Recent reviews by nWg. SC[m]STR

Overall: SS

This game has constantly impressed me over the past 10 years I've been playing it. Call it a social experiment or a love letter to people who care to think - whatever you can call it, this game stands in the top tier of gaming, period.

While this IS a puzzle game, and a great one at that, this is not just another portal clone; it's not just another puzzle game.

However, due to the nature of life and death and the ability to think for yourself, all I can do is give it a high praise and recommendation - you'll have to play it for yourself - live your own life, your own way. Many won't, and that's okay. But, it's their loss.

The graphics are fantastic for 2014. This game still runs on their proprietary, in-house engine (the Serious Sam engine), and looks just as good as it should. No ray-tracing, but this game absolutely doesn't need it: when your game is hand made by extremely passionate people, no amount of automatic light will surpass the creativity of artists will full control.

The audio is very good, but not without very minor flaws (I'm really picky). The soundtrack isn't as good as the sequel (The Talos Principle 2 has a STELLAR soundtrack), but they're different enough games, and the soundtrack and sfx are every bit as satisfying and appropriate as needed.

The puzzles in this game get actually hard. Not impossible, but an appropriate level of challenge and satisfaction. The sequel (Talos 2) is disappointingly easy where I'm at (~30% in), and to some that's a dealbreaker, but I enjoy the thoughts and questions presented in the sequel, as well as how pretty it is (and did I mention the soundtrack??!). The puzzle difficulty ramps up appropriately, too, which is nice.

The movement engine is a little oversimplified for what's basically an FPS. There is no crouching, and the jumping and air-control (no air strafing) still moves like 2001. But, the game is designed, such that the jumping is automated in places (where you look, sometimes a jump-helper appears, and when you hit jump again, your player will jump there).

The story is what this game's best foot forward. Do not play the sequel first, play through all of this game until completion, first. Take your time, there is no rush, it'll be here. This is not a summer-hype COD8 game that if you wait you'll miss out, obviously - I am, after all, putting this recommendation out for a 10-year-old game at this point (game released December 2014, and writing this in November 2024).

The themes in the story are thought provoking and philosophical, as well as technology and blur the lines between science fiction and reality a little bit.

There are secrets in this game. Croteam, the makers of the 2001 game Serious Sam: The First Encounter (still a fantastic boomer shooter LAN/Co-Op game), are well known for doing things the old way: handmade, secrets, jokes, thoughtfulness, and integrity. These are games, meant to be played, by people. Which brings me to my next point...

There are no micro-transactions in this game. As of 2024, there is a DLC expansion that came out years later. But, this is not a way for them to get your money - this game is meant to be something for you, a living, human person, to do, to experience and to play.

And that being said:

-----------> DO NOT LOOK STUFF UP ABOUT THIS GAME!!!!

I'm serious. Go in blind, and remain that way the entire time. The game is not meant for you to cheat.

It took me ten years to finish, and was well worth it. I got stuck several times and life happens. That's okay. I was drawn back, maybe you won't be. But after ten years, I can say right now, that this game was game of that year. You know what else came out that year? Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Nighogg, Titanfall 1, Mario Kart 8, Elite: Dangerous, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Divinity: Original Sin, Dark Souls II, Transistor, MGS5, SSM WiiU, and a handful of other good and great games.

But let me tell you... If you like puzzle games at all AND can ask yourself some hard questions:

This was the game of the year, 2014.

This game is nearly a 10/10.

The only shortfalls are very, very minor. The sequel does fix them, but introduces other, bigger issues. Neither are perfect...

...but then again, what is?

Overall: SS
Video: AA
Audio: A
Story: SSS
Engine/logistics of play in 2024: A
Puzzles: AA
Secrets: S
Coherence: SS+

You should play The Talos Principle if:
- You can handle PUZZLE games at all
- You can handle FPS games/controls
- You appreciate ATTENTION TO DETAIL and HANDMADE things

this game is minecraft for vehicles. You start out with a basic vehicle, and explore until you find (essentially) a cube in the world. Your goal is to somehow bring it back to a respawn point. You can build whatever vehicle you want, within your material limit and with the special parts you've unlocked. When you unlock that part, you can use it. There are islands, caves, poles, jumps, cliffs, underwater cliffs, underwater caves, secrets, mountains, and sky islands! All the normal mobility styles are here, cars, trucks, bikes, boats, planes, jets, submarines, hover stuff, and if you're really clever with some of the later parts, drones and helicopters. There are moveable parts like powered hinges, rotors, engines, and more.

