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New Portal 2 DLC: “Perpetual Testing Initiative” To Come Out On 8th of May For The PC And Mac

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Yes, Portal 2 fans – Valve has not forgotten about you after all! In little over a week, Portal 2’s second post-launch DLC pack will be safely nestled inside your hard-drives.

New Portal 2 DLC: “Perpetual Testing Initiative” To Come Out On 8th of May For The PC And Mac

Let’s take a look at the official press release, straight from Valve:

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the free Portal 2 DLC titled “Perpetual Testing Initiative” will be available for the PC and Mac on May 8th.

The “Perpetual Testing Initiative” allows players to easily create, share, and play Portal 2 puzzles. The Initiative comes with a simplified puzzle maker that allows that creation of mind-bending puzzles without ever leaving the game. The puzzle maker can directly publish maps to the Steam Workshop where users can browse, vote on, and select to play them. Selected puzzles will automatically be downloaded and installed inside Portal 2.

Sounds pretty neat! Unfortunately, judging by the sound of this, the PTI will be a PC-Mac exclusive feature, at least for the time being. That’s a shame, but hopefully console gamers will see it some time soon – while redesigning the Puzzle Creator to support gamepad controls would be challenging, I’m sure the PTI would be a perfect fit for the console experience. Similarly, the Initiative will not include support for co-op maps at launch, and that’s a shame as well. 

I’m also disappointed regarding the lack of any new Valve content in this DLC pack – last year, Peer Review’s awful “Art Therapy” co-op DLC course left me with a really, really bad taste in my mouth, and so, I really wanted to see a new singleplayer mini-campaign. Of course, Valve might not be done with post-release support for P2 just yet, so let’s keep our fingers crossed for more substantial future DLC releases.

Remember that GameTrailers TV will be releasing the reveal trailer (featuring Cave Johnson himself) for the Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC in about 11 hours – we’ll let you guys know when it comes out. We might also be directly covering the DLC’s closed preview version, which will become available this Monday, so stay tuned!

27 Comments

  1. Will this run on 2 gb of ram?

  2. Commenter AvatarThe Great DeceiverApril 27th 2012 at 12:25am

    I didn’t have any problems with level dificulty. The only problem I have is the story. It’s not bad, there is just not that much of it. Coop has a lot of great, interesting elements and they really should expand on them. /SPOILER/Chell is gone , we saw the mad possibilities of Cave Johnsons inventions, we saw the human vault ,the old version of Glados. The situation is very open and there is a ton of stuf about aperture science we didn’t saw in the game. Imagen you and your co-op friend beeing stuck in this situation

    http://combineoverwiki.net/w/images/f/f5/Potato_59.jpg

    I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be willing to pay just to see this side of Aperture Labs.

  3. Again, Valve calls May 8 “early 2012″… still awesome, though.

  4. Awesome! But again, Valve is the only company that could call May 8 early 2012…

  5. I wouldn’t call Art Therapy “awful” as much as “underwhelming”. I mean, it was nice to have some new puzzles and story elements, but it just wasn’t as much as it could have been.

    • Perhaps – but the puzzles got unbelievably obtuse, especially towards the end (I’ve spoken to half a dozen people who’ve told me they completely noclipped through the last 2-3 chambers). It felt like in the process of squeezing some more gameplay juice out of the existing gameplay mechanics, Valve had unintentionally created puzzles that were overly complex and difficult. The story wasn’t much better either.

      • Really? My friend and I didn’t have that hard of a time with the last three chambers of Art Therapy.
        I feel smart now. XD

        • My friend and I had problems, run out of time and stopped playing entirely. Then figured it out the next day, with a fresh mind, almost immediately. I don’t think they were overly difficult, but I agree with the underwhelming sensation. The whole buildup process leading to the final joke was quite meh.

  6. Dammit! I can’t get it cause I have it on xbox. Maybe I’ll just sell my copy & get a PC copy. If I can run L4D and Dota 2 on my PC, do you think Portal 2 will work?

  7. YES! I’ve been waiting for this since… EVER! I WANNA SEE THE TRAILER NAO!

  8. Ah man. I have it on xbox. My pc sucks. 🙁

  9. Commenter AvatarmyworldischangingandidunliekeetApril 26th 2012 at 7:27pm

    Since when does Gaben favour MAC over his PC customers?

  10. Thanks, Vic! Been waiting to hear about this.

  11. http://youtu.be/oKI-tD0L18A

  12. Great news! It’s not too far!

    I didn’t think Peer Review was awful, though… Just… plain simple.

    • Ehhh – Art Therapy’s mediocre plot, overly childish humor and bad puzzle gameplay just wasn’t what I was expecting from Valve. Challenge Mode was okay, but nothing special or interesting, and it should have been in the game from the start. Overall, much like L4D1’s “Crash Course”, Peer Review is the kind of DLC that just makes me wish Valve re-examined their approach on post-release content.

  13. Do we have any proofs of the new DLC is in fact PTI?

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