The latest game in the first-person puzzler legacy of Portal, The Talos Principle 2, is getting pretty positive reception. Developed by Croteam and Devolver Digital, the game inevitably cribs some design logic and concepts from Portal and Portal 2, seeing as they’re in the same genre. Normally you’d just acknowledge the giants on whose shoulders you’re standing and move on. You wouldn’t hire them to make fun of you.
That’s just what The Talos Principle 2 has done, however, bringing on voice of malevolent AI GLaDOS and all-around voice acting heroine Ellen McClain to roast them in a short video called GLaDOS Plays The Talos Principle 2, embedded above.
In the little trailer GLaDOS takes Croteam to task for mimicking her brilliant incandescent particle gates, cubes, portaling devices, and other such innovations. She also makes fun of their robots for taking on human form, like cowards, and reveals a heretofore unknown fondness for cats.
Publisher Devolver describes The Talos Principle 2 like this: “Born into a new world where biological humanity is extinct but human culture lives on in a city of robots, you find yourself swept up in a mind-bending adventure involving a mysterious megastructure hiding enormous powers. The more you discover, the more you will be confronted with questions about the nature of the cosmos and the purpose of civilization. The broken promise of a better tomorrow, the fear of repeating humankind’s mistakes, faith in reason or renouncing humanity altogether – the choices you make and the sides you take will determine the course of events.”
Reviewer Dominic Tarason really, really liked it in the PC Gamer The Talos Principle 2 review, giving it an 89/100 and saying that it’s “Not just a great sequel, but a thoughtful and human narrative adventure wrapped in a satisfying and beautiful puzzle game.”
“The puzzles themselves feel perfectly tuned for a squishy-brained creature such as myself. They’re small, self-contained challenges, each one using a handful of moving parts, similar to Portal’s test chambers, but with more varied puzzle pieces. Rather than relying on a single tool like a portal gun, each chamber contains an assortment of devices to pick up and move around. Some as simple as blocks to stand on or hold down buttons, but mostly you’ll be redirecting color-coded lasers to matching receivers, bypassing force-fields, rerouting bounce-pads and more,” he said.
You can find The Talos Principle 2 on Epic and Steam, and on its own website.
