If you told me at the start of the year that a puzzle game with philosophical undertones from the developers of Serious Sam would be one of the year’s best titles, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. However this is very much the case as The Talos Principle is a fascinating and mentally invigorating experience with clever puzzles and a highly intriguing philosophy laden science fiction backdrop. The game slowly generates an atmosphere of mind-bending contemplation unlike anything I have experienced before in games thanks to a potent mixture of clever writing and music that starts to get under your skin. I think only 2001 A Space Odyssey has given me the same feeling before.

The puzzles themselves are the star of the show however with a good difficulty curve and consistently excellent design. Some puzzles which have you dodging floating mines can be annoying, but the vast majority require clever thinking rather than quick reflexes or good timing. The puzzles are short but require you to use existing mechanics in new and surprising ways. The game lets you figure almost everything for yourself, from the story to the mechanics, but the world and puzzles are laid out in such a way that this is generally not a problem. There are loads of secrets/optional challenges that help add further substance to the game after you finish working through the main set of puzzles. I did not spend a lot of time going after these and finished the game in about 15 hours, I would say it is well worth the forty dollar asking price.

If you have even a passing interest in puzzle games and don’t mind confronting some heavy philosophical/nihilist ideas (among some more hopeful ones), I can’t recommend The Talos Principle highly enough.

Croteam, after their hallmark series Serious Sam managed to create the first puzzler game on the level of Portal 2, which was unexpected, to say the least. After having played through the game, it is definitely my game of the year 2014 for various reasons, which I'll break below into several sections:

At the start of the game, you awaken as a android which is tasked with solving puzzles, for which Elohim - your maker, promises you eternal life. The story is told mostly through logs found in terminals scattered around the world, but also serve for communication with Milton, a library assistant and an intelligence with which you discuss some intriguing philosophical dilemmas. While Elohim encourages the player to explore it's creations, he explicitly prohibits venturing into the tower, which soars into the sky. As the story progresses, Milton encourages the player to act independently, and motivates him to enter the tower and find out the truth for himself.

The game starts slowly by introducing gameplay elements (some of which are unlocked by solving specific puzzles) and the difficulty of the puzzles ramps up pretty fast, but they are never unfair - even if some of them may be excruciatingly hard. If there is a situation where the player may get stuck, it's because some specific mechanics and uses of elements aren't expected or explained beforehand. Example: some puzzles utilize your own body for intentionally blocking lasers, which the player himself might not think for some time. One thing that may get on some player's nerves is the reset ability, which you will use at some point to unstuck yourself from an unsolvable jam. It resets the entire room along with all the progress you might have made, which can be somewhat annoying in longer puzzles which take some time to progress through. Once you do solve a particularly tricky puzzle, you are glad you persisted and managed to solve it on your own. On most puzzles there is a shrine you can use to get a hint if you get stuck (although some hints are too vague and don't help as you might expect), but getting that hint requires solving some hidden puzzles which are not a part of the main story, but are worth exploring any ways as they have the most beautiful locations in the entire game. If you find yourself a bit short on hints, you may want to play Sigils of Elohim, a free companion mini-game in which you may get an additional 3 hints.
There are four worlds in the game, which go as follows:
Mediterranean - ancient Greek/Roman themed world
Egypt - puzzles spread out in the desert, borrowed aesthetics from Serious Sam 3
Medieval - typical medieval style with ruined castles in a forest
Tundra - the "main" world in which the tower and the three other hub worlds are located

You start your adventure in the Mediterranean world and gradually unlock the Egypt and medieval worlds with puzzles, which are spread out into different rooms in every world. You can play the puzzles pretty much in any order, which is welcome if you are stuck in a particular puzzle, so the player can skip that particular one for the time being and return later on with a fresh approach, unlike in fully linear games like Portal.

