Ah, Portal 2. While the allure of its mind-bending puzzles, and the witty, malevolent charm of its antagonists may be evergreen, it wouldn't hurt to have some new levels to play through once in a while. It's been six long months since the release of Portal 2's Peer Review DLC, but the wait for new content is nearly at an end -- the only catch is, you'll have to make it yourself.

Alright, you caught me -- that's not entirely true. You can make your own Portal 2 levels, but you won't have to, when the Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC becomes available for PC and Mac on May 8, 2012 -- less than two weeks from now! Yes, the Perpetual Testing Initiative is the final version of the level editor that was in beta last Summer, and will allow players to create and play their own Portal 2 puzzles, and to share those puzzles with the game's community.

It doesn't stop there. Once a map has been published to the Steam Workshop, users can browse through the available options, select a particularly promising candidate to play, and vote on the whole lot of them. According to the DLC's press release, "Selected maps" -- which we assume means maps with particularly high user ratings -- "will automatically be downloaded and installed inside Portal 2." Now that's convenience!

Sadly, at this point, it appears as if PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 players will be out of the loop. While the PlayStation 3 version of Portal 2 does support multiplayer over Steam, Steam Workshop is currently unavailable on the platform. Perhaps the geniuses at Aperture Science and/or Valve will come up with some sort of workaround (fingers crossed!), but for now, the Perpetual Testing Initiative is strictly a PC/Mac affair. Then again, Portal 2 on PS3 does includes a free version of the game for either PC or Mac, so all is not lost for the PlayStation faithful.

In any case, the price is right. The Perpetual Testing Initiative won't cost players a thing -- other than their time, family relationships, sanity, possibly personal hygiene... but I digress. The point is, the Perpetual Testing Initiative is free to owners of Portal 2. Plus, with this DLC out the door, there can't possibly be anything left to stop Valve from completing work on Half-Life 3, right? Right?

The Perpetual Testing Initiative DLC for Portal 2 will be available May 8, 2012, on PC and Mac.

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