A Portal-like puzzle game with an interesting story that unfolds after you complete each room.
Portal is a phenomenal game, and anyone who has played that will immediately see the similarities to this game: a lab-like environment, puzzles using colored orbs (just switches instead of portals), an AI that talks to you throughout the game, and a conversation about human-AI coexistence and the implications. And it has exactly what you would expect a game called “The Turing Test” to cover topic-wise: the interaction between humans and AI and what the limits and flaws of AI might be at any given point of its advancement vs. the limits and flaws of humans. The story is great, but there is one thing that didn’t fully pay off for me, so it just fell short of being great (but was very good).
The Positives:
-This game has great graphics and controls. I felt fully in control of my character and was immersed in the environment. The environment is pretty monotonous, but that’s intentional because you’re in a lab. Fortunately, it varies it up as you go through with little in-between-chapter areas that are visually more interesting than the puzzle rooms. The only issue I had with the controls was that, using a controller, you had to sometimes move the analog stick around a little bit before you could select a far-away computer-controlled device to select, but it wasn’t too bad. I had zero issues with the graphics—very nice all-around.
-The game performs very well. I had no performance issues, and I ran it on max settings and everything was great. I love playing games that are a few years old with a modern mid-tier card because you get to experience the best of it at a reasonable price and much lower power, heat, and noise than you would with a high-performing card from the time of release.
-There are many puzzles, but none of them are long or convoluted to the point that you have to have split-second reaction times or perform a complex set of actions in perfect order and timing to get through. So it’s about figuring out how to proceed vs. having good reflexes.
-The story is really good, as you learn about the people who were stationed there and what you’re trying to do over the course of completing the puzzles. There are a couple of twist/payoff moments that play out well after going on the journey, which I liked. While I like the puzzles, I do like the rewards for completing them and would be disappointed if I didn’t get some interesting tidbits for my trouble.
-The voice acting is great, and you get to choose how much of the lore you want to explore. There are voice recordings along the way as well as papers to read and other ways to engage you. You can also search the rooms of your crew mates. These elements bring the world to life.
The Negatives:
-My biggest one is hard to explain without spoilers, so I’ll focus on what it doesn’t do and keep what it does do vague. In a game called “The Turing Test”, I was hoping for a couple of mind-bending mysteries, questions, or revelations about what it means to be human and what AI could do vs. humans. I got something very different. Different isn’t always bad; there are two primary revelations in the game along with two secondary ones. The mid-game one is cool and makes you question things, which is half the payoff I expected, and then the other one is an interesting “What would you do?” one at the end that I liked but they didn’t fully explore it and it kind of departed from the philosophical ideas posed by The Turing Test (not by much; if they would’ve covered it and the main one, I would’ve been happy with both). The secondary ones involve your crew, and the “what happened to them” ones were fine but the dramatic events ones in the audio recordings didn’t always feel like they were building up to the final parts of the story. Again, not a big deal, but not everything had the payoff I was hoping for.
-The puzzles are generally easy; I figured most of them out in a few minutes at most until the last chapter where a couple took me a while (they really started making you think outside the box—one achievement literally points that out—which got me a time or two). There are so many that I’m glad they didn’t take too long or I would’ve been tired of playing, but there are 10 per chapter and so you probably only want to play for a chapter or two per play session or it’ll feel endless. I found that playing in spurts prevented me from feeling drained by the dozens and dozens of puzzles. If you’re looking for stumpers, this might not be your game…but because there were so many, I see the shortness of them to be a positive or this game would’ve probably been too long because of how mentally taxing the puzzles would’ve been.
-There was a really cool final decision that you could make to determine the fate of the characters, which was awesome. But then the game ends, so I feel like it didn’t fully pay it off by showing the consequences in a way that would make your decision feel impactful. That’s the big theme I have for the negatives of this game: I was underwhelmed by the fact that the game took one of the greatest, most interesting topics in the history of the universe, added an interesting mystery with characters they gave some depth to, and then the non-puzzle scenes that should’ve explored those ideas and characters did not deliver against what I was hoping for (i.e., what the best games would do with those elements). It was so close, which is why it is just a tad disappointing that I didn’t get everything I’d hoped for. It feels like there must’ve been budgetary, staff, or time constraints that caused them to cut them short because it didn’t seem like an intentional decision on the part of the developers. Great plot threads that go nowhere in movies are usually due to bad writing (i.e., they jumped from thing to thing or they wrote too long of a movie), but great plot threads that don’t get fully realized in video games are usually due to running out of time or money, so they just wrap things up to get it out the door.
In short, this is a good game that resembles some of your favorites over the years like Portal, The Talos Principle, etc. They did a great job with so much of it. I really wanted this to be one of my favorite games, though, where it would’ve done some thought-provoking or even mind-bending stuff that would’ve changed the way I thought about the universe. I know that’s a tall order for a puzzle game, but you know that the best in gaming, from Planescape: Torment to Braid to Bioshock, can deliver climaxes or resolutions to plot threads that would blow your mind. And I was hoping for that here. It did deliver a couple of interesting ones, but they didn’t fully pay off and so I feel like it didn’t reach the heights of the best. I love psychology, philosophy, and technology and was hoping for this to go through all three because that’s what its namesake (and The Chinese Room they reference throughout) was getting at. It got most of the way there but not all the way. So I recommend it, and there are some great moments, but it’s just shy of the heights of the best that gaming has to offer in story and in gameplay. It’s plenty good to recommend, though, and I hope you enjoy it if you choose to play it.
