A computer terminal in the game asked me why I wanted so much to prove I'm human. I spent like 10 minutes thinking, unable to answer.
Thought this was just puzzles, ended up on one of the most philosophical rides a game has ever taken me. 10/10

HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!

"The Talos Principle" is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding gaming experiences I've EVER had and I've been playing video games since the Atari 2600 days. There is a reason why "The Talos Principle" is a hit among critics and the player reviews are "Overwhelmingly Positve." For me this is a new classic. A game that catches lightning in a bottle. One of those games that scratches an itch I didn't even know I had.

NOTE: If you think you might get this game, I'd recommend against watching video and looking at player screenshots. They are both highly likely to contain spoilers and inadvertent puzzle hints, both minor and major. I only played the demo going into the full game and I feel the experience was better for it.

This is a first person, sci-fi themed puzzler in which the player, an artificial intelligence, is left to complete puzzles by using a series of tools that are introduced throughout the game. The first tool is the Jammer, a tool that jams electronic devices and force fields. Another tool connects to and aims laser beams. You'll also learn that tools can be used in combination, keeping the progression interesting. Solving a puzzle rewards the player with a sigil (tetromino) which are then used as puzzle pieces to unlock new areas when arranged correctly in puzzle mini-games.

The only conversational contact the player has is with another AI program that often presents itself at computer terminals as the game progresses. The player is also, through communicating at the terminals and reading information displayed on them, left to ponder the role of the disembodied voice known as "Elohim", as well as the meaning of life, consciousness, being human, being alive, free will, and the afterlife.

The game itself is solid. Easy and tight controls. Very nice music, sound effects, and voicework. Clean, often beautiful graphics. Intelligent writing. No profanity or violence. Menus with many options like FOV, character speeds, FPS display, time display (something I never used as I chose to take my time), etc. Basically, I found the setting menus to be thorough.

Many have compared this to the Portal games, which is high praise. While both offer clever puzzles and a high quality experience, "The Talos Principle" only rarely depends on any sort of physical dexterity or reflexes. With those few puzzles that do require quickly timed movement, even the most casual of players shouldn't have any issues whatsoever.

While the presentation and story are high quality, it's really about the puzzles. What makes them so satisfying? First, puzzles do not need to be finished in an exact order. Leave one alone for a while that you are having trouble with and try again later. I found it interesting how I'd find myself struggling with a puzzle but after a day or two, the solution would become clear. It was almost "scary" when realizing how hard at work my subconscious was. I would also think about certain puzzles when not playing and come up with new things to try out. I found myself overthinking many times when the solution was much simpler. Also, just when I thought I had a handle on a "recipe" that certain types of puzzles used, the game would throw me a curveball, forcing me to deviate from previous "patterns".

Some puzzles, even of the harder variety, can be figured out quickly depending on the player's frame of mind, while "easier" puzzles (those without numerous elements) can be trickier. You know the puzzles are good when you find yourself wanting to do "just one more" before ending a session. And puzzles can often be completed in more than one way. I found out later that some solutions I used were much much more complicated than they needed to be. This dynamic of overthinking vs. underthinking is what helped make my time with "The Talos Principle" so interesting, as well as thinking out a solution before acting vs. using a lot of trial and error at other times.

This game also encourages and rewards exploration. There are stars to collect, which unlock additional content in the form of more puzzles and ultimately an additional ending choice (there's a main ending and two possible side endings). These stars are often "puzzles within puzzles" and gathering them is rewarding and can be quite challenging. It's not just a matter of "hide and seek". For example, a star may be within a puzzle and behind a door (force field). It is up to the player to figure out how to reconfigure his/her solution so that an additional door can be opened. There is also an ample amount of "Easter eggs" to find, many of which are interactive and well worth seeking out. Many are references to other games, like Portal 2 or Papers Please. Pink Floyd is honored with one as well.

Keep your eyes wide as you traverse the puzzles and worlds. Even just finding ways to exploit the simulation is fun, for example, finding a way to climb over the outer walls of a puzzle and into "out of bounds" areas (where there are some Easter eggs to find). Or "breaking" a puzzle by finding an "unintended route" to the finish by climbing over a wall, or walking above one. (This accounts for a lot of my game time).

