I really LOVE Talos Principle 2, but it was one of the most tiring games I have ever played. 9/10 is good for this game, aside from the absurd playtime and a few weirdly specific puzzles, it is literally flawless and one of the best that this genre has to offer. Yes, I added the finishing sentence of a review to the beginning because the rest of the review isn’t specifically a review. I will ramble about a problem I actually had control over and talk about a valuable lesson I learned as a game designer. It will probably sound extremely stupid to you, so get ready.
I actually have lots to talk about this game, but 24 hours of puzzles completely destroyed my mind to a degree that even thinking about puzzles as a concept seems like an exhausting task. I wanted to talk about how I liked the narrative threads, how beautiful the game looks, how beautiful the soundtrack is and how well the puzzles are made, but sadly whenever I think about this game playtime is one of the main things that comes to my mind.
I adore this game, but 24 hours was WAY too much. It’s not that the game ever bores you, it’s the exact opposite actually. The game never runs out of new mechanics to give you, puzzles never get boring, and story threads and dialogues always keep you fresh. But man, if you want to see every bit of the story, you have to devote your life to this game and solve every puzzle this game has to offer. The main problem with this is that the maximum time I can play this game in a day is two hours because after that I completely run out of steam and even get to a degree where I start to have headaches. I wanted to see the ending of the game, also I wanted to move on to another game, so I played this game in really long sessions and in the end, I was extremely tired. Maybe a good solution would be to play another game with this one that is the opposite in nature, but I feared that I would have abandoned this game after a while. There might have been even more solutions that don’t come to my mind (thank you Talos Principle 2) but pushing through this game was probably the easiest one to do, so I did that. It was a mistake, but I did it anyway and I have no regrets as it taught me a valuable lesson.
This series is weird man. Not in terms of its story, or gameplay, but in terms of playtime. As a game designer, it gave me a valuable lesson in terms of playtime. The first game was also really good, but the puzzles got really, really hard and combined with the long playtime (15 hours) that game was also really tiring, even more than the second game. This game seemingly solved that problem, puzzles weren’t gradually getting harder, there were easier puzzles between harder ones and there were always new mechanics to keep the gameplay fresh (unlike the first game). When I was at the 12-hour mark, I thought to myself that this game solved the main problem of the first one and I probably won’t get tired at the end of this game like I did in the first one. As I progressed through the game, I gradually started to get tired again sadly. The reason is simple; Even if your game is endlessly fun, even if you have the content to support a long playtime, there is always a degree where your game can be too long.
Even though this series tired me, I’m really glad that I played it. I learned a really valuable lesson about playtime that I don’t think I could have had without experiencing and analyzing it by myself. If you are a game designer, definitely play this game. Even if you don’t learn the same lesson as me, I’m pretty sure you will learn about something equally significant.
I actually have lots to talk about this game, but 24 hours of puzzles completely destroyed my mind to a degree that even thinking about puzzles as a concept seems like an exhausting task. I wanted to talk about how I liked the narrative threads, how beautiful the game looks, how beautiful the soundtrack is and how well the puzzles are made, but sadly whenever I think about this game playtime is one of the main things that comes to my mind.
I adore this game, but 24 hours was WAY too much. It’s not that the game ever bores you, it’s the exact opposite actually. The game never runs out of new mechanics to give you, puzzles never get boring, and story threads and dialogues always keep you fresh. But man, if you want to see every bit of the story, you have to devote your life to this game and solve every puzzle this game has to offer. The main problem with this is that the maximum time I can play this game in a day is two hours because after that I completely run out of steam and even get to a degree where I start to have headaches. I wanted to see the ending of the game, also I wanted to move on to another game, so I played this game in really long sessions and in the end, I was extremely tired. Maybe a good solution would be to play another game with this one that is the opposite in nature, but I feared that I would have abandoned this game after a while. There might have been even more solutions that don’t come to my mind (thank you Talos Principle 2) but pushing through this game was probably the easiest one to do, so I did that. It was a mistake, but I did it anyway and I have no regrets as it taught me a valuable lesson.
This series is weird man. Not in terms of its story, or gameplay, but in terms of playtime. As a game designer, it gave me a valuable lesson in terms of playtime. The first game was also really good, but the puzzles got really, really hard and combined with the long playtime (15 hours) that game was also really tiring, even more than the second game. This game seemingly solved that problem, puzzles weren’t gradually getting harder, there were easier puzzles between harder ones and there were always new mechanics to keep the gameplay fresh (unlike the first game). When I was at the 12-hour mark, I thought to myself that this game solved the main problem of the first one and I probably won’t get tired at the end of this game like I did in the first one. As I progressed through the game, I gradually started to get tired again sadly. The reason is simple; Even if your game is endlessly fun, even if you have the content to support a long playtime, there is always a degree where your game can be too long.
Even though this series tired me, I’m really glad that I played it. I learned a really valuable lesson about playtime that I don’t think I could have had without experiencing and analyzing it by myself. If you are a game designer, definitely play this game. Even if you don’t learn the same lesson as me, I’m pretty sure you will learn about something equally significant.