Upon the announcement of a sequel to ‘The Talos Principle’, my immediate reaction was negative. The original game is easily the most profound and transformative experience I’ve had in gaming- so I couldn’t imagine a sequel that would live up to that beautiful, open-ended final image of the original.

Given the first game was set in a simulation designed to test the player-character, the sequel had the massive task of now taking place in the ‘real world’, which our robot descendants would- I assume, be inhabiting. To my surprise, CroTeam faced this challenge head on, spawning you into the sequel as the 1000th ‘human’ born into this new robot civilization. The puzzles are now mysterious real life constructions your society has found many miles away from the capital city of New Jerusalem, the only city these robotic humans have managed to build. As it turns out, the dominant perspective among our robot descendants is that human greed is what caused our extinction, leading to their hesitations on ambition, reflected in their societal objective, ‘The Goal’, which was to build only 1000 humans total, meaning you are the final conscious creation of this society.

My initial reaction to the creative decisions here were pure awe and wonder. Riding the train into New Jerusalem for the first time, I was not only impressed by the artists at CroTeam, I was truly proud of what ‘my people’ in this new society had accomplished. In the first game, the building of a new society to replace humanity was a far off dream. Not only for me as the player, but Alexandra Drennan, the human who invented the simulation and robot bodies that lead to this.
The first game certainly gave me an incredible perspective on human existence, but it didn’t contain any character-to-character interaction. It was a more abstract, meditative experience solving those puzzles, listening to Alexandra’s voice messages and reading the many perspectives on human existence. Now, I was surrounded by my robot brothers and sisters, and it was absolutely glorious.

“Hello 1k!”
Most of them waved to me as I made my first tour around New Jerusalem, speaking with the many unique characters spread around the city. One of them, a journalist, asked me for a statement on earlier events, the catalyst of the story, which I refused and got a good laugh out of the rest of the group, noting that I was already showing signs of wisdom. Many of these bots(humans if we are being polite) are interesting and well-spoken. Others are ignorant and promote conspiracy theories. A few stand gazing reflectively at the still pools of water, pondering the purpose of existence, or moping about a lost lover. Deeply entrenched in the humanist spirit of the series, I was quite happy to see all of them just moving about in the real world, existing. As humans once did.
Also in New Jerusalem was a museum dedicated to Alexandra Drennan’s simulation, the setting of the first game, which I have to say is one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had in gaming. There were even some replica puzzles, with the original game’s soundtrack coming from a diegetic speaker built into the exhibit. Despite The Talos Principle coming from a fairly small developer, on a relatively small budget, it’s subject matter and world are of a massive scale. Everything I’d seen up to this point, only a few hours in, had delivered. But If this game wanted to live up to the first, its mystery would have to lead somewhere extraordinary.
The catalyst of this game comes about in the midst of your birth ceremony, when a strange hologram interrupts the mayor’s speech, “The flame has awoken and summons you. Who is brave enough to answer its call?” This leads you, after a tentative approval from the Mayor, on an expedition to a massive pyramid, referred to as the Megastructure. Unlike the lonely experience of the first game, your expedition partners are a constant presence. Backpacking along the paths of these large-scale maps, theorizing on the Megastructure, and congratulating you on your puzzle solving.

GAMEPLAY
To preface, I’m not usually a puzzle gamer, but when I first played the Talos Principle I was immediately sucked into the mystery of it’s strange world, so I went on to play through both the core game and the Road to Gehenna DLC. I’ve grown familiar enough with the mechanics that a lot of TP2 felt like a job to me, specifically because so much of this game is just designed to be easy. Each new area introduces a new mechanic, and therefore the first 4-5 of the 8 puzzles in the area are extremely easy, and the two after that usually aren’t that difficult. Granted, I’m so experienced now that it’s probably my fault, and I have no idea how a new player will experience this, but the latter areas of the first game were a fun challenge, a deeper exploration into the mechanics you’d now spent most of the game learning. TP2 on the other hand, never felt like I was in the endgame, just the end of that specific area.
There were several mechanics introduced that I thought were absolutely brilliant, like the walking on walls mechanic combined with the gravity shifter. These added quite literally a new dimension to the gameplay that I would have loved to see carried much, much further. Instead, those mechanics get mostly sidelined in favor of new mechanics in the next area. I’m disappointed to say that the endgame of Talos Principle 2 doesn’t really feel like the endgame, and I never walked into a single area intimidated by what challenges may await me.
My other main issue with the gameplay is that each of the 12 areas are MASSSIVE, and for a lot of this game, you’ll be hold down the sprint button. On one hand, I like that the worlds are big, it’s a strong contrast to the first game and it gives Talos 2 the epic atmosphere that it deserves. On the other hand, starting every new area by sprinting 2 miles, darting in and out of easy puzzles was the opposite of atmospheric. So, it has some upsides and downsides, but I digress. It didn’t ruin the game for me, but it definitely wasn’t perfectly executed.

