Review Day: The Talos Principle

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

The Talos Principle is a first-person puzzle game from the creators of 2001's Serious Sam. Although it's not amazing or addictive, it's a very pleasant way to spend a few laid-back hours solving cerebral puzzles.

There are almost too many puzzles in this game: 3 worlds with 7 lands each, containing an average of 5 puzzles per land, not to mention a neverending array of secret puzzles. It's possible to burn out if you play too many back-to-back, but it's perfectly paced for doing a puzzle or two in very short gameplay sessions.

The puzzles run the usual gamut of 3D puzzles, and generally involve aiming lasers, moving boxes, dodging robots, and turning on the power to various switches. Once you know all of the rules, the puzzles are logical and deviously clever, but a few of the earlier puzzles suffer from poor explanation of the underlying concepts, relying on your continued experimentation instead. It doesn't help that the puzzle chambers are massive and full of dead space -- it makes it harder to determine what is relevant to the solution. If you get stuck on an early puzzle with no obvious way to proceed, it might help to know that some unexpected things are capable of having other things stacked on top of them.

The game is wrapped in a heavily-thematic story about consciousness and existence, but it comes across as a humourless Portal and is mostly forgettable. However, it does give a passable background for why you might be solving all of these puzzles, and serves its purpose.

The world is graphically excellent and runs smoothly on my old graphics card, and the soundtrack is a muted New Age mix that made me recollect Myst. Overall, I made it about 2/3rds of the way through the game (10 hours or so) before losing interest, but I came away with a positive impression of the game.

Final Grade: B+, great if you like puzzles and greater if it's on sale