Seriously addicting and challenging. Literally, the sky is the limit.

Unfortunately, the devs focused more on colors and decals rather than on more parts and more and more challenging unlockables. In the non-story maps, theres races of a few different types, arenas, drag strips, and a top speed donut.

I have a waterjet powered speedboat that has an articulating tail with a fin that can jet around on water or dive down and go under water. Remember, the goal of this is to explore and find the parts, and grab them somehow and bring them back to a respawn point. Sometimes, the parts are underwater in narrow caves on top of a platform, and you have to navigate from land down there, then grab it somehow, then navigate back out onto the island, and drop the piece into the respawn zone. Very challenging stuff sometimes, and VERY fulfilling.

With the expansion (high seas), apparently the dev made a new map thats the biggest one yet, and has a bunch of extreme weather and new terrain......buuuuut didnt make the player unlock anything. So you aren't really motivated intrinsically by any puzzles other than just to explore. A lot of people didnt like it (See reviews on that dlc) because it felt like a half-assed empty/dead/pointless world. It really is disappointing that they couldnt even develop puzzles to unlock a few new parts or even just have you start from scratch again, which would have been fine. Disappointing, but I'd still 100% buy an expansion from them if they figure out that THAT is what people want.

If this sounds like a fun physics game to you, I highly recommend it (the physics arent that realistic or perfect, but its still super fun). If you're one of those people that really like to build and tweak stuff and try it out, and/or you have an interest in suspension and geometry and can handle (basically) only right angles, then this game is probably worth a full 30-60$ usd. If you didnt play with legos or if you played minecraft and never thought "this game should have vehicles or howls castle", then this game probably isnt for you. But who knows, maybe this could be the engineering spark that starts it all.

2016 Doom is awesome. At about 60% of the game it gets a bit too gameified with repetitive weird sidequest arenas and feels-out-of-place grind mechanics.

BUT - probably the most groundbreaking and iconic soundtrack of any game ever. Mick Gordon NAILED it and Bethesda showed their inferiority by letting a gaming rockstar like him go.

There's a lot to love about this game. Unfortunately, it has very very low replayability. The mechanics, menus, soundtrack and sound design, programming, graphics, style, and story are all top tier, with the soundtrack and sound design coming in at truly stars-align level. Genre defining.

Highly recommend it. If you could play one singleplayer fps between 2010-2022, play this. Though, as time goes on, i'm sure this will only feel more and more derivative as games (and other things, weirdly) take the best parts of this game from it. Maybe, or maybe studios wont figure it out.

Don't waste your money. Bungie's business model is to remove content. Currently (10/2/2022) the only content is PVP and the latest 3 expansions. The previous expansions went free to play and then eventually deleted. TO BE CLEAR: There is no way to play the campaign in this game anymore. Again, the base game has been deleted - it doesn't matter if you're free to play or buy the game and expansions, the main story before the currently for-sale DLCs has been REMOVED.

Why? Because: BUY OUR DLCS THEYRE THE BEST.

Unfortunately, this business model devalues the DLCs, as they will only be playable AT ALL for a few years after release, until Bungie declares them *too old* or something. So, while the gunplay is actually really good, the art is nice, and the game generally looks good, DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY paying for anything in this - just don't even support this sort of practice - vote with your wallet and tell Bungie that this isn't acceptable.

Edit 10/31/2022: bought dlc 4-7 for relatively cheap because i heard bungie said they wont delete content anymore. I did more digging, it seems like the base game and the following 2 expansions have been removed, along with a LOT of planets. When you play now, it's as if your character only just now appeared and missed all that previous story from destiny1+2. The furthest back content you can play, to my knowledge, is Forsaken (the third expansion and year 4 content, to my understanding). I have not yet played any of this content yet, but because the core gameplay loop of shooting stuff is fun, the devs actually do add in secrets and jumping puzzles and other puzzles and neat stuff that I like, I will give it a shot. Bungie's business model is still bad (over-monetizing) and their business ethics are very concerning. Will report later on whether or not that content is actually worth paying for and, ultimately, if the game is worth vesting time/interest into.

