![]() One of Talos' greatest strengths lies in how it gives the player a great deal of freedom in which puzzle to tackle next. And, as your abilities grow and more puzzle types become available, Talos' levels soon start mixing the various kinds of challenges together in very smart ways, the most difficult of these being any of the ones that task you with recording a shadow image of yourself you then have to work alongside as it plays through its prescribed actions. So, by the time you've had your fill of disrupting force fields with mechanical devices, Talos lets you play around with controlling the direction of switch-powering red and blue laser beams via conductors. What makes it work so well can be found in how thoroughly Talos explores a concept before moving onto the next one: Collecting certain glyphs gradually unlocks a new ability, and the opportunity to use said ability on formerly unexplored levels. With over 100 puzzles to speak of, there's always the chance for repetition to emerge, but after a few hours of play, it should be clear Talos contains so many levels simply because the developers had so many ideas. Whatever the case, you'll do anything to nab that glyph if only hear the always satisfying THUNK it makes while crash landing into your inventory. Sometimes, the sentry guns and floating mines pose the biggest problem other times, your greatest foe can often be a switch you just can't figure out how to hit. Getting there, however, stands as the greatest challenge, and Talos gradually accelerates the complexity of getting from Point A to Point B. The main goal of these challenges is extremely straightforward: Grab the tetromino glyph that lies somewhere within each one. Like Portal, Talos runs the player-who doesn't know why they're there at the outset-through various experiments, each limited to a confined environment. (And if you're asking where I was when Talos originally released on PC close to a year ago, your guess is as good as mine.) ![]() It may be lacking the humor and central mechanic of Valve's creation, but this collection of 100-plus environmental puzzles manages to hit the same heights as Portal, regardless of whether or not it serves as Talos' inspiration. So I'm more than happy to say Croteam's The Talos Principle, newly released for the PlayStation 4, feels like the Portal 3 that never was. In the wake of Portal, I've played the few productions to put their own spin on its brand of first-person puzzles, but mostly walked away disappointed-even Portal creator Kim Swift's Quantum Conundrum ended up being a little dull. At best, Portal taught the world great games could come in small packages, but since the sequel in 2011, its publishers have been much more content to pull in that fat Dota 2 cash than to actually make new games. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.Įight years ago, Valve's Portal practically appeared out of nowhere and created a phenomenon with an all-too-short shelf life. ![]() ![]() This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. ![]()
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