Portal Stories: Mel is one of the best gaming values in years. It's a completely free stand-alone mod based on Portal 2, so if you like Portal and you haven't played it, you should go do that now. The creator, Prism Studios, has just released its second Portal fan-game, called Portal Stories: VR. This new release features 10 puzzles that are designed from the ground up as a room-scale VR experience for the HTC Vive. Portal Stories: VR appears to be the first game that takes players into Aperture's test chambers, and it's also the first community mod on Steam with official VR support. Valve's Robot Repair VR demo and The Lab as a whole are both set in the Portal universe, too, but neither game technically puts the player to work in the all-important job of testing.
Early reviews say that the new release feels more like a demo than a completed title, no doubt due to its brevity. Still, for the low, low price of nothing, it's hard to complain about a polished Portal VR experience. Portal Stories: VR does require an HTC Vive, and it also is marked as a mod for Portal 2 to appease Valve. The Portal creator wanted it to be clear that this is not an official game in the series. As a result, Portal Stories: VR does require players to own (but not install) Portal 2 in order to work. Still, if The Lab has left you wanting more Aperture-flavored goodness, Portal Stories: VR could be just the ticket.