Talos Principle 2

When I came across Talos Principle I had no idea what the game would turn out to be. I bought it as a puzzle game, hearing many people compare it to Portal, but as I played I discovered it was about way more than just the puzzles. The game posed philosophical questions, ones that are very hard to answer, ones we might never find an answer to. Introspection about one's existence was the theme of the game and for a good reason. As we would find out sooner or later, we were solving puzzles in a simulation which was created by humans to create a self-conscious AI with human values. Those who managed to leave would wake up as the first robotic human in the real world - post apocalyptic Earth.

Talos Principle 2 takes us thousand years in the future after the first human's awakening. The player wakes up as the 1000th human robot and becomes a witness to a strange projection, calling himself Prometheus, making a speech to the robots. You can then embark on an expedition to where the source of the projection was found. That is where you will discover a mysterious pyramid and 12 areas with puzzles similar to those from the simulation you all went through.

Talos Principle 2 is still a puzzle game in its core with philosophical questions but this time there is a fully voiced narrative. From the moment you wake up you will be welcomed by another human robot. You will be able to explore the city the robots built and also talk to them if you choose to (the dialogues are of philosophical nature). Even after leaving on the expedition, you won't be truly alone, as you will be able to talk to the members of the expedition who have different opinions on what their civilization should strive for. That is also about what the story is and your actions will decide in which direction the civilization will go. The questions you will get to ponder about are about morality of a civilization, technological progress, evolution of species and their extinction. Apart from talking to the expedition members directly, you also have access to the city's social media platform. You can join the discussions there and voice your own opinion on the topics.

The puzzles are the main focus of the game. They will feel familiar if you played the first game. The basis is simple, you will be connecting specific color beams with the same color targets, overcoming obstacles to do so can range from easy to difficult. This time around there are no bombs (or turrets) which makes it a calmer experience for those that do not like timing in games. Each area has 8 numbered puzzles, two lost puzzles and a golden gate puzzle which are all very well marked. In order to progress in the story you will have to solve 8 puzzles from an area. Unlike in the first game where the puzzles were getting more and more difficult since the beginning of the game, here the difficulty gets only harder within each area which gives the game a steady pace of progression. Puzzle marked as 1 is the easiest, it is more of a tutorial for a new contraption you can use. There are various contraptions, some fairly easy to use, some that can give you a bit of a headache. For example there is a beam shifter that allows to combine red and blue beam into a green one. You will encounter a quantum tunneler which you can use to create a hole in a specific material walls and use it for light beams to go through. Another contraption can create anti-gravity beam allowing you to move items or your body in the direction of a new gravity. All these contraptions will aid you in connecting the beams and unlocking door where you can find a mysterious blue fire.

Talos Principle 2 also has star puzzles - outside of puzzle area puzzles. In the first game, you could encounter a star somewhere in the area outside of the closed puzzle areas. In order to get to it, you had to come up with a way how to reach it. This usually required certain contraptions you could find in puzzle areas. Getting these out was quite a head scratching task. In general, they were very difficult to solve. In Talos Principle 2, getting a star is much simpler, there are three different kinds of 'puzzles' and once you figure out the first of each type you won't have that much of a hard time to solve them.

Each area out of the 12 has different scenery. I'd buy this game even as a walking simulator as it would be worth the money for the scenery only. It is truly beautiful no matter where you find yourself - be it mountaintops covered in snow, an endless desert, or a forested area. When you find even more beautiful spot you can take a picture using the game's photo mode. While enjoying the environment you can encounter secret labs and different collectibles, be it memories from the founders of the first human-robot civilization, ancient human artifacts, statues or other items. You can also encounter a fire of Prometheus. These once collected can be then used to skip puzzles.

If you played the first game, you might ask, are there tetrimino blocks still in the game? The answer is yes. Once a player collects 8 of the mysterious blue lights in an area a gate will open. To reach the other side a player will have to build a bridge out of the tetrimino blocks - that means finding correct order and correctly rotating the blocks. If the bridge building was limited to those 12 areas it would have been a pleasant experience. Unfortunately you will be forced to build way many more bridges, even ones that go up or down. For some this may be rather tiresome.

Verdict:
Talos Principle 2 is a masterpiece of a game, it is a thought provoking and well made mind-bending puzzle game with beautiful scenery that is well balanced and suitable for all players.

Room of Realities

Room of Realities is a VR game that offers three escape room experiences that can be played either solo or with other players.

The multiplayer aspect is something many players wanted for a long time. Many could experience an escape room with friends in VRChat, but in standalone VR game that was not possible until now. Room of Realities features a cross platform multiplayer and up to 4 players can play. One player will host and others can join using a code. When in multiplayer mode, cooperation is required for certain tasks.

