The Talos Principle VR (Verdict: Top Quality)

Welcome back everyone.

It's been a while since I have posted on my blog. I apologise, work and other duties have kept me occupied, and my home study had managed to accumulate various junk, which took me the longest time to clear. As any Vive player knows, it's hard to play VR unless you've got the clear space.

Another thing that had frustrated me was I was planning on doing a big review on Fallout 4 VR, but the release date for that has now been pushed back to December.

Luckily, my timing was good enough to coincide with the release of The Talos Principle VR. I must admit I didn't even realise this was being worked on, I've been so far out of the loop of late. However, I have previously completed and platinumed Talos Principle on PS4, so when I saw this released on Steam, I snapped it up straight away, despite my previous penny pinching nature with trying to buy discounted games. 😛

So on to the review.

What is The Talos Principle?

The core plot of the Talos Principle essentially sees your game character as being an avatar of yourself. In other words, you could be him, he could be you. Neither you nor your character has any idea what is going on, so what's to do except start plodding around? It isn't long before a voice starts giving you instructions about what's going on.

The Jammer: One of the core puzzle solving tools.

As you explore, you come across messages in various different formats, the voice in the sky keeps talking at you, and also another "character" starts talking to you, and it's left to you to make sense of it!

So that's the plot, now for the game mechanics. Basically, this is a puzzle game with an excellent plot wrapped around it. The game consists of hub worlds that connect to levels, and each level contains a number of puzzles to solve. The majority of the puzzles are of the nature that you are in an arena with various obstacles, gates, switches, etc and you need to get to the "end" of it to claim your prize, which is a kind of jigsaw piece. Once you start building up pieces you can unlock further areas via solving tetris-style puzzles, where you get a set number of pieces and have to fill the board with them with no spaces.

The plot and the puzzles combine well. The puzzles teach you to think outside the box a little, and if you apply that lateral thinking to the overall game world and the plot, you can move off the well-trodden path to some interesting new areas with new things to discover.

I don't want to say any more, you can tell I'm being a little vague already, but the whole point of the game is to start from knowing nothing, and as the Talos Principle is a great game, you should play it, whether it is on a traditional format if you don't have VR, or on your VR headset.

For more in-depth coverage of the core game, here are reviews from 2 major gaming magazines on the Talos Principle (non VR version).

• Gamespot (written review) - 9/10
• IGN (video and written reviews) - 8.3/10 

The Talos Principle in VR.

The Connector - Notice the robotic hand? That's your hand!

Firstly, this game in VR is an example of a rare full-on triple A title for your VR headset. It is the entire game, plus the Road to Gehenna DLC, rendered very well in VR. The game controls have been adapted so they make intuitive sense using your hand controllers. Also, there are very few bugs and for those bugs that do exist, they are mainly cosmetic. If you complete this game to the maximum extent there are many 10s of hours of gameplay here. At £29.99, there can be no argument that you are paying a fair price for a full game, unlike many VR "experiences" where you can pay half as much for a tenth of the game time.

The other huge plus for this game is that the developers, Croteam, have worked on making the VR experience as customisable as you want it. There are options for being able to turn around with the controls or have that disabled (so you physically have to turn around yourself), several different types of locomotion, an option to click or just touch the touchpads to move, an option to always run or only move as fast as you press, and more. Even if you have some comfort issues with playing VR for a length of time, if this game can't solve them then I don't know what game will.

The only tempering points I can raise about playing this game in VR is that although it is a great overall VR experience, it doesn't add any additional sense of presence when you play it, as opposed to playing the traditional non-VR format. Some VR experiences can feel totally different and more personal, especially the horror genre, but there is little extra sense of immersion playing Talos Principle in VR.

Also, you don't actually have to really physically move around that much. Room scale is only useful for perfectly positioning yourself in front of a touch puzzle or terminal. You mainly play the game just standing, and after a few hours my legs start to ache. You'll probably stop playing when you want to sit down for a bit, rather than any motion issues.

So, is it Recommended?

Solving a puzzle in VR. Your controller is the hand.

Regarding my points about the lack of  VR "addition" to the experience, I should stress again this comes from someone who played The Talos Principle on PS4 to 100% completion, and I am still very much loving going through this game again in VR.

Even though:

• I've played this game before
• My previous experience was on PS4 so I have to pay full price on Steam (if you have the original Talos Principle on Steam you get a 25% discount off the VR version)
• Historically I've been a bit stingy paying top whack for VR games.

I very much recommend The Talos Principle to all PC VR headset owners. On the PS4 I considered this game to be one of the most enjoyable platinums I've ever achieved, and going through it all again in VR is a total pleasure!