Use your Portal gun in HL2

By Robert Purchese Published 22 October, 2007

Win cake.

Those of you with brains like computers will probably have worked out that you can use your Portal gun in other Source-powered games like Half-Life 2 and its pair of episodes.

And the benefits are obviously enormous, as you can drop cans of paint on Combine forces from lots of inventive places and they will have no idea how you are doing it.

All you have to do is roll up your sleeves and merge your Half-Life 2 maps and scenes with your Portal content. Then, when you fire up Portal again you will be able to pull down the developer console and pick a map to use your new gun on.

Primotech has a step-by-step guide on how to do this, and remember that it is unsupported by Valve so you will need to back up all of your files before you start tinkering with things.

It drags up the question of whether we will see the Portal gun in a Half-Life 2 adventure sometime soon, something Valve has previously denied as it would basically be too complicated to regulate.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • bengray66 #1 4 years ago

    Portal........Best.........Game..........Ever........

  • TONYgr #2 4 years ago

    thats awesome

  • JayPee #3 4 years ago

    The portal gun opens up level design potential to a whole new level.

    While Portal was great, I think the idea of portal is greater - a lot of still untapped potential.

    However, the portal gun does make the traditional idea of route-finding puzzle solving (found in abundance in HL2) somewhat moot; unless, of course, you resrict the surfaces that the portal can be fired upon by a significant amount; something which I found rather disappointing in the portal game for real.

    I still have yet to go back to portal and play the harder modes - maybe they will yeild interesting results, but the implementation of the portal gun in "Portal" I think has only just scrached the surface of the actual concept of portals.

  • DUFFKING #4 4 years ago

    Trapping combine soldiers in infinite loop ftw.

  • GamesConnoisseur #5 4 years ago

    Portal is a bloody brilliant game in where there are basically no usual shootings!

    Very creative and at a time where one would expect there can be no real new things with FPS aside from new weapons, better AI, level design, gfx and USP feature (select: temporal control, deformation, two weapons limitation, recharging shield etc etc).

    Though I believe that the simple console hacking to get portal weapon into HL2 would only be possible on PC and not the consoles version.

  • the_dudefather #6 4 years ago

    would love to see a multiplayer game of CS:S with the portal gun, shortcuts back to base with hostages, sniping around corners or setting a portal under an enemy that dumps them on thew other side of the map

  • bonker #7 4 years ago

    Portal truly awesome.

    They have to restrict the portal-able surfaces otherwise every level would be dead easy!

    I have lots of money instantly available for any and all extra Portal DLC on the 360 and absolutely no money available whatsoever should they mix guns/shooting into it ...

  • Rirekon #8 4 years ago

    Use the accelerating portal chain to see how fast you can make combine soldiers faceplant against vertical walls ;-)

  • Artemus #9 4 years ago

    So is Gordon going to get the gun in episode 3?

  • Saladin #10 4 years ago

    "So is Gordon going to get the gun in episode 3? "

    The idea of having Portal a separate storyline was that they felt that the portal gun would be too powerful a weapon in the hands of Freeman. I think Valve felt it would break the game - having tried it in HL2, I'd be inclined to agree.

    However, given how popular the portal gun's turned out to be, I wouldn't be surprised if it made an appearance in Ep3.

  • Artemus #11 4 years ago

    I hope so.

    *Ep2 Spoilers*

    Perhaps Gordon will find the portal gun on the Borealis...

    *Ep2 Spoilers*

  • gelf #12 4 years ago

    If the portal gun is used in Episode 3 I suspect it would be only for a short section of the game and will be taken away from you if that section isn't the last one. Just like the supercharged gravity gun was only allowed in the citadel
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/07 @ 12:42

  • Entity #13 4 years ago

    Lawdy lawd....
    I want this now

  • barnard666 #14 4 years ago

    "Portal........Best.........Game..........Ever........ "

    I agree...also I dont think a 3 hour game feels that bad, I'd be happy to have many more such products if they were this good.

  • davisorle #15 4 years ago

    I have to say this but..
    this portal patent was first used in Prey... for those who cant remember. Ofc not witha "gun" like in Portal and sourcecode but it was the same thing if you come to think about it. You know.. shooting through it.. seeingyour back since first lvl already passing through them etc...

    Just wanted to remind it. Portal is briliant though.Agree.