I recently finished playing The Turing Test. I have to say that it was a thought provoking experience that also managed to have stimulating and engaging game play. Although I thoroughly inspected each area, visited the secret rooms, listened to the audio logs and paid as close attention as I could to the dialogue throughout the game, I found myself still full of questions. After my review of the game, I'm going to post the game's events as I understood them in another post. Then, in another blog post, I'm going to address all of my burning questions. I really have a lot to say about the game, so splitting it up into three parts may make it easier for users to read.
What is The Turing Test?
The Turing Test is a first person puzzle game. It has puzzle solving aspects similar to Portal and The Talos Principle. There are 7 chapters, each with 10 puzzles per level. In each chapter, there is also a bonus challenge puzzle. When a new room is entered, a snippet of dialogue will feed the player the story in small increments. When the end of a chapter is reached, a non-puzzle room (I like to call them "story rooms") can be explored for audio logs and areas to inspect to get more of the game's story. Puzzles will scale up in difficulty as the game progresses, and each new chapter will introduce a new mechanic. The character we control is a woman named Ava Turing. With the aide of an AI named T.O.M, we progress through the game, solving puzzles and learning as much as we can about the situation we find ourselves in. This is the best overview I can give without giving away any spoilers, at the very least!
My Thoughts
Here is where I should probably talk about my experience playing before I go off on a conspiracy theory ramble on all the game's plot devices! I'm going to discuss pros, cons, and what I managed to piece together about the plot, before discussing any other possibilities further. While the overview didn't have any spoilers, I cannot guarantee that the next few sections won't.
Pros
1. Very stimulating. The puzzles really hit the sweet spot on difficulty. There are certainly a few throughout that make you think for a bit longer than you normally would. But, for the most part, it scales up in difficulty beautifully and never leaves you feeling stuck for too long. For those new to the puzzle genre or are worried about anything too difficult - don't fear. The Turing Test never leaves you stranded in difficult puzzles that seem impossible to solve.
2. Atmosphere and design. The lack of music in this game fits in perfectly. It's in a space setting, and everything feels very white and 'sterile', but it retains a futuristic look. It's all very believable. Nothing is flashy, but it all manages to look polished. Simplicity is sometimes better. They don't do anything too crazy or go overboard with the aesthetic, but simplicity is sometimes the way to go. Here, it all ties in nicely and it just works.
3. Interaction between characters. I think that the VA work for both Tom and Ava are done well. There aren't that many words spoken when you consider the length of the game. But, all interactions serve a purpose. Most of the conversation is about a computer's way of thinking versus a human's. Ava and Tom have polarizing opinions about most of what goes on as the story progresses. Tom can only think of what is most logical (as he is a computer), whereas Ava factors in emotions and ethics. In their own respects, both have very good arguments at varying parts of the game. There are times when I found myself siding with Ava, and times when I understood what Tom was trying to say as well. Because the two cannot agree but are forced to work together, there is a lot of great back and forth that allows the player to better embrace both characters and their points of view.
4. Great progression saving. The game saves at the beginning and end of every puzzle. Because each individual puzzle doesn't demand a great deal of time, you can play the game how you want without having to worry about losing data. If you're feeling burnt out after one particularly difficult puzzle, you can simply quit before starting a new one and go back to it later. The 'continue' option right from the main menu will very literally continue you right from where you left off. If you're sure that you've made an error in a puzzle and what to restart, you can simply choose to restart the puzzle you're currently working on right from the start. This is a great system that allows the player trial and error without punishment. If you've missed something and want to replay, you can use the 'chapter select' feature. This will not only allow you to play the previous chapters, but you can individually load which puzzle in the chapter you'd like to start from. I was so happy when I saw this after missing one secret room. I knew the general whereabouts of where it was, which was pretty late into the chapter. Luckily for me I could position myself right where the secret room was without having to replay the entire chapter.
Cons
1. It begins to feel tedious the longer the game is played. At first, ten puzzles per chapter doesn't feel like a lot and you are able to breeze through them pretty quickly. But as the story picks up in the later chapters, I find myself really wanting to rush through the puzzles so that I can focus on the story instead. The puzzles introduce more mechanics and become more time consuming, so rushing through isn't much of a possibility. Although I appreciate the predictable formula that stays true to itself, it makes it difficult to appreciate the puzzles in later chapters. The game shifts drastically to the plot, but the game doesn't do much in the way of game play to help draw focus away from the core puzzle solving mechanics.
2. No subtitles for audio logs. Even with subtitles turned on, there are no subtitles available for the audio logs that you can hear throughout the game. Sometimes it can be hard to hear and the voice clarity isn't very good. The only option is to repeat each audio log until you can get a full understanding of what's being said. This feels inconvenient, especially to those trying to get the most out of the story.
3. No way to zoom in on any readable text or documents. All of the text for things that Ava can find such as email correspondence, labels/writing and documents is all very small. I also didn't find a way to rotate items that can be picked up in all directions, making reading things on a slant or an angle even more difficult when interacting with certain items. I found myself having to squint trying to read things. Some of the documents that Ava comes across are quite important and help to piece together the overall picture. I found this to be a major oversight that once again felt very inconvenient..
4. An underwhelming ending. The game has a few different possibilities for endings, but they are so similar that it almost doesn't matter. I didn't feel very satisfied with the conclusion at all. They really amp the story up in the later half of the game, but it comes crashing down with an ending that feels rushed or incomplete. I got the impression that I would get much more closure than what the game presented. The final choice in the game doesn't exactly feel like much of a choice, since you are never shown the ramifications of your actions regardless of what you do. It almost makes giving a choice pointless. I believe that giving the player a choice is more symbolic than anything else. One of the game's themes is free will. By giving the player the free will to do what they want at the last moments of the game, it reinforces the thought of free will and the consequences of our actions. Up to the point before the ending, we haven't been given much choice and are more or less just following orders. It also forces us to think about whether we agree with Tom or whether we identify more with Ava. Despite this, the choice still felt shallow and unsatisfactory.
