A truly great puzzle game reworked for VR
Lots of people who I just know would dig The Talos Principle slept on it. Whenever puzzle games come up in conversation, I try to sell them on the idea of a philosophical first-person puzzler about AI and eternal life, and the words never seem to flow correctly. They don’t quite get the appeal, and I don’t blame them. It’s one of those games you kind of need to discover for yourself, of our own accord.
I’m hopeful The Talos Principle VR can win over new players. The calm, contemplative, non-linear nature of this game is an inherently good fit for VR, and it’s also quite long. We could use more substantial virtual reality titles. Based on my hands-on at E3, things are headed in the right direction.
Croteam has several options for movement (teleport, instant teleport, blink teleport, full locomotion), which I think is the right way to go for any and all VR games. Let us pick, please.
I’m usually a free-movement sort of guy, but I ended up loving the teleport options here. Once I had my light-bulb moment and knew just how to solve a puzzle, I could rapidly skip around the world and do what needed to be done (a lot of laser redirecting) without experiencing any motion sickness.
Some elements like the in-game Vive controllers were placeholders, but the foundation — the important stuff — already works. It’s Talos Principle in VR as you’d hope and expect. I only got to play through a few early levels, but Croteam says that certain puzzles have been revisited and altered as needed to better work with VR. So even if you’re a returning player like me, there’s incentive.
Assuming things go as planned, Talos VR should be out on Vive before too long. No date yet, though.