STORY CRITICISMS
Returning to the story, each of the characters accompanying me on the expedition I found to be interesting and fun to be around, but as much as I like them all, I found they got along a little too well for what happens throughout the story. I think some tension or some edge on at least one character would have added some weight to the plot, which was heavily lacking at junctions where the story asked for it. Characters may say they are upset about certain events after they’ve happened, but they don’t panic when things go south, or ridicule one another at any point. I hate to say this, but the big plot moments of the Talos Principle 2, emotionally fall flat.
My main critique of the storyline branches off of this because the massive-scale story ends up simplifying the questions that the writing and voice entries did a much better job of exploring. Whereas the ending of Talos Principle 1 felt right, like it had lived up to something beyond the game that I’d started many hours before, Talos Principle 2’s ending feels like an oversimplification of every thought I’d had across my playtime. This isn’t to put down TP2, because those thoughts were much more meaningful to me than the first game’s. While TP1 centered around what it means to be human, TP2 centers around what it takes to have faith in humanity, and in the latter part of TP2, I appreciated that deeply.

Walking back through New Jerusalem for what I imagined to be the last time, I was submerged in some really profound emotions. My criticisms for this game may come across as harsh, but there’s absolutely no doubt that it’s instilled in me a capacity for human faith, something I immediately would find missing in the real world when I put down the game. Perhaps I’ve just been indoctrinated with humanism, but there’s no doubt that I was profoundly impacted during my play through. I personally can’t foresee a point in my life now where the idea of an unshakeable faith in humanity won’t tug at my heartstrings, and for that, I consider Talos Principle II a beautiful piece of art.

“Think of the world we could build if we believed in ourselves.”
-Alexandra Drennan

Perhaps the most compelling game world ever created, Disco Elysium expertly immerses you in its struggling world. Its gameplay flaws, specifically its pacing, often grew frustrating, but the game’s narrative integrity cannot be understated. Each time I uncovered new characters, areas, or story beats, I was completely hooked. The quality of the writing is evident not only in the world’s detailed human society, but in the heartfelt characters and uncanny situations you discover. For the first time ever, I considered replaying a game immediately after beating it.

You begin Disco as a drunken, washed out hoodlum waking up from a full-on blackout in a disgusting hotel room. You remember nothing. Completely hungover, you find a man downstairs who appears to have been looking for you. Slowly, you realize he is your partner on an investigation, and that you are a cop. The body of the murder victim has been hanging from the tree behind your hotel for a week now, and none of the locals seem to respect you whatsoever, especially the hotel owner, who claims you owe him hundreds of dollars, of which you have zero. Sucking up the hangover, you set out to solve this war-scarred city’s murder through lengthy dialogues with the locals, slowly recovering who you are along the way.
Due to my character’s alcohol-induced amnesia, I opted to confront the citizens of Revachol with only the most non-threatening questions- avoiding any risk of havoc or confusion. Very shortly I realized Disco Elysium is not built for this strategy. It is not a game where you get to interact with people in your own way. Instead, the player is forced to interact with essentially every NPC they come across in order to progress the story.
Progression comes from stat checks that force you to spend a skill point if the roll is unsuccessful, leveling up the required skill in order to take another shot at the check. It grew frustrating waiting out story material because of an unlucky skill check, but in the early game you have plenty of time and new skill points to uncover and come back to try again. It’s in the late game where these checks become frustrating, and several times over I found myself wandering through Revachol trying to figure out how I should pass the time, or finding something that will level me up so I can retry a skill check. In my 34 hour play through, I would say about 4-6 hours were spent in this purgatory of not knowing what to do, or just not being as engaged by the world because I was desperately trying to progress. Maybe I just didn’t understand what I was doing, but it’s 100% worth mentioning because those moments are what would usually cause me to accidentally never come back to a game after putting it down.

