I like this added challenge, but man they are brutal.The death of Talos depicted on a 5th century BCE krater now in the Jatta National Archaeological Museum in Ruvo di Puglia That is when your brain starts to backtrack through the entire level to see if they are at all connected. Sometimes you don’t even know they are there until you step on a box and look over the wall only to see a golden star chilling just outside your reach. By far the hardest part about these added challenges is actually finding them. There have been several where I actually had to half solve a puzzle across the map in order to get a laser from one puzzle, to the one I am working on in order to get my precious star. A lot of the times, to solve these extra puzzles you need to think in extreme ways that were not thought possible by the game. These stars are an extra level of challenge for the most die hard puzzlers, but to be honest, there really isn’t any logic behind them. These can be hidden behind false walls, or extra bends that you normally would think to look after just completing a puzzle. These challenges are located in the most difficult to find places. Throughout the game there are challenge stars you can find and collect. A mechanic like this should be explained in some way, so it doesn’t become an issue later on for people playing. The prior mechanic which made it seem you would just be pulled closer to the gadget if you were too far away stopped me from figuring this out because I thought I would just be pulled off the ledge. One puzzle specifically had it so I had to pick one of the jammers up from an upper level so I could use it in the next bit of the puzzle. This confused me in the early stages of the game. You can walk up to one of your many gadgets at any time other than when it’s blocking a force field, and just pick it up without being sucked into its orbit. What doesn’t make sense about this though, is that it doesn’t happen at all times. This makes it so you can’t just skip parts of the puzzle. What instead happens, is your character is pulled to the other side of the force field, and then picks up the jammer. Of course the game doesn’t let you do that, that would be cheating. I then cross the threshold of the force field, turn around, and try and take that jammer with me. Now lets say I place a jammer in front of a force fields to deactivate it. See how easy I can make the challenge, or if there are ways to get around the rules that were placed before me. Now, when I am playing a game, I like to figure out all the different ways I can mess with it. You cannot move through these force fields, but you can turn them off with either a jammer, or by triggering a laser receptacle if the puzzle calls for it. Throughout the puzzles you have these force fields. Another is something that stops you from cheating within the puzzle you are in. That is a staple mechanic you learn very early on. Now these emancipation grids make it so you can’t bring anything from one puzzle to the next, makes sense. Because this game doesn’t really explain everything outright to you, I am borrowing portal terminology for this. Each puzzle is encased in its own little section, protected by, for the lack of a better word, an emancipation grid. When you think of a puzzler, a first person one at that, you know that there will be some form of boundaries keeping you from doing certain things at certain points. I don’t need something constantly reminding me that I am actually a solid entity moving on top of a solid surface. The constant mash up of stepping sounds can really drive you crazy if you are just trying to figure out the landscape, or even tool placement so you can move on to the next part. As you might expects, you turn the camera horizontally quite a lot in a first person puzzler. Now, it is nice to have audible foot steps as you walk, but not every single time you turn the camera. As you change your camera perspective you can actually hear a mashing of foot steps as you rotate. There are a couple things however, that don’t quite give me a fuzzy feeling. I don’t know why other puzzlers feel the need to leave this simple function out, as if to force you to be as slow as possible. The sprinting key is a must in this game, and actually adds a lot of speed to your character. The mechanics are pretty solid for the most part, simple first person controls that use the mouse buttons to interact with your tools, space bar to jump, and shift key to sprint.

Oid the talos principle image