The Turing Test was just released on XB1 and Steam. It will probably come out on PS4 at some point (don't know for sure). Anyway, it is quite possibly one of the best puzzle games I've ever played. It is an indie first-person puzzle game made by
Bulkhead Interactive. This appears to be a new studio but under a different studio name, these same talented individuals made Pneuma Breath Of Life, another really good first-person puzzle game. This is a trailer for the game in case you're interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b6EE0V8NPM
+The game has the graphics, presentation, and visual eye candy of a AAA big budget, blockbuster game. The game is absolutely
beautiful.
+ The game is a first-person puzzle game and the controls are sublime. When you don't have your energy/puzzle gun, running around sometimes causes your gloved-spacesuit hands to wave around, as if to brace the main character, which is a nice touch. When you do have your energy/puzzle gun, anything to do with aiming, jumping, running, etc... feels very responsive.
+The game is dripping in attention to detail. Whenever you finish a block of 10 puzzles, you take a "breather" so to speak, and enter a narrative-focused room/area that often has neat story-related documents, audio logs, and objects to investigate. And later on, you perform some "non-first-person-perspective" puzzles in which you can observe the main character - and she is intricately designed. Despite being an FPS game, in these latter parts of the game you can see that the main character's astronaut suit looks impressive and
really detailed.
+Wonderful puzzles that treat the player with respect - you are
never told what to do. When you enter a puzzle room, it's up to you to carefully examine your surroundings and find the most intelligent way to resolve the room.
+Clever puzzle design for any mechanic the player has never seen before. When the game wants to introduce a new mechanic, it presents it to the player (with no dialogue, hints, or on-screen instructions) in a very, very simplistic, short, easy-to-solve puzzle room. That initial puzzle room teaches the player the new mechanic, and then that new mechanic gets incorporated into much more difficult and sophisticated puzzles later on.
+ Intriguing and interesting storyline and dialogue that touches upon some fascinating subjects, with respect to biology and AI. I loved entering a new puzzle room because every new puzzle room has a few lines of dialogue between Tom (AI running the facility) and Ava Turing (main character) with meaningful discussion about AI/biology subjects, like The Chinese Room, The Turing Test, etc... And a lot of the audio logs and documents touch upon those subjects (and the idea of The Imitation Game). I've done extra reading into the subject thanks to this game.
+Great voice acting from everyone in the cast, from the main character Ava Turing, to Tom (the AI that controls the facility in-game), to the side characters (Ava Turing's colleagues/astronauts).
+ Fantastic soundtrack reminiscent of the movie Moon. This game takes place on an installation on the moon Europa (and Europa orbits the gigantic planet Jupiter). You're (nearly) alone on a cold, lonely, desolate, quiet, snowy landscape. And the soundtrack elicits the same kind of desolate loneliness that the movie Moon had. Awesome, soothing music with just the right amount of bass and tranquility during puzzle solving.
-You have to push the button X on the XB1 controller to climb up any ladder (minor nitpick)
-Load times in the game are horrendous
-There are some minor frame rate drops but for the most part the game ran perfectly fine for me
-Some audio logs were difficult to hear and had no subtitles