The game has stylized cartoony graphics that are pleasant to look at. While it is nothing spectacular it looks very good and is crystal clear. The items needed for puzzles fit well with rest of items and the environment which is something we don't see every day. Each scenario has a different theme and everything fits nicely and creates good (or scary) ambiance.

The puzzles themselves are not overly difficult nor too easy. Some need careful observation, manipulation and some will require a bit of thinking and memorization. I found the puzzles clever and also fairly unique. They are also very fitting and I found them entertaining.

If a player gets stuck, they can ask for a hint. What happens is that puzzle items get highlighted (similarly to Ubisoft escape games). You still have to figure out what to do with them.

Each scenario, is very atmospheric, has several chapters and tells a story. I felt deeply immersed in them and I really wanted to know more about what happened than just solve the puzzles.

While playing I did not experience any major or even minor bugs. I did manage to lose a torch in a wall (so don't drop items in areas you can't reach). Sometimes I had problems with item collisions but even those were rare compared to many other games I played.

I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes puzzles or atmospheric adventures. The scenarios are fairly short but of a similar length as a real life escape room - they can be finished within one hour. The game is totally worth the price tag it currently has and I believe they will have more content for us to enjoy in the future.

vivid/stasis

vivid/stasis is a rhythm game with a story and fairly difficult puzzles. The rhythm game part is a vertical scrolling 4 key rhythm game with one gimmick - bumper notes. These notes take two lanes and you can just press a key within those two lanes to confirm it. This spices up the game play and makes the reading a bit harder.

The bumper notes are probably what rhythm gamers will get stuck on the most, since you can choose what key to press to confirm them. The good thing about them is just that you just need to hit them within a certain window. In higher difficulties, I just concentrate on confirming them be it early, on time or super late.

The songs in the game are great and if you are a fellow rhythm gamer many of those songs or artists will be known to you. The charting is very good in general at least until level 12 and contains long notes. I'm not a fan of long notes but the LN charts in this game make sense and made me even change my opinion about long notes in general (that require a release at the end). They are well placed and fit into the music. The higher level charts 13 and higher sometimes seem a bit chaotic, they seem less coherent. Still way better than many custom charts I played in other games.

The game can be played casually with no life bar or you can decide to pick a different life bar to make the game more challenging. The harder the life bar the more points/battery you will get (used for unlocking songs/story).

There are options to make the rhythm game part of the game more enjoyable with different kind of usual settings (speed, stats shown/hidden etc).

Vivid/stasis does not have different skins or noteskins though which may be a disadvantage to some. There is not even an option to change colors, which makes it harder for me to play as I can't see pink color well (and need color blind mode for games using pink).

The story part of the game is like a visual novel style game. It's about a group of girls going out on an adventure saving yet another girl. The story is for everyone to experience on their own. There is a lot of things that reflect how many people from the rhythm game community feel and that also may be one of the reason why many people can be very attached to the this game. Even if people won't enjoy the story that much, I would welcome if they would think about the behavior and feelings of the characters in the game.The game features unreal elements but the dialogues and thoughts are very real, realistic.

The story lets a player choose what to do in certain scenarios and depending on that the game will take a certain turn. At the end of the chapters there are puzzles (or locks) to solve and they can be quite difficult to crack. One needs to be attentive to details and use logic to solve them. I liked them very much (I stared at the screen for quite a while before I realized where I could even start).

The game has nice visuals and pixel art style ui. There are also many neat details (animations) that are enjoyable to watch.

Vivid/stasis is very unique game, a mix of rhythm game and a visual novel. The rhythm game part is suited for any kind of a player - be it a total beginner or an experienced player. Unfortunately for beginners, there is nothing like a tutorial and the UI elements and settings may be very confusing. For more experienced players it can still be a bit confusing, but if one doesn't simply try to figure out what does what, doing the puzzles may be a nightmare.

Difficulty-wise there are 4 of them and they start very easy and teach patters fairly well. I think the learning curve is good in this game (I played all difficulties, which I don't usually do).

I enjoyed the story a lot and also like the fact that both parts of the game are intertwined. On the other hand this fact can also be a downside for others.

Verdict: 4/5
I would recommend this game to anyone who likes rhythm games and wants a change from their regular rhythm game of choice. I would also recommend this to anyone who likes nice cryptic puzzles. As for the story, I would recommend it to everyone, because it gives a very good insight into certain people's minds.

Qwilight

In general, Qwilight is a vertical scrolling rhythm game, featuring different key modes, with an internet ranking for 7k (+turntable) that requires a third party login.

For those more invested in VSRG, Qwilight is a BMS player as in, it lets you play BMS/PMS files. On the other hand Qwilight should be looked upon as a game quite different from what you'd expect from Beatmania IIDX or BMS players like Lunatic Rave 2 and Beatoraja. In fact, it's rather closer to Osu!mania.

