I think that this game would be hard to recommend to a lot of people, because I think most people's idea of a video game is something they can sit down and learn the basic steps, and then do very little thinking outside of what the game throws at you. It might get progressively harder if its singleplayer, or your experiences may vary in mutliplayer.

But The Talos Principle is a game in which there is only the simple premise, to solve puzzles. That's the gameplay. And to a lot of people on the face, it is boring. I thought it was possibly going to be boring.

What I ended up playing was a game that I felt was doing its best to challenge my preexisting view of humanity, of the self, and of what it means to have free will. Sure, other games can do this as well but I think this game is perfect for an avenue of thought like that.

You're both thinking about the puzzles, but thinking about the information the games presents to you through dialogue at the same time. You ask yourself "Why?" over and over again, and you get the feeling if you just keep pushing, just solve another few puzzles or levels that you'll eventually figure it all out. What exactly? Well, I leave that to you to find out.

And you can be ignorant of all this the whole game, and just solve the puzzles too at the same time. It makes me realize that everyone's experience with this game will reflect their own curiosity and wonder, or it might reflect someone's more linear and goal-oriented mind with only wishing to solve the puzzles.

I don't want to presume it's super deep and puts forward new ideas never explored; a lot of this stuff could be explained to someone in a college lecture or another story of course. However, I think that The Talos Principle uniquely sets itself up to really engage the average layman with this if they only choose to at least have an open mind and try to press forward as much as they can. No one puts it better as Alexandra Drennan:

"Games are part of what makes us human, we see the world as a mystery, a puzzle, because we've always been a species of problem solvers."

I have been thoroughly enjoying the second one, and I think these games will become one burned into the far edges of my brain until the day it stops working.

portal with god

6/10

Gives that Portal feeling. The last 5 minutes of gameplay are a bit mid IMO but otherwise it's a near perfect game