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Redout is super well polished and put together, but it's honestly kinda mid so far as AG racers go. Despite the name, it pulls more from the F-Zero side of the AG racing game family tree as opposed to Wipeout, and as a result the gameplay is actually pretty shallow. Really, the only things it takes from Wipeout are some of the aesthetics of its presentation (which are hit or miss and generally read more as copying the form without understanding the underpinning commentary, but that's an entirely different essay).
Gameplay primarily focuses on the spectacle of speed, and while it does that very well that means it has incredibly minimal substance. Ships are near uncontrollable (the best analogy I can use is Minecraft ice boating physics; to be clear, I'm saying this with a couple top 100 times to my name), which severely limits how interesting track design can be. As a result, progression is not through conquering interesting track design or learning how to beat AI that can give you a run for your money, but from simply adding more zeroes to the speedometer.
It's still enjoyable, don't get me wrong - the game is absolutely gorgeous and the dynamic music really elevates the experience a ton - but the skill floor is the exact same as the skill ceiling. Even at Veteran (maximum) difficulty, you'll never see an AI opponent after the first 20ish seconds of the race until you start lapping them. The few mildly difficult tracks in the game (Alaska Vertigo and Revolve; Europa Surface Sprint; Moon Spacepark and Explorer) end up reading as a blip on the radar.
The boss tracks, in my opinion, are probably the main draw. Each boss track is all 5 tracks from a given location smashed together into a several-minutes-per-lap endurance test, and while the AI somehow does even worse than it normally does when presented with a boss track, getting good at each of them feels amazing (even if the endgame stuff is roughly as difficult as the early game stuff).

If you want gameplay depth, look elsewhere (I highly recommend BallisticNG). If you just want to play a casual racing game that makes you feel cool, Redout is more or less the pinnacle.

TL;DR: Solid mod, buy on sale only, if you want more or want to play it when it's full price then just go play Tag.

Ah, Aperture Tag. The black sheep of Portal mods, if for no reason other than the price attached to it. A mod that costs money - this must be a phenomenal, top-of-the-line mod, right?

...no.

As with my old-as-hell Portal Stories: Mel review, I'm going to start off with the plot.

This game presumably takes place after the events of Portal 2 (all the old chambers are retrofitted with components to aid the paint gun) but to some point where GLaDOS is either spontaneously dead again or just doesn't care about tests outside of the Cooperative Testing Initiative... yet the Human Vault is open still? Ok, sure, whatever, I can handwave something relatively minor like that. You're the first (unnamed) test subject for a testing core named Nigel, and you're participating in the Handheld Gel Testing Initiative. Simple enough, right?

Somehow, they _still_ manage to trip and fall.

!!!Spoilers for the plot beyond here. Skip ahead if you care.

The core of my issues with it stem from Nigel. Seeing as he is the core administrating the test, he's all we interact with for the duration of the campaign. For much of the game, his writing comes off as a less funny GLaDOS crossed with the announcer voice lines and none of the deadpan delivery that made these two work, sometimes even outright ripping off a good amount of the jokes (a lot of the 'fill out the appropriate paperwork after the test' setups and punchlines). He's at his best when not trying to be something else, which unfortunately isn't too much of the game.

The main bone I have to pick with him is regarding how his portrayal in the context of the lore of Portal actually makes him less interesting. One of the 'core' points about the cores is the more human sounding the voice, the more human (and less cold/robotic) the personality and character (think Wheatley, or GLaDOS in Portal 1 vs. the end of Portal 2). Nigel's voice is pretty much unfiltered, which you'd think would mean he's the most human character going in this version of Aperture.

He. Never. Deviates. From. Protocol.

