Portal with RTX review: Ray tracing makes Valve’s puzzle FPS spooky

Can a remaster change a video game’s genre? It took me a few hours to get used to it. Portal’s free ray-tracing update, I’m tempted to say yes.

Original Portal is on the short list for “funniest video games ever made.” Released in 2007 as a spinoff of Half-Life, this bite-sized first-person puzzle game grabbed the humor from its parent series and yanked it from the periphery into the spotlight. Chell plays as a human lab rat and outsmarts a malevolent artificial intelligent named GLaDOS. He talks like Siri via Mitch Hedberg. You use little more than your wits, Chell’s physical fitness, and a nonlethal “gun” that, instead of bullets, shoots a pair of interconnected portals. It’s as thrilling as it is cartoonish, best remembered for a cake meme and its closing credits pop song written by humorist musician Jonathan Coulton.

Portal with RTXIt is in all things ButVisuals and gameplay are the same. It has the same puzzles and the same script. The ending ditty and dessert references are the same. It just looks different. GPU maker Nvidia teamed up with a partner to make the best of its latest graphics cards. Portal’s publisher, Valve, to create an updated variant transmogrified by the graphical wizardry of the moment: ray tracing.

A test chamber in Portal with the RTX update enabled. The glass separating the chamber from its entrance is photorealistic, and the textures on the walls and floors look rough and dirty.

What’s ray trace? What time do you have to spend? Digital Foundry’s breakdown is worth 20 minutes. I highly recommend it. However, if you only have a few seconds, here’s the elevator pitch. Ray tracing simulates light much better than traditional methods. You will be able to observe reflections and shadows with ray tracing. Also, you can see the small ways light can bend, bounce off or absorb into different materials.

Ray tracing can be particularly evident in areas where light is strongest: glass and reflective metals, wet surfaces, mirrors, and glass. Portal’s labyrinth of industrial test chambers is a natural fit.

The creative team is able to create a laboratory that looks very real. Portal with RTXHas created an version Portal It values realism more than anything else. Assuming you can get the thing to run — it took an Nvidia RTX 3090 with Deep Learning Super Sampling enabled to get something close to reliable performance on a 4K TV — you will see a frighteningly believable version of GLaDOS’ laboratory. And I do mean frightening.

The player looks down at a portal in the floor in Portal. The portal shows a view of the player from above, indicating that the second portal is placed above them somewhere.

For emphasis on dynamic lighting Portal’s laboratory with RTX is darker and moodier; inky shadows fill every corner. Many surfaces now appear wet and icky, like if you scraped your knee you’d contract some rare bacterial infection. Electricity balls bounce around, creating a soft and ghostly glow. The walls don’t just look like metal paneling; they look like heavy, immovable blocks of steel. This makes the walls seem even more cramped.

We’ve seen a similar effect in other classic games that have received ray-tracing updates. Natural light can make things a little more dark and scary when it replaces artificial light. However, ray-tracing is not as harmful to horrors as the inadvertent addition. Portal with RTX. In this case, it’s not just that the game is darker — there are still plenty of rooms with sickly office fluorescent lighting. You can emphasize realism through the visuals. Portal’s entire vibe has shifted from cartoonish to something much more sinister.

Valve’s video games from the 2000s have an iconic blocky, grimy, and muted aesthetic, which ends up flattering the corpo-fascist art direction of its first-person shooters. Half-Life, on the other hand, was more focused on art direction than the technical showcases of AAA shooters like Call of Duty and Crysis. Valve’s worlds weren’t as technically impressive, but they were more considered. It served a specific purpose.

A room in Portal with its RTX update enabled. Light reflects off an onyx-like surface to the right as the player looks at the test chamber’s puzzle from above.

If the following applies to you: PortalThat function had fun and humor. Although you can play as a lab rat human, success is not impossible. This was Valve’s closest attempt to make a game that is family friendly, without any lethal weapons and no human targets. And Valve’s blocky aesthetic set a clear divide between the real world and the video game. GLaDOS’ increasingly heightened, malevolent monologue popped perfectly against the background of bland, abandoned labs.

However, these darkened chambers are a terrifying place. Portal with RTXGLaDOS sounds even more frightening. The big red glass buttons, the Companion Cubes, and the looming viewing chambers used to feel rather silly — but not so much anymore. Now, they’re set-pieces in a corporate haunted house. It’s a completely different experience than playing. Portal15 years ago.

Portal with RTX isn’t PortalBut it’s not really. It’s something else, an alternate vision that feels a bit closer to Half-Life 2’s Ravenholm. You might find the visual upgrade unsettling, especially if you’re more of an originalist who likes things as they were “meant to be.” OrYou might find it exciting to revisit the site. PortalThrough a far more frightening lens.

A player walks up a set of stairs in Portal. There’s an orange glow coming from beneath the stairs, which is reflected on the industrial walls encasing the staircase.

Or, if you’re the sort of person obsessed with the future of video game visuals, you will appreciate Portal’s RTX update for what it does best: Prove that ray tracing matters. Ray tracing’s ability to significantly alter the game’s mood captures something powerful about the technology that can’t be seen in screenshots or a tech demo video on YouTube.

Imagine what the artists would do if ray-tracing had this kind of effect on a game which was not meant for it.

Portal with RTX Windows PC launch on December 8th and will require high-end equipment System specifications. Nvidia provided a prerelease code for the game to be played on PC. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions when products are purchased through affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.

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