"The Talos Principle" should appeal to a wide variety of players. I spent about 80 hours on my first playthrough and a less thorough playthrough will of course take less time. I then replaid for 100% achievements (which I usually don't do). I suspect that many of the people finishing Talos in "20 hours" are not doing everything (reading files, getting all stars/doing the puzzles they unlock, looking for easter eggs) and likely to be using a walkthrough here and there. You can play this game as you want. Complete the puzzles in order or don't. Do them fast or slow. Solve star puzzles or don't. Don't read every piece of information at the terminals if the story side of the game doesn't interest you. Look closely for Easter eggs or don't worry about them at all. Try out the side endings or don't.

The support is very good with developers active on the Steam forums should anyone have issues and updates have been released to fix and add things (like an added special settings menu for "motion sickness", a speed time function, additional language support, etc.).

NOTE: The demo is also good, yet only a taste of the full game. It ofters a solid introduction to gameplay and some clever puzzles. There is even another free game called the "Sigils of Elohim" that is made of tetromino puzzles. Solving them will reward you with codes that are then entered into the menu of "The Talos Principle" for bonuses. These do not change the core game at all but, for instance, you can get stars with these codes.

All the regular stars will still be in the game to find. If you get the codes for bonus stars (three in total), you will start with three stars in the full game. So, you'll be free to leave three stars unfound if you wish and still receive the bonus content for finding all of them. In other words, if you start with the bonus stars and then go on to find every star in the game, you will finish with an extra three stars.

PS: If you get and finish the game, check out my screenshots if you want (NOT before you play). Some hint at additional "challenges". Like getting a picture of the blue man visiting the greedy man and living to tell about it.

Possibly the most existential game I've played. Though it is, at it's core, a puzzler. The puzzles are often complex, a few head-scratchers, but sometimes require a more reductionist approach. What may seem complex at first may turn out to be very straightforward. At times it requires you to question the assumptions it has itself given you. Good exercise for the whole brain, as it doesn't train through repetition but demands both creativity and reason, both abstract thought and technical logic. Along with the puzzles a story gradually unfolds. Concepts of self, place and time begin to dawn while another mystery deepens. I like that the story is only hinted at and alluded to, so that you formulate the idea on your own. It makes it that much more meaningful and powerful. It is likely the most existential and eternally relevant topic one could imagine, and the story itself would make a fascinating novel or film. My only complaint is personal, that the game seems to make assumptions concerning beliefs, more specifically, that having them is a universal quality of humans. But this is not at all the case. At times it seemed as though the authors had an agenda to express their own beliefs, but perhaps this was just my suspicion of beliefs in general. The dialogue trees where multiple choice and never once did I actually agree with any of the choices. So it felt like being pigeon-holed and I ended up arguing for a point I didn't actually think was correct. Other than that minor brow-furrowing frustration, I really enjoyed spending time in the beautifully rendered game world. The music was lovely and atmospheric. Extremely smooth play with a good variety of menu options. It's rare that a puzzle game addresses both hemispheres of the brain as well as the subconscious mind. I strongly consider it a work of genius. Oh, and if you decide to play it, I left some messages for you. ;)

My favorite game by far in 2014 (and in the last couple years, probably), was The Talos Principle. It was as if this game was specifically made for me.

The most important things for me in single player games are:

- the quality and inventiveness of the mechanics—and whether or not I can manipulate them in a meaningful way
- immersion (which usually means first-person perspective, excellent sound design, etc..),
- the writing/story