The client feels more like an osu!mania one when it comes to settings, judgment windows and grading system (and look). Nonetheless, you can make it even more like osu!mania or make it more BMS player friendly.

First you will need to set it up. If you come from BMS you will be alienated by Osu! logic/settings and if you come from Osu! IIDX settings may confuse you. In either case recommend reading the manual first https://taehui.ddns.net/forum/qwilight/350. It took me an hour to setup without reading it, mainly because there are different menus and things I'd expect to be at one place (lane cover, sudden+, speed etc) are not. Just go through each menu and set it to suit you. Note that if you want to set lane cover, lift etc. do it while in-game not on the song selection screen.

What I like about the client is that it gives you a mania-like skin or more IIDX-like one and you can choose if you want gold notes or not. For speed you can either use the slider with both IIDX and beatoraja green number conversion or F3/F4 in-game (no possibility to change lane cover while playing?).

When it comes to gameplay you can choose from different key modes, that are either forced or native ones. For each mode you will have to set input, both keyboard and controller can be mapped. My controller is set in PS2 mode so I can play Infinitas and Beatoraja/LR2 but doesn't work with Qwilight though (I used joy2key to play).

The default windows are quite big compared to LR2/Beatoraja/IIDX. You can make them tighter (or wider) if you like or even set custom ones. You can use LR2/Beatoraja windows but your scores won't submit to the internet ranking.

EX score is missing which made me sad. What you can look at instead is a score which doesn't really say much to me. There is also percentage that can give you a better idea of someone's accuracy (which seems to be more or less a sum of Yell!, Yell and Cool, the three highest judgments). Based on that you are also given a rank. The ranks are D, C, B, A (90%), A+(95%), S(98%), S+(100%). The score is based on the accuracy primarily but it is obvious that other things affect it (type of clear for example).

The life gauge is very different as well. It is way more lenient compared to what IIDX/BMS players are used to (feels similar to the dan course one). There are several different types, similar to IIDX - very hard, hard, normal, easy and very easy (no idea how the easy ones work). In IIDX/BMS when using the normal groove gauge, you need to reach 80% to clear the song but it can go down to 0%. In Qwilight it just goes from 100% to 0%, 0% you fail.

Loading songs (if you already have them downloaded) is a breeze as you just pick a song folder containing them. Otherwise links for downloads are provided, but you still have to download the songs via a browser window that opens. I imported my BMS library of 300GB and it took about 30 seconds to load, this happens every single time the game launches (unlike in other BMS players where once you load it the first time, everything is fast).

Loading tables is easy as well. You can either enter the url of one or manually put it in Qwilight/SavesDir/Level/. The body should be named [filename].json and the header should be named #[filename].json. Then these can be loaded with few clicks. (Once the table is loaded though, you can only text search within the table)

Apart from what I mentioned Qwilight offers a myriad of settings that can make the experience better but one needs to get familiar with the (advanced) menus. I'm very happy what it provides and how well it performs.

Verdict:
Qwilight is a good game if you play it with the default settings and participate in the internet ranking. The way how Qwilight functions is unique and thus makes it incompatible with Lunatic Rave 2/Beatoraja Internet Ranking - you can't compare scores from the other BMS players with Qwilight ones.

I can see Qwilight as a brigde for player who want to start playing BMS but are too afraid to try other BMS players or find playing IIDX/BMS hard. Qwilight is easy (for a BMS player) to setup and offers a full experience right away.

I can highly recommend this to anyone who would like to explore the world of BMS but may not have the necessary skill or mindset for it. Qwilight can help beginners gain confidence. I would also highly recommend this to (7k) osu!mania players, as this is a very easy way to explore BMS without the need to change playing habits or gaining a vast knowledge about the whole BMS world prior setting a BMS player up.

(There is one negative thing I did not manage to solve. From time to time the input simply freezes. This can be a Cool gotten out of a Yell! but can also outright fail you. This may not be happening to everyone though)

Wanderer

Wanderer is a VR time traveling adventure game that starts in the future where you, in the role of Asher Neumann, are on a way to discover his grandfather's apartment which holds many mysteries. There you discover a watch that can speak and which will accompany you throughout the whole game. Thanks to the completed watch you will be able to traverse time at will. You will travel into the past to different locations where you will be able to change the history and hopefully make the future more bright.

Gameplay

Gameplay-wise the game is more of a point-and-click adventure in the sense that there is only one solution (item) that needs to be used - something that seems like a logical solution, may not be an actual solution. The time traveling aspect of the game is pretty good in this game. You will be slowly uncovering stories from different times. In order to proceed you will need different items that you can find either at the grandfather's room you reach at the beginning of the game or other timelines. If you explore each area you will have a good idea what items will be needed (the only items you can grab) - each will be used at some point. Unfortunately, that is pretty much it for the puzzle game part, the whole game is mostly about this.

