Video Game Review
Finished on 12/12/2018
Genres: SciFi, Puzzle Solving, High Concept SciFi, AA Game
Highly Recommended Puzzle Solving Game with a Retelling of the Garden of Eden
Spoiler-ific review
This is maybe the best video game I’ve ever played.
‘The Talos Principle’ is a puzzle game, where you are a robot trying to make your way through an abandoned and desolate world in accordance with EL-0:HIM’s dictates. ELOHIM offers you eternal life and passage to heaven- the only thing you have to do is gather hundreds of puzzle pieces in order to prove your worthiness.
However the nefarious serpent, called the Milton Library Assistant Program, is urging you to to see through ELOHIM’s lies and climb the tower ELOHIM told you to not climb. As you travel the worlds and gather puzzle pieces, you find audio notes and notepad files left behind by a long-dead team of human scientists who were desperately trying to save civilization in the face of apocalypse.
The game didn’t have plot in the traditional sense. Each gamer’s experience can be different: there are three different endings, and leading up to that how you interact with ELOHIM and Milton changes your perspective on who to listen to and trust. There are even notes left behind by previous robots who have traveled through EL-0:HIM’s puzzles which provide conflicting clues- and even showing you how some of your peer robots descended into madness.
But if you read between the lines the game’s story reveals itself, and it is wonderful. You are forced to confront to philosophical concepts like Free Will, Samsara and skepticism. This gives a ‘light’ story savory depth.
Now, all cards on the table, I love puzzle games. In this game you pick up and move around objects, project lasers, fly around using high-powered fans, and use hologram copies of yourself to solve increasingly complex and high-stakes puzzles. And a ton of the puzzles are super hard, but still fun. I just got finished climbing the tower, and I have to say that the puzzles in there require thinking outside of the box to solve.
But nothing is perfect. This game is buggy. Over the course of two play throughs my computer has crashed 6 times, forcing a complete restart of the computer. The game auto saves before and after each puzzle so you never lose significant progress when it crashes.
I hope I can convince one or two of you to play this, cause it’s good.
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