Ah yes, who doesn’t love a good game of Portal? If you are lucky enough to own an Nvidia Shield (or any Tegra 4 device), you already have access to the game plus more exclusives. But what if you do not own an Nvidia Shield? Well there is still a way to play Portal thanks to an app called GLTools. GLtTools will emulate the Tegra 4 drivers, so that the app thinks you are using a Tegra 4 device. As far as performance, I want to first remind you that you’re playing a game that wasn’t meant to be played on anything else other than the powerful Tegra 4.
With that said, the performance was pretty decent on my One plus One. Not amazing frame rate, but very playable. Also keep in mind that this might not work on your device. At first, I could not get this to work on my Oneplus One running Lollipop (5.02) but it works perfectly on Kitkat (4.4.4). So YMMV. In the end, if you are serious about playing Portal on the go, buy an Nvidia shield. Otherwise, give this a try.
Play Portal on any Android:
What You Will Need:
- Rooted Android Device
- GLTools
- GameKeyboard+ (Only if you do not have a Bluetooth or USB controller)
Downloading Portal:
There is no way to buy Portal from the Play Store, even if you wanted to. Perhaps you could use a build prop tweak to make the Play Store think that you are using an Nvidia device, but I have not tried that. So, the only other way to get it is searching the web. To make things easier, download the app tTorrent. Launch the app, and click the search button (it will prompt you to also download the search extension). Search for Portal apk, but filter the results to only show from Kickass torrents (or any other site that might have the application). Then select download. Since the content is 2.3GB it might take awhile to fully download.
Transferring the Content:
After you have downloaded the content, transfer the folder named com.nvidia.valvesoftware.portal to /sdcard/Android/Obb. Then install the Portal apk, but do not open it yet.
GLTools:
Download GLTools from the play store. When you launch it, it will prompt you to choose a texture decoder. Make sure to select TEX(DE)coder then hit install. It will reboot your device.
After your device has rebooted, launch GLTools and naviagte to the Portal app. Make sure to select the option to enable custom settings for this app. Next select optimize GLSL shaders. Then select the fake cpu and gpu options and choose Tegra 4 as the template. Finally, select all the emulation options at the bottom.
Game Keyboard:
This step can be skipped if you already have a Bluetooth or USB controller. Portal requires a controller and will not work with a touchscreen. Since I do not have any controllers, I am going to use the GameKeyboard+ app. Inside the app, go to settings and** quick setup.** Make sure to choose touchscreen/Joystick. Then set the button size to the minimum value. Finally, make sure the custom hot key option is selected and set a custom hot key. I used the volume up button. Then, go back and start the service.
Launching Portal:
Now the fun part, launching Portal. Since you are using the Game Keyboard, you will need to use that to navigate to the app. When you launch Portal the Valve intro and logo should appear. It might go black for a minute afterwards, so give it some time and Portal should appear. Like I mentioned earlier, the performance is not as bad as what you would expect. I would still much rather play this on a shield, but it’s still enjoyable on my phone.