The game has some very nice visuals, particularly if you look at the texture quality (Example: look closely at the greek-style fresca scattered through the ruins of the first world, or just looking at the floor mosaic in the third world hub cathedral). There are some hidden locations with truly great visuals, so I definitely encourage anyone to explore the game fully, which will not go unrewarded. The game runs pretty well on older hardware, but don't expect wonders - the game likes stronger hardware, but it knows how to use it. If you played Serious Sam 3, you pretty much know what to expect, it's a visually slightly upgraded game, which is fine for my taste.

This game has one of the best soundtracks this year, which you can listen for free in full here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J2xolKQjs8
It's one of the few games where I didn't have to turn the music off after some time as it blends in fantastically with the game. If you buy the sountrack DLC now, you might be a little bit dissapointed to find out that there's Elohim's voice in pretty much every track, making it a bit weird if you listen to the game's soundtrack in the public or at work. The game's developers promised to offer a versions without voiceovers, but we'll see.

I haven't had this much fun with a game in years, and Croteam did a stellar job with this game. If you like puzzle games, especially Portal 2, pick this game up immediately, you definitely won't regret it. For now the game the game doesn't have content beside the main campaign and the prototype maps DLC, but they shipped the game with the editor and full Steam workshop integration, and already the community started putting out stuff days after release, so we might get an abundant amount of content as time goes on.

This game has everything to become a cult classic. I have never played anything like this.

The story is amazing and beautifully written. Although you seem to be alone with your creator in a mysterious world, you have a lot of characters and stories to follow. It has amazing scenery, beautiful photographic graphics together with a gorgeous fitting soundtrack. Every single detail in the world is perfectly crafted and it feels good just to be there, exploring. And exploration plays a big part in this game, just as big as solving the puzzles. That is why this game is so special: this is not just a solve-puzzles game.

You explore. You find secrets. You play a role. You are an important character. You have choices and consequences. You are part of something mysterious. You are in a story that will, maybe, make you question your own existence.

I wish I hadn't to talk about Portal, but I will say this: the gameplay is only similar to Portal in the fps puzzle genre, altho the puzzles are, I believe, more engaging, challenging and fun to solve than Portal.

Please give this game a chance if you like to be submerged into compelling stories and worlds. This is a very special game.

The Talos Principle is an amazing first person puzzler experience held together by a story building on elements of philosophy. However, if you're looking at this game, you probably know that already. Yes, one could summarize a recommendation for this game as: "Liked Portal 2? Get this.". In all honesty, it is damn good.

Instead of reiterating the same things everybody says about this game, I'd like to present maybe a more differentiated opinion, discussing what I did not like - make no mistake, the game is fantastic and I'd recommend it without hesitation, but even such games have flaws. If you're just wondering whether you should buy the game: Yes, yes, you should.

In this case, you're being presented a puzzler with distinguished rooms, between which you can switch and which unlock you sigils that you need to progress. Essentially these sigils are tetrominos that form sets which in turn once completed can be used to unlock new parts or to open doors.
My problem here is that these tetromino puzzles sometimes permit a logical approach implying certain symmetry relations or similar, so you can solve them using a determined strategy - but most do not. Especially tetromino sets consisting out of 14 parts feel rather tedious and time consuming, as they detoriate to a matter of trial and error, and ultimately trigger frustration.
More precisely, the messenger's abodes have four or more sigil sets, of which some are very large. Given the reward, a single messenger's tip, that helps you with ONE puzzle chamber, I do not feel that difficulty is justified. Solving four tetromino puzzles in a row doesn't exactly make you want to solve more of them: They just turn annoying.
Had they eased on that components I feel the game would have had a somewhat better pacing.

