One thing I absolutely adore about puzzle games is their ability to make me feel stupid one moment, and the most intelligent person on the planet the next. The best puzzle games out there balance this quandary with precision – never leaving us down in depths of dumbassery too long, and always making us feel like the problem, and not their game mechanics and/or the convoluted conundrums that stand between us and success. Which means that when these games do raise us up with every ego-boosting, endorphin-fueled eureka moment, they make us forget about those lows in an instant. Some of my personal favorites of all time to this end include Portal and Portal 2, Braid, Fez, and Croteam's 2014 gem, The Talos Principle.
I can't quite believe it's been nine years since the latter first wowed with its environmental head-scratchers, themes of transhumanism, and barn-loads of bastard AI-powered baddies, but here we are. That's a conundrum unto itself. In any event, here I am in the throes of The Talos Principle 2, falling in love all over again, inside a world that's unreasonably infuriating, brilliant, fresh and familiar all at once.
Problem solved
Thrown once more into a contradictory world of ancient ruins and highly-advanced technology, The Talos Principle 2 is as thoughtful as it is challenging. Games like The Witness, Return of the Obra Dinn, and what I've played so far of Islands of Insight have taken the puzzle-adventure genre to new heights in spectacle and exploration terms in more recent years, but one of my favorite things about the first Talos Principle game was simply existing in its series of interlinked puzzle rooms.
With over 120 intricate and steadily more challenging puzzles to be overcome, you quickly found yourself juggling pressure plates and Weighted Companion Cube-like tools (minus the cake, sadly), laser beams and diverter apparatus, and industrial fans and time-warping machinery, all within the bounds of a setting that appeared untouched for hundreds if not thousands of years. I've barely scratched the surface of The Talos Principle 2's preview build, but one of the most appealing parts of my journey so far is the feeling of coming home.
Just like its predecessor, there's an interesting and thought-provoking narrative thread that underpins the hows and whys of your presence here in this paradoxical setting, but it's the nitty gritty of its puzzle work that holds the most intrigue. During one particular set piece, I spent the best part of 30 minutes attempting to reroute a series of laser beams, in order to power up a dual-plated door, to reach a tetromino puzzle piece required to unlock the next area of puzzle rooms. I tried and tried and tried to no avail to match the lasers with the correct re-routing devices, but kept crossing their paths and shutting the whole thing down. This was one of the aforementioned moments that made me feel like the silliest man in the room.
"When written down, it all sounds so easy – but that's exactly the beauty of puzzle games that walk the line between infuriating and infatuating so neatly; whereby you can handle feeling like a jerk because eventually you'll feel like a genius."
For whatever reason, my brain just could not fathom the simplest route to success in this instance – until I popped away from my screen for a coffee, and returned to find that something had clicked in my mind. What if I move this here and that over there, I thought to myself, before making three small but significant tweaks to my proposed solution. The lasers clicked back into place, they hit the required plates on either side of the locked door, and a slow but steady electrical hum preceded the door swinging open. Eureka.
When written down, it all sounds so easy – but that's exactly the beauty of puzzle games that walk the line between infuriating and infatuating so neatly; whereby you can handle feeling like a jerk because eventually you'll feel like a genius. Perseverance in those lulls is key, of course, and I totally get why that process isn't for everyone. But if you fancy pushing yourself to this end – whether you played the first Talos Principle all those years ago or not – you should totally check out The Talos Principle 2's complementary demo on Steam.
And if you like what you see there, know that The Talos Principle 2 is due to launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X on November 2, 2023.