Edit 11/14/2022: played a bunch more. figuring out content and what you need is still super difficult and requires TONS of googling and third party web tools like Destiny Item Manager (or "DIM", which frankly is amazing but is 100% fans doing the developer's job with a 3rd party kludge). I just tried playing, and was a little ways into a solo dungeon (apparently you have to buy the dungeons separately, each for 20$, suuuper ♥♥♥♥♥♥) and got kicked from the game because I use the windows program "NetLimiter". I've had this program since the early 2000s, its a bandwidth limiting program/firewall, look it up. Apparently people use this to lag in PvP and so is blacklisted. The other issue here is, I've been playing now for over a hundred hours and ONLY NOW did I find out that this is an issue. I tried killing the anti-cheat software to do this, and it straight up killed the destiny2 process instantly. I tried some other stuff to try to get it to stop scanning my entire computer or limit it, and I guess it fought back, refusing to be killed in task manager, nearly freezing my computer for almost 5 minutes. Super intrusive stuff, highly inappropriate stuff I wouldn't tolerate from anything besides maybe a manual antivirus full-computer scan or windows updates. At this time, I still cannot recommend buying this game. It is seriously over-monitized, poorly programmed with low efficiency, hard-stuck at 75 vert FOV (the absolute maximum), the UI is insanely console bound, and the new player experience is mindbogglingly bad in a way that I can only describe as "intentionally and predatorally obscured, hiding its little to no substance and repeated game-breaking retcons to further extreme overmonitization and predatory loyal playerbase addiction." In short, Bungie has chosen over and over again to get as much possible money from their abused fanbase, with each design choice further damaging their game to the point of unrepairability. Do not buy this game, do not support this sort of behavior.

------tl;dr----------
if you have it, try it, if it's $1.99 or under, sure, waste an hour or two mindlessly driving it around though its probably not worth the wait installing it.

first impression:
ohhhh.... man. what is this game even. so ♥♥♥♥♥♥. wait, how is this fun? what a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ piece of ♥♥♥♥ how is this even fun i dont understand.

ok let me start with the game itself:
its kind of a sandbox i think where you can reset your jet powered, afterburner, flying, destructable, super-unstable car once it's destroyed because you've driven it around in a gigantic outdoor racetrack and take it on near impossible loops and jumps while trying not to destroy it.

now how it plays:
this game is absolute trash circa 1998 sandbox racing destructo simulator thing. that being said, it absolutely brings back memories of stuff like that and is somehow fun. think: "oh wow theres a mountain over there, outside of the track, and its really really tall and i want to climb it this time without flying off and exploding for the fifth time."

how much its worth:
i have no idea how it got in my steam list, but i wouldn't pay more than a couple dollars. its such a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over the top taste with a vastly underwhelming development, that I feel like it's ACTUALLY abandonware from the early 2000s or late 90s.

if you liked source you probably wont like this. its like 1.6 in the source engine. everything is random, the art style is mud washed out ass, and the interface is bloated and ♥♥♥♥.

go play anything else besides this game, its a piece of ♥♥♥♥ shell of what it used to be. its the gta4 of counterstrike. they try to incorporate longstanding community mods into the main game, but cant even call them by their original names.

dont like it, dont buy it, dont play it, give me my money back because i dont want it.

cant turn bloom off, cant turn hdr off, ♥♥♥♥ this game.

This game is surprisingly fun. Zombie pathing, item movement, and mob spawning is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wonkey as hell, but this game is still very fun.

There's lots of exploration, building, inventory, surviving nights, creepy stuff, and I think there's some sort of storyline.

The monster AI/pathing is easily the worst part. Even with the really cool survival/recipe book, a lot of it is unexplained, so you have to decide between looking stuff up on a wiki or not. I suggest having everybody you play with not unless you get stuck, and even then limiting what you read about to just what you need to get unstuck.

It's like grow home but way more expansive and less finer detailed. Think, gta vice city -> gta san andreas. Still fun, but not quite as special.

played monopoly with two friends. felt like playing monopoly.

workshop has every tabletop, card game, trading card game, and original games that you can think of.

to top it off, it has an ipad built in to it that actually browses the internet. perfect for looking up rules or distracting people with porn gifs

Wow. 5 minute free game. Good play.