Fortunately, by the end of its first day(of five), this game had hooked me into its cold, foggy world, boasting a literary depth, a chaotic world history, and a somber, reflective mood. The game takes place in Martinaise, a battle-scarred district of Revachol that has been almost entirely ignored by it’s rulers, leaving the dockworkers union to help protect and manage it’s residents. Digging deeper, you’ll find a massive amount of history behind this society. Informed not by books or objective means, but the small-minded and emotional people around you, who all have different views on where they live and what the world should be. The relatively small open world is also packed with environmental history. Some of my favorite story moments came from the environment, such as one where you see physical evidence of a firing squad, dozens of bullet holes on a wall, your skills determining the many different military forces that could have been killed here. Was it the communards from the last war? Or the victims of the communards the war before that? The futility of life is something the writers communicate very well, and being inside this protagonist adds another layer of human desperation to it all. I’d never spoil the moment, but learning about the larger world’s natural situation, and the scientific makeup of everything, really showed me that the writing is on a different level, and that the literary effort of a game world pays off in spades. It’s full impact doesn’t really come until after you beat it, where it’s depth sits with you, and your understanding of Martinaise is likely to be more than that of so many real places you’ve been to.

This grim, hazy society functions as something much, much larger than the player. Your player-character(who’s name is technically a spoiler) doesn’t get to save the world, the city, or the town. In fact, he seems to struggle for a reason to save himself. A small, alcoholic fish in a nearly frozen pond. The amnesia-ridden opening is certainly a tired trope, but learning about this character’s past in turn effects how you view the society and world around him. It took me a while to understand that I am not playing a version of myself, but my version of this character. He has his traits and problems, and I’m supposed to be curious about that enough to dig deeper. Slowly discovering his past, both distant and recent, was a blast, and I never would have expected how much I’d grow to love this guy.
The skills you unlock determine his inner voices. Perception may point out things in your environment, or subtle behaviors of characters. Logic will remind you of what you already know and make connections you may not have noticed. Encyclopedia will drop meaningless lore on you in the strangest of circumstances. There are also some other more unique skills that I won’t discuss that focus more on the inner turmoil of your character, or his physical connection to his environment. Each of these skills are given unique voices, and are, like the rest of the game, very well voice-acted.

Until I replay this game and discover more of its content, I can’t make many definitive statements on this game, but the quality of it’s writing is certainly in the S tier level of gaming, and I will gladly continue to ponder how it was accomplished.

I remember borrowing my friend's ps4 to play this at launch on day one. It was a 'must-buy must-play as soon as possible' game for me, hype built from an entire childhood playing Spider-Man games. Any natural gamer skills I have I credit to Spider-Man 2's web slinging, some of my earliest memories of horniness involve Black Cat from Web of Shadows. Dozens of great Spider-Man games have been released since my childhood, and it had been a while since we'd gotten a proper installment. This big budget title appeared to be the next big step in the gaming legacy of New York's finest superhero.

The Insomniac + Sony pairing was a good enough reason to believe this could be a fire ass game. The movement in Insomniac's last game, Sunset Overdrive, was smooth and buttery, so I imagined their movement combined with Sony's budget and atmosphere could make for a really special Spider-Man game.

Waking up before my early alarm, I sat down at 9am and 12 hours later I stood from my desk with the game completed, and headed down for dinner. The last act of the story was pretty interesting, and I felt pretty satisfied with beating the game. The characters all felt familiar and correctly executed, with some heartfelt performances from the actors. It was paced very fast and wove together many characters, villains, and story elements. Beating it in a day made me question how easy it was but it overall felt like a solid experience...A good enough experience.

The next day I found myself with a little craving for the web-slinging and hopped on, but within an hour I placed the controller down and came to a conclusion; my friend was getting his ps4 back this week.
Spiderman PS4 is an easy game with no unique traits, consistently uninspired in design.
Its story is heavily reliant on cutscenes, welding together familiar elements from previous movies to build the safest possible product. The player is guided through every encounter with easy mode Arkham-ish gameplay.
It’s Ubisoft formula open world consisted of very little world-building and left me with nothing interesting to do after I had beaten the game.
Graphically, the New York in this game doesn’t have much character besides just trying to look and feel realistic, it’s only 'positive' effect is making the game look more like a movie.

Despite all of this, the most disappointing aspect is how easy and bland the gameplay is. Web-slinging felt buttery smooth for about 10 minutes until I realized it is essentially autopilot difficulty, and blazed through the rest of the game with ease. Mechanically it is built to assist you and make you feel like you are good at video games. Pressing the trigger too close to the ground won’t result in Spider-Man running along the concrete, or crashing into cars. He simply floats in mid air, delaying his fall while the animation of the web starts up before hauling you 200 meters down the block. Zooming from one side of the city to the other takes little time or adaptation. No section of the city feels much different to swing around. I mastered the web-slinging in the first hour and was easily zooming back and forth across the city at 300mph for the rest of the game.

Watching the new trailers and gameplay for the sequel, I expected at least some visual twist to the world or something new and engaging, but it looks like another bland-type game, crafted around cutscenes specifically designed to not trigger fanboys.