The Turing Test review: A brisk, breezy test of your humanity - freelsject1971

At a Glance

Expert's Military rating

Pros

Puzzles are breezy
Light philosophical ponderings tie it all collectively

Cons

Puzzles never quite reach their full prospective
Audio log mopes kill the tempo

Our Verdict

The Turing Test's quick puzzles and lightweight philosophical ideas make for an enjoyable afternoon diversion.

Every year there's a Portal. I mean, it's not titled Portal or anything, but every year there's a puzzle gamey that wears its influences so obviously along its sleeve so As to take in comparisons. Quantum Conundrum, QUBE, Antichamber, The Talos Principle, and instantly—for 2016—The Turing Test.

Here, the gimmick is electricity as an alternative of portals. Only stillness, it fits the writing style. So, how does IT stack up?

Fork in a socket

As you mightiness expect from the title, The Turing Test revolves around analogous questions of human consciousness and machine intelligence as The Talos Precept. Hell, there's a reference to the story of Talos hidden within one of The Turing Test's optional chambers.

You play atomic number 3 a woman with the act-too-on-the-nose name of Ava Alan Turing, part of a bunch sent to Jupiter's moon of Europa to drill for energy and search for the possible action of life-time. A few years into your mission you're awoken from stasis by an Artificial insemination named T.O.M. who says communication with the rest of your team has ceased, and you need to witness out why.

Arriving connected Europa from an orbiting space station, you find that the crew's living quarters have been rearranged into a series of puzzle William Chambers, a la Portal, which require "distal thinking." This is ostensibly infeasible for T.O.M. (therefore the Turing Test form of address), and then it falls to you to do things like throw boxes through Windows and tread on switches.

Atomic number 3 I said, The Alan Mathison Turin Test revolves around electrical energy—unmistakable by the number of cables draped casually through windows and nailed to the walls. You manipulate the flow of electricity in a number of ways, but most typically by either a) removing fuse-like boxes from walls and placing them in other sockets or b) using your "Energy Handling Tool" a.k.a. a artillery to suck electricity from the wall and scud it into unexampled sockets.

That's an oversimplification, but it's decidedly more one-billet than something like The Talos Principle or Antichamber. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. This is a breezy puzzle courageous, one where the rules are clear, there are only soh many possibilities for each room, and the answer always feels just around the corner. I blasted through all seventy of The Alan Turing Quiz's main chambers and its sevener ex gratia (slightly much delicate) puzzles in or so pentad hours, and came to take account the quick tread. It never grinds, never gets stuck for excessively long.

That lack of friction also works against The Turing Test, though. You burn through the puzzles, and when you're done information technology feels like a smutch of synonymous rooms. There's non really an a-ha here and now, nobelium puzzle that really stands exterior as the culmination of its ideas. It feels like the puzzles never get every bit hard A they should, or as erect as they had the potential to be. Wonderful set-up, simply no payoff.

This is most evident in the aforementioned optional chambers—seven not-thus-secret rooms with Sir Thomas More playful puzzles, ones that challenge you to use the game's limited tools in more creative ways. It's a shame The Turing Test doesn't provide more rooms in this vein, because I found myself sprinting through puzzle later puzzle trying to get to the next optional board, one that would require slightly more of the game's vaunted "lateral thinking."

And reward me with more story. The Turing Mental test's plot is as stormy as its puzzles, told mostly through with found documents and pace-killing audio logs hidden in the optional suite and scattered at the closing of each ten-puzzle chapter. (Please, developers, if you hold to admit audio logs leastways arrive thusly I put on't birth to stand in one place to listen to them.)

The entitle probably gives you a good idea of the game's themes—"Can machines mean?" "Are they conscious?" "Are they conscious in the same manner as humans?" "Do they make decisions?" "Does free will exist?"

Classic themes, although The Turing Test isn't nearly As pernicious Oregon contemplative as The Talos Principle. There's rather a bit of backstory to piece unneurotic, and performin post-hoc detective in search of the work party makes for offensive fun, simply The Alan Turing Test doesn't say much that hasn't been said by a thousand other robot stories. And it's so damned earnest or so it too.

Bottom telephone line

I wear't want to belittle The Turing Test too much. Information technology suffers by nature of comparisons with other similar games, but possibly below the belt. With its lightweight puzzles and plot, The Turing Test is nonpareil of those "Bang-up-For-An-Good afternoon" games, the ones that moolah a specialised itch and lead down easy. In this case, it's the "I need something like Portal, only I've already played Portal" itch.

Sometimes that's exactly what you need.