Of course, I couldn't spend my entire time with the game staring at trees, so I set off down a dirt path to see what mysteries awaited. The Talos Principle is a first-person adventure set in a gorgeous land in which towering trees and enticing vistas demand your attention, letting you spend time to take in the sights before you go about your business. The first inkling of The Talos Principle began when the team was trying to figure out more complex puzzles than 'blue key opens the blue door.' And once they traveled down that rabbit hole of the mind, they realized how much they had to say, and eagerly flexed their talents that had lain dormant before.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's Those two design philosophies are polar opposites, right? So what kind of puzzle game could they deliver? Well, maybe the discrepancy isn't as great as it first appears to be. Surely, a puzzle game from people who make twitch-based shooters would be a disaster.

If I had known before seeing The Talos Principle that the development team behind Serious Sam had created it, my expectations would have been slanted. The pressure of that moment may have been great, but my misery gave way to a fantastic experience I had previously known nothing about. Despite my desperate need to find a hole to scurry into, however, I was enamored by the beautiful world that lay before me, and the cunning puzzles in wait. So if you saw me with a bright red face and anxious hand-wringing, it was because I had to play The Talos Principle in front of the very people who had made it.

When it's a puzzle game and my brain is fizzling out, well, there's nowhere for me to hide. For action games, any embarrassing pratfalls can be explained away by my place as a novice, so even though I cringe with every failure I rack up, I can at least use ignorance as a defense. There's no greater pressure than playing a game in front of its developers.

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