Nextly, some puzzles later on just become tedious. Especially those with multiple mines in them can be frustrating as a single misstep will result in a reset. Moreover, the recorder part is demanding a large deal of concentration. It's very well possible messing a recording because you forgot to carry out one single step or had a bad timing on another, requiring a new recording and consuming time. In general, I like the part but felt it was never genuinely difficult to see how they want you to solve a given a puzzles, but rather the difficulty was in actually recording that solution properly..
It's a bit weird as some extra puzzles introduce some new mechanics unseen in the main puzzles. Again, it appeared to me the game would have profited from taking these mechanics and moving the tedious extensions in the extra puzzles instead. Oh well, there's a grey sigil puzzle named "Nerve-Wrecker" - which is really a very appropriate description thereof.

Furthermore, a lot of text - both from QR codes and in-game messages - is 'enciphered' by just showing their ASCII representation in hexadecimal numbering, for example "I like 54 49 54 53!". I don't see the purpose thereof: Either you are technically adept enough to know what ASCII is, in which case this is something you translate maybe one of the messages and then ignore that or it is just confusing. There are some easter eggs related to this, but given the vast amount of text encoded in this form, you are very likely to miss them.

Lastly, I found the collectible stars being too easily missable. They can be hidden anywhere, inside and outside of puzzles and some stars can only be seen if you are in 3rd person mode. It took me quite some time to notice there was such a thing and even longer to learn that the increased vision thereof makes some stars unseen in the first person view visible. As of such, if you've missed a star, but have already solved all puzzles in the given world, you're bound to revisiting things you've already seen. This is even more problematic, as there are 30 stars in total and with 10 stars you can unlock an extra puzzle world, of which there are 3. So, if you want to visit all extra puzzles and complete the grey sigil set you need to find every single star. This is made worse by the fact that three stars are hidden outside of any puzzle world and thus cannot be located using the panels indicating the amount of stars/sigils of the respective world.

Even more problematic is in my opinion that some stars are being hidden by arbitrarily arcane mechanics. Some examples:

• There's a star accessed by connecting two invisible laser connectors. A cryptic QR code in the vincinity of the star is supposed to tell you that you're being expected to take a connector out of another puzzle and connect the two points with it. I learned this by peeking in a guide and even then had trouble finding the exact spots due to their invisibility.
  
• One of the stars outside of any puzzle area is also hinted by a QR code. You're expected to align properly between two points and then walk over an invisible bridge. Problem? This again requires precision. I tried the hinted solution when I passed there the first time but slightly missed the path apparently. Later on, after considering a guide, and knowing what I was supposed to do, I tried it several times and succeeded ultimately.
  
• A rather early star puzzle is hinted by a QR code that the in-game reader does not decode. The game actually expects you to use your own smartphone, then decode the ASCII code in there giving you a date and a time. Around that, there are columns aligned like a clock and numerated where you are supposed to press the ones relating to the date. Why the date and not the time?

I've listed these three examples for a specific reason each: The first two ones give you no indication that the the solution is what the game expects you to do. Since they require precision, it is very well possible for the player to discard the actual solution as not being what you're supposed to do. The last one is very unmotivated. Given the aforementioned ASCII flood, why would you bother to decode exactly this single message? It's somewhat specially placed, but still very possible to dismiss it as some easter egg or bug rather than a puzzle. I mean, it was the only QR code not partially concealed by foilage that did not decode: I seriously thought this was a bug.

My ultimate impression all things considered is that they wanted to squeeze in as many puzzles as possible. Per se, that would be a good thing but tieing them all in with the story and with extras leads to the aforementioned issues I have with the game. Furthermore, the story feels at some points badly paced because small fragments that progress the narrative are separated by long puzzle sequences.
While playing the game, I felt this giving it some pacing issues. What I mean is that the story would have could have also been presented with much smaller sets of sigils. Since you unlock the last part - the platform - with sigils of world hub B, world hub C consists only out of acquiring red sigils without adding a significant amount of new core ideas. Had they cut it down to say fewer worlds per hub and extracted the other puzzles in some extra unrelated to the story, I suppose the story's occasional drought periods would not have been there, while the game would have provided the same content, just in a different arrangement.