Regarding mechanics, combat-focused games are the majority in the industry—especially on PC and especially in first-person games—so those that aren’t centered on combat often must work more creatively to be interesting—games like Myst (1993) and Portal (2007). This is also true of games which have combat, but also offer non-combative methods to play through the game (stealth/sneaking, for example)—ie., Deus Ex (2000), Splinter Cell (2002), and Dishonored (2012). These are my favorite types of games—especially the latter, perhaps because the avoidance of combat adds a further complication to the mechanics of gameplay. So, I was really excited about the First Person Puzzle design of Talos when I played the demo at PAX Prime 2014. It was love at first sight in the demo booth. I had trouble getting through the last couple demo levels on my first try, but it was still extremely satisfying and fun. As I sat struggling with the connectors and fans and boxes, of the fellows from Croteam warned me the Enforcers were coming to run everyone out of the Indie Megabooth, but told me to come back the next day to finish the demo—they’d get me back where I’d left off. So I went back the next morning, finished the demo, and gushed to Croteam about how interesting I found the game and how excited I was to play it on release. I tried to explain that it reminded me of playing Deus Ex and System Shock 2. It’s hard to articulate exactly how Talos relates to these types of games, but they all give me the same kind of satisfaction upon completing an area, even if the mechanics and design are quite different—the end feeling as a player is similar, so there’s some kind of overlap in how the gameplay works on the player. And the first-person immersion helps with that. (I should note here that you can play the game in third-person and easily switch between first- and third-person. I simply prefer first.)

More on gameplay: the puzzles were great. I found the most satisfying bits to be finding the optional stars because I had to find ways to “break” the game (or at least The Great Voice in the Sky’s intentions… hehe) to get them. The puzzles in general—sigils, stars, and easter eggs—had that kind of excellent satisfaction to them—some of them were teaching the player the possibility of the mechanics, while others encouraged the player to break beyond the narrow way in which puzzle/first-person mechanics usually work. As I mentioned, in some ways Talos really reminded me of experiences playing the original Deus Ex and System Shock 2; there were ways to play those games that literally did break them, just because of the limitations of game development/AI functionality at the time. That’s not to mention that they had multiple routes to play the levels built in already. Talos also achieved the same type of feeling that the Half-Life games produce where it feels like you’re breaking the game—pulling one over on the level designers and outsmarting the game—but in reality that is because levels were designed so well. They were built in a way to teach you to break the limitations and expectations of regular gameplay. I remember the first time I got stuck in Half-Life and after I searched every possible route out of the area, realizing I could climb on the pipes to escape where I was—like, I was so shocked that there was platforming in my FPS! I remember feeling as if I was outsmarting the game, but looking back, of course there really was no other way to get out of the level. Yet it was built in a way that made that fact satisfying instead of frustrating.

Another thing worth mentioning: the QR codes. Without saying much, there is functionality built into the game to leave messages on the walls for other players (people on your Steam friends list) to see later. It might seem like a small thing—but it really was a great little touch and made the game even more immersive.

So I was super hyped for Talos’s gameplay, and it still delivered beyond my expectations. But I gotta say that the writing and storyline was on the same level, in really impressive ways. It was subtle but powerful, and—without saying too much—I liked how it played with the ideas of free will and game-imposed confines of “choice”. I guess what I mean is, the game—mechanics-wise—were already top notch quality and impressive. But the story—the character development through audio logs, the slow revelation of the story through classical literature and other text artifacts, the QR codes, the interactions with the terminals—made it even richer. Basically Talos combined all of my favorite aspects about video games in a really fresh, great way. And it also took advantage of some of the best avenues that science fiction opens up for those ever-important literary questions... “What is the world like, and what does it mean to be human in that world?” Despite the rambling nature of this post, I actually double majored in Literature and History at university. So this game just... I feel like this game was made for me. And I was made to play it! (All that said—if you’re not interested in story, you can completely ignore and not investigate any of that and still enjoy the game for its excellent mechanics. But I’d still recommend getting into the story!)

All in all, I recommend it 100%. Well designed, highly polished, and super cool devs!

Easily the most thought-provoking game I've ever played. I enjoyed the story and philosophy much more than the gameplay. Although the core mechanics are solid, it felt like the game was too long. The sheer number of puzzles felt tedious at times.

The story is interesting and does a good job of revealing itself at a good pace, always keeping you curious and trying to figure out your character's purpose, the world itself and the story of why it was created. I was pleasantly surprised by the ending.

The game foreshadows issues and ideas around artificial intelligence that could potentially become very real in the next century or so, and for a game that's very impressive. Ultimately how much you take away from this game depends on how much you know and care about AI and philosophy, but I thought it was awesome.

9/10