal 2, as well as Portal 1 mods, meaning that mods that are years old should work on the Community Edition, with minimal headaches.
If you want to check out Portal 2: Community Edition, and access its excellent supply of modded content, you can grab it for free from Steam now. Just be sure you’re claiming it on a Steam account which owns the original Portal 2.