do you like portal? do you wish portal was about 10 times longer and took itself really really seriously? Then this is the game for you!

only a couple of hours into it but excellent so far . Very addictive and even at this stage requires some "alternative" thinking. Audio/Visual experience is cool too , as you would expect from Croteam. definately worth the coin

I'm shocked at how unique this puzzle game is. A lot of the puzzles require critical thinking and planning. After each puzzle, which you have the freedom to choose which ones to attempt, you can roam the many different environments. I must say that this game is just visually stunning. Half the time I've just spent exploring and looking around the amazing environments. The story in this game is an added bonus to give you a reason to finish the puzzles. It's so mysterious that you really want to finish the puzzles just to know what happens!

The game is set in beautifully nuanced, digitally simulated world with a bittersweet backstory told through found texts and voice recordings. It presents a compelling commentary on faith, technology, philosophy, and transhumanism while not taking a galvanizing stance on any of them. There's a few pop-culture references and computing jokes sprinkled throughout the narrative, and I also found a hilarious easter egg.

The voice actors for Elohim and the girl in the recordings deliver a spectacular performance. I found myself very strongly emphasizing with the latter, to the point where by the end I just wanted to be able to find her and give her a hug and tell her everything is going to be okay.

It has a surprising amount of content for a (pseudo) indie game, very open-ended and for the most part, totally nonlinear. The gameplay is addicting, and rewards clever, creative solutions and a keen eye.

However, some puzzles have entirely counterintuitive solutions while others are stupidly simple but horribly tedious. But this isn't entirely unexpected in a puzzle game, so I can't fault the devs for that. However, they seemed to rely a bit too heavily on red herrings and excess complexity to make some puzzles seem harder than they should be.

The Tetris-like 2D puzzles required to unlock new areas and tools were novel and enjoyable... the first few times. Then they started to become tedious. I think the devs could have come up with at least one or two more puzzle types for these parts to add some variety.

The "hints" the messengers give are usually painfully obvious and not really helpful. I found that often by the time I resorted to getting a hint, I had already figured out the part the messenger was hinting about and was stuck on something else entirely. The hint system could have been made more intelligent so it didn't tell you something you already knew. And since you only get a few of them throughout the game, the hints could have been a lot more useful than a vague sentence or two.

Failure, such as dying or getting stuck and needing to reset, is extremely inconvenient as it resets you to the very beginning of the puzzle, making you lose all your progress, inside and outside the puzzle. This is especially frustrating on long puzzles with many intricate steps. But some might argue that failure should be inconvenient, as it incentivizes the player to put more thought and time into their solutions. So I guess this should be more of an FYI to potential players than a criticism.

I like reading as much as the next guy, but I found that there was way too much to read for a video game. I think there's more written text in this game than all the Elder Scrolls titles put together (hyperbole). By the end of the game, I didn't really bother to read anything unless it seemed important. I would have liked to have the story told more in voice recordings from more characters and maybe even video logs, essentially more stuff that I can have playing while I'm running around or solving puzzles, and less stuff I have to stop and read.

If you're still reading after all that, I hope you understand that the disproportionate amount of time I spent on the game's flaws doesn't mean I didn't like it. In fact, I loved the hell out of it. It was an extremely enjoyable yet thought-provoking experience. Just as good as, if not better than, Portal and Portal 2 put together.

My only real complaint is that it had to end.

The Talos Principle is a puzzle within a puzzle. In short, you solve puzzles by connecting lasers and push plates on your way to sigils, but that's only on the face of it. There's a deeper puzzle within, one that makes you question your own beliefs. Who is this voice in the sky? Should I trust him? Who's this person in the computer? Should I trust him? He certainly seems to have an answer against everything I believe in. Should I continue believing in the things I do?

