Somewhat surprisingly, the direct release of the Portal Companion Collection was confirmed as part of the Nintendo Direct Mini – and that also has a side effect: the first players have got Half-Life 2 up and running on the Nintendo console.
As part of the Portal Companion Collection, the two Valve classics Portal and Portal 2 found their way to the Switch this week – and the players are sometimes already busy and going one step further. The portal release also seems to open the door for the classic shooter Half-Life 2 on the switch.
As one of the first successful users in this regard, the Twitter user OatmealDome published impressions and clips of how he got Half-Life 2 running on the Switch via Portal. Of course, this cannot be compared with an official release of the game on the platform and can only be done indirectly – but it works!
[Portal 1]
I managed to load Half-Life 2 in the Switch version of Portal 1!
It kinda works: the game occasionally crashes, some maps are impossible to progress in, NPC animations are bugged, saves don’t work, and world cameras don’t spawn correctly.https://t.co/osSnDsi2bZ
— OatmealDome (@OatmealDome) June 29, 2022
To do this, OatmealDome used the switch version of the first portal and uploaded the files from Half-Life 2 and got them running. However, the whole thing only works with a few levels and the title also crashes from time to time. Furthermore, many sections of the shooter cannot be completed at all. But despite all the obstacles, it’s somehow impressive how quickly the classic shooter can be ported to the switch.
The Twitter user later explained that the technical implementation was therefore quite easy because the original portal was basically just a mod for Half-Life 2. Accordingly, the player code is largely identical. In the future, OatmealDome wants to improve its own Half-Life 2 mod on the switch – but the fact that Valve could possibly implement an official release for the switch quite simply is likely to be much more interesting. Would you dive into the shooter again?
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