Even though he clearly cares some amount for you and for doing a good job in his testing duties (congratulating you after finishing the testing-required message), he still rigidly adheres to protocol, such as berating you at the end of some tests (I believe the main example is the second chamber of chapter 4, which involves scrutinizing you for taking too long trying to solve; however, I could be wrong about the specific chamber). Not once does he break from the script - the alternate ending (if you take the secret path in the final chamber and hit the button first before proceeding) leads to him sending you no closer to the surface. Given that he should be (on paper) the most empathetic core around, you'd think he'd prioritize your wellbeing at least once, but nope. This makes for a rather large disconnect between how he's presented in the context of Portal's established storytelling and what we actually get - a boring, disembodied-for-most-of-the-game voice that spends most of its time cracking bad jokes.

!!!End of spoilers for story.

Now, as for the level design... it's decent. Levels never feel mezzanine; it's just as clear to spot important areas and objectives as the base game. Due to the fact you can now put gel on the majority of surfaces, it should be no surprise that there are a lot of alternative solutions to each puzzle - and this is where the fun is, finding these shortcuts and shaving as many seconds as possible. It never feels like it's pushing it too difficult (which is unfortunate, seeing as there's no additional content past the campaign - but I'll get to that), but some of the solutions felt reasonably clever (for instance, the puzzle in Chapter 4 requiring you to shuffle a laser and 3 cubes) and the possibility of most given solutions being cheese solutions still manage to make you feel smart. However, the lack of difficulty means that it clocks in at only a few hours on a first go - and even less for subsequent playthroughs. Furthermore, where the early tests are about navigating an environment, the later tests are slow as molasses, involving sitting in excursion funnels, lethargic setups, etc. The OST names also seems to suggest that some more interesting movement chambers ended up on the cutting room floor, which is unfortunate.

!!!Spoilers past here.

The most fun part of the game is the end of Chapter 3: the ALSSER escape, in which you shut down an (ultimately fake and meaningless) reactor through a tight 50-second escape sequence. It's fun! It requires you to think on your feet and just _go._ It takes full advantage of both mobility gels very well and is still incredibly satisfying to play through each time because the challenge isn't cerebral - it's about parsing and navigating an environment as fast as possible under a serious time crunch. And save for 3 or 4 other tests across a 27-map campaign, it's the only time you get to move fast.

Also, the game doesn't have a bossfight. Period. It seems to me like we could have slipped a Nigel fight in after he realizes you closed the pit of fire - maybe he could snap at you for ruining what was supposed to be a perfect first test? Maybe the empathy suppressor (which is canonically a thing, according to the turrets investment opportunity trailer) in Nigel finally kicks into overdrive and tries to make him kill you, forcing you to reach him and deactivate it bit by bit? There's a lot of ways you could take that, and I came up with those two (trying to stay consistent with what little of Nigel's character we got) in a few minutes. This is also the thing the OST song title was alluding to - the final track on it by Harry101UK (#24, Confrontation) implies there was supposed to be a boss fight, but it simply got scrapped.

!!!End of spoilers for level design.

The soundtrack is phenomenal, not much to say here. Anything Harry101UK touches turns to gold, and this OST is no exception. Some of my favorites include tracks 18 (Boots), 3 (Keep it to Yourself), and 21 (Certifiably Insane), and many more that would be too long here (which, coincidentally, includes pretty much the entire soundtrack). Additionally, All These Walls is a great song to end the mod with, complete with some symbolism in how Aperture (something that can already be drawn as an allegory for capitalism, throwing caution and ethics to the wind in the name of money) traps those within.

Now, you might be saying: why am I so harsh on Aperture Tag? It's just a mod, of course the quality isn't to the same level as the base game!

Of course, the issue is the price tag.

I'd recommend this mod as a fun diversion (because it is) and an interesting spin on many of the elements used in the base game (again, because it is), but I simply can't because it costs as much on sale as Portal 1. Even on sale, it still costs more than Rexaura, Portal Stories: Mel, Thinking with Time Machine, etc., but doesn't hit that higher level of quality or amount of content as those other mods. The puzzles are too easy to slow down the pace of the game (even on a first go) and it lacks the additional modes like time attack and such from the base game. The only source of replayability is the workshop. Granted, these are a bunch of fun to play through (because they actually take full advantage of the mechanics on display here), but it's still lacking compared to other mods (that are also free, to boot).