It certainly is a unique experience that touches you on an intellectual level that is so rarely seen in gaming. The puzzles, while pretty easy in the first third to half of the game, grow increasingly more difficult, especially if you seek out all the star sigils as well. This game kind of came out of left field and I didn't even hear about it until it was already released. I bought it on a whim after enjoying the demo and am not disappointed at all. This is game of the year quality and I worry that it will slip through the cracks and become a hidden gem. It certainly deserves a lot of praise.

Honestly, best game I have played this year.

People are comparing this to portal for a reason, but honestly the portal puzzles where piss easy compared to these.

Yes this game also have boxes. No it's not that different looking from a companion cube but it's used the same way as regular boxes deal with it, it's a puzzle piece nothing more.
Using that as away to dismiss the game is like saying you wouldn't bother with Farcry cause Wolfenstein 3d already did guns and FPS.

Kinda suprising that's what people latch onto instead of the fact that the entire game is sentered around collecting tetrimonos to solve lock puzzles..

Portal is my all time favorite game. It is a prefect 10. The Talos Principle is a wonderful satisfying 9. If puzzles are great story telling is you thing, then play this game. An added bonus is all the great hidden secretes scattered throughout the game. Searching the hidden corners is very rewarding because you are likely to find a treat.

This game may have just surpassed Portal as my favorite game of all time. The comparison between the two is common, and I still have a certain favoritism toward Portal's core mechanics (the portals, which just feel cooler to play with than many of the mechanics in The Talos Principle), but the fact is that the two games have wildly different atmospheres. I still love Portal for its wonderful characters, voices, and its general feel, but The Talos Principle is thought-provoking, somber, and genuinely brought me to the brink of tears.

Portal's main conflict revolves around the player and GLaDOS -- a very concrete adversary. The conflict is still resolved as a direct confrontation.

The Talos Principle's main conflict exists within the player's own mind, and while characters may attempt to sway the player's opinion, the player is given full control over their progression and the outcome.

From a world design point of view, The Talos Principle feels wonderfully open. The player can choose to go anywhere they wish, but it's clearly defined when something impedes your progress.

To summarize, Portal still wins in my heart for humor, presentation of its characters, and some in-game mechanics. The Talos Principle has atmosphere, world design, and far more food for thought, which makes it far more up my alley. Even if most of my friends don't really enjoy puzzle games, I'll be recommending this to everyone I know.

If Animus would have ever spent a night of passion with GlaDOS, then this would be their child :) Influenced by Portal and Assassin's Creed series, among others, this game is a mind-blowing combination of puzzle-solving tasks with a story which builds a philosophical bridge between religion and science in a way that can only be called a stroke of genius.

I can't say that Talos Principle is better than Portal. It's beyond Portal.

It takes Portal's approach to first person environmental puzzle solving and, standing on its shoulders, reaches higher, offering you much more sophisticated puzzles of various kinds that sometimes have several layers and sometimes even inter-operate. The virtual reality you are operating in is filled with messages and secrets, not unlike the world of Animus from Assassin's Creed, telling you a story and fuelling your brain. And just like in AC, you get some secondary things to do when you get tired of the "main" puzzles.

The graphics are fantastic. Landscapes are gorgeous. Controls are perfect. Music is superb. Voice acting is impeccable. Length is ideal. Puzzles are mind-bending. Progression is non-linear. This game might be officially "indie", but its quality is triple A. Or quad A. To call it non-trivial is like to say that a rocket is non-slow. And what's most valuable, is that you don't feel that profits were the top priority for the makers. The game was.

The things I love about it the most:
• Assisted jumping. Just brilliant. If only Quantum Conundrum had it.
• No fake puzzles based on arcade elements.
• Weather effects.
• I can get as close as I can to a wall and still see no blurred textures.
• Skippable intro movie and sensible menus.
• Runs on my Macbook Pro.
• It's so clever, it feels alive.

The things I dislike:
• Loud "Death" sequence can give one a pretty good scare when comes unexpected.
• It ends.

If you like puzzles - buy it. If you like first person games - buy it. If you like philosophy - buy it. If you like lasers - buy it. If you like finding secrets - buy it. If you like clever writing - buy it. If you like computer games - buy it! And if you don't like computer games... You just never played this one!

The Talos principle is the best sort of puzzle game; it explores the ramifications of a small number of mechanics in a gradual and intuitive way, and rarely repeats itself. The presentation is excellent and it runs well on a midrange desktop/upper-midrange laptop. The emphasis on breaking out of the map in order to complete bonus objectives will bring many a nostalgic tear to the eye of anybody who ever enjoyed a '90s fps.

If you're looking for a fun puzzle game, pick this title up.
If you're looking for a good successor to portal, pick this game up.
If you're looking for a sci-fi allegorical exploration of existentialism, faith, and doubt that utilizes the common tropes of game design to explore the fuzzy borders of free will... that's very specific of you, but yeah pick this game up.

Though it has been flying under most of the game playing public's radar, I'm fairly sure the Talos Principle will be remembered as an important step in the evolution of this medium. It's not just a fun game, it's video game literature. With all of the humor, humility, and self doubt of Kurt Vonnegut, the Talos Principle manages to be quite literally a soul-searching exercise without ever veering into the pretentious.

It's funny, it's thought provoking, and it's oddly moving. It's also made by the same crazy Croatians that gave us Serious Sam... So it's ironic too.

A game, beautiful in it's intelligent design and nerve racking puzzles.
Never before have I encountered a game that draws the player into such deep philosophical discussions and challenges your opinions and beliefs.

If you are unsure because of the steep price: Don't be. Give this game a chance. You will not regret it.

Just finished the game, 2 of the 3 possible endings (Ascendence and Transcendence), and I'll admit, the endings were far greater than I had expected. Great gae overall. Could be better (but then what game couldn't (coming from a developer's POV)) Would definitely buy it again
Replayability 10/10 : Story 9/10 : Mechanics: 9/10 : Scenery 9.5/10 : Overall 9.75/10

The best first person puzzle game there has ever been! (Sorry Gabe!)

Weird, but typical Croteam humor with LOTS of easter eggs, many ways to end the game, beautiful soundtrack, STUNNING graphics and athmosphere. Difficulty varies from beginner to hard to superhard (if you want to search and collect all the stuff)

Croteam games has always been very high quality and this is not an exception, "Serious" engine is getting better on every release.

If you're a hardcore PC gamer and you think there's not enought options to tweak the graphics/performance and other stuff (there is plenty, really) hit "§" to pop up the console and tune up the game even more (not like in most games, where you can merely turn the FPS graph on/off)

11/10 from me.

The most unique and intelligent game I have played. Here is why:


-Great varying puzzles requiring logic thinking (may remind of Portal's puzzles)
-Relevant philosophical theme that will keep you thinking outside the game
-Fantastic visuals, voice acting, and atmosphere
-Very mysterious and story rich plot
-Flexible game-play: game can be finished with the most basic puzzles, but solving the more difficult ones will give access to different endings, and fill out some very interesting details
-No technical issues
-Fantastic (dark) ambient soundtrack

The game is unique in that it delivers a good amount of thought experiments, which will keep you thinking even outside the game. The game doesn't attempt to teach you anything, just gives food for thought. And then the topic becomes melted with the story itself. This combined with the list above gives a mindblowing experience. I suggest this to everyone, and even if the story and the theme isn't your cup of tea: the puzzles alone are fantastic to solve.

My single issue with the game was one particular puzzle, which (no specific spoiler) required to leave the game to solve it, without any specific hinting to do so. This is fine in itself, but this created some doubt regarding remaining more difficult puzzles: how was I supposed to know if they too would have such broad basis for solving?

This is a very pleasant surprise. Think of a more serious version of Portal but with existentialism thrown in. It is hard to believe that it is from the same studio as created Serious Sam as it has such depth. Highly recommended.