If the idea of coating things in gels sounds up your alley, I'd recommend the original game that both Portal 2 and Aperture Tag draw inspiration from: Tag: Thee Power of Paint[arcade.digipen.edu].

A fun game... when it works. Which isn't too often.

The game has a fun and diverse map pool, weapon pool, etc. It's a blast, especially with friends. However, joining a game can be incredibly glitchy, with internet lag spikes that make the first few rounds after joining a server completely unplayable.

If this game is on sale, consider it. Don't buy for full price.

This is a Portal 2 mod that takes the setting of Old Aperture and pushes it further. The rest of this review contains spoilers, so heads up.

The story was one of the main draws; a story leading directly into Portal 2's events. However, this story puts more pressure and definetly feels a lot more intense. The story is well designed all in all, and the pressure of being swallowed by deadly goo made it much more do-or-die than the facility explosion in 2.

The levels feel like a cross between the slower, think-before-you-leap chambers of 2 and the dynamic, fast- moving chambers of 1. It is a pretty large step up in difficulty, and numerous levels where, when you finally struggle out the answer, the solution just seems like, "Why didn't I think of this earlier?". Very gratifying.

Overall, if you liked the 2 portal games and want more with some actual story, I would highly recommend this.

If you never played any of its earlier iterations, this game is fine. If you played during 2014-15 then you'll be sorely disappointed.

I found this game in 2015 while looking for free stuff I could run on a god-awful laptop. This game had an amazing core loop of designing, testing, and redesigning until you arrived at your perfect machine, and the restrictions put in place by the devs forced creativity in how problems such as flight were solved. Nowadays?

Everything is in place, but the skill ceiling has been largely discarded.

Essentially, Freejam released a slew of updates that simplified aspects of the game to appeal to a wider audience. While appeal is important, it should not be at the expense of depth. Giving aerofoils built-in thrusters - and removing several aerial maneuvers such as rolls and loops. Neutering - and ultimately removing - the tech tree in favor of lootboxes. Weapons that only work against aerial vehicles, but deal massive amounts of damage and have significantly increased accuracy as a crutch. Being able to strap multiple primary weapon types to the same robot to create catch-alls.
Taking the most in-depth gamemode available, with aim, tactics, bot design, etc. heavily emphasized and rewarded - and turning it into standing on circles.

While decisions such as lootboxes and the tech tree have been rolled back, that does not acquit Freejam. One should not be rewarded for pointing a flamethrower at somebody's house, then stopping before it's torched to the ground. Especially in the case of lootboxes, they still tried to pull one over the community and put profits before their userbase. Freejam should still be panned for trying to take advantage of its playerbase like this.

They know that a very large part of the community/ex-community longs for the older versions of this game. Why does Freejam choose to ignore the community, time and time again? This game's followup, RobocraftX, is already dead in the water from the same ignorance that doomed Robocraft. Why can't they come back and revive an older version of Robocraft? They certainly have the time to invest getting the netcode from, say, League of Mechs or Respawned and Overclocked up to snuff to work with their current server hardware now, and I can guarantee you that using the old emailing list they could bring this game back from the ashes.

The best way to describe current Robocraft is as a spin-off of itself, diluted for mass appeal.

The game is still fun. I'll likely continue to play it until the servers go dark for the final time, if for nothing else than an extended nostalgia trip. But whenever I sit back and think about it, the game just feels hallow compared to what it was. The game that actually got me to sit down and grind because the act of grinding was fun in and of itself. The game that forced me to consider the positives and negatives of going all in with SMGs, plasma, etc. The first game I got well and truly addicted to. Nowadays, grinding is a pointless waste of time because the most it will do is increase your DPS by 1%, and the gameplay is barely enough to stand on its own.

I'd still recommend it to anybody interested. But I cannot financially support Freejam with its blatant disregard for what the community wants.

TL:DR; If you're new the game is fine. If you've played for a while beforehand, you'll be sorely disappointed. Either way, don't spend a cent here.