Immersion

Wanderer offers different environments at different times as well which makes the experience more enjoyable, from Nikola Tesla's lab to ancient civilization pyramid in the middle of a jungle. The game looks good in general but rather bare. The 3d models are not of a great quality, colliders are usually pretty bad and animations are hardly smooth which is something that often broke the whatever little immersion I had. The overall look and feel of the game is very good so if you don't mind flat looking textures and some artifacts (flickering) showing through objects you may enjoy the varied environments.

Sound effects in this game are rather immersion breaking, either there are none, they are weird or they come from where they shouldn't. Audio doesn't come from where it originates but rather is based on where you look at. The levels of different sounds, including speech, is not mixed well, so some sounds can get lost and some are simply too loud. Voices can overlap, and hearing what someone has to say is important and there is no going back (you can reload, or ask the watch for a hint). All this breaks the immersion even though voice acting and script is good.

Apart from these, you can also run into invisible walls that are often totally unnecessary reminding you painfully that you are in a game that tries to show you what needs to be done and where you should not wander. Why is the game named Wanderer?

Bugs, bugs and even more bugs

I've played games that were buggy at launch like Cyberpunk 2077 or Witcher but this game has been out over a year and is very buggy. When I started the game I already failed at a croc scene which I had to restart several times in order to be able to proceed. Few minutes later I got stuck right at the beginning of the grandfather's room as I couldn't get through the closed doors. I had to restart the whole game to get through them. When I was happy I managed to get past the issue I realized that some items I threw around the flat are no longer around. This followed throughout the game. I dropped a torch that fell off the bridge and didn't respawn even though it respawned several times when I simply dropped it on the bridge and could physically pick it up. Apart this I also got stuck in other items and had to reload. The colliders were also sometimes problematic when trying to just keep an item at one place. After time traveling sometimes things were not were I left them and it took me a while to figure out where they could possibly be (or remember where I first encounter them, as that is their respawn point). Having a persistent world including items is nice, but it would be great if it actually worked. I got hit by a tank 10 times because my RC car simply vanished.

Thanks to the time traveling system and that traveling puts you always back from where you jumped originally, backtracking is fast unlike in many other games. This is something I welcomed (and probably the reason I finished the game).

Controls and knuckles

If your immersion wasn't broken by visuals, sound, or bugs there is still one more thing to painfully remind you, you are playing a game - controls. The controls are very clunky and that only wanted me to stop playing. The primary action is grabbing items and using them. Each item grabbed has a forced position and you can grab anything from a distance. This may not sound like a problem but the way things are you will often grab the wrong object or immediately drop the grabbed object if the forced position does not really fit your hand position. I used knuckles when playing this game and the position and rotation of the VR hands and my hands did not match. This made any kind of interaction harder. Rotating knobs and pressing buttons was even more clunky. While this is not needed that often, it is often timed (you are being shot at and such).

Samuel

The watch - Samuel - apart from being your companion also allows you to store items. The inventory starts with one slot that you can make bigger (up to 5 slots). You can unlock those by collecting special crystals and solving a puzzle. The inventory idea is very good one as the game is about using many different items. The truth is that I rather did not use it at all, as the overlay it brings up still allows you to touch or grab items from the environment around you. It was difficult to hit the smaller than thumb eject button or even just grab the small object from the inventory (never managed to take out a mag and put it into my weapon). I resorted to just grabbing two items and jumping as that was less nerve wrecking than trying to force the inventory to work properly.

Otherwise, Samuel is very well written and voice acted. Samuel gives you some facts from the time/world he remembers (our own) and gives you hints when you encounter something new. Sam can also be ejected from your wristband which will make him give you a more specific hint for the task at hand - it will give the hint no matter if you are in the right place or time which may be a bit awkward at times. Thanks to Sam no one should struggle with finishing the game.

Verdict:

This game has a feel of a very early access version of a game. It is very buggy. The developers came with mysterious story, that will take you to parts of the history that some may consider perturbing. It is advertised as a puzzle game but feels more like point-and-click adventure game rather than a game where you have to actually solve something. There are puzzles in the game but you will most likely remember more all the hassle that comes to using items which the game is mostly about. Overall the game looks great and due to time traveling it offers different environments, that unfortunately you cannot really explore much due to invisible walls. Your watch companion gives you hints with his comments about everything that is important sooner or later in the game and can also be ejected to give you a hint about what you have to do.

Unless you have nerves of steel I do not recommend this game in its current state.

Ren

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was on my list of games to play for a very long time similarly to previous Zelda titles which were being released on different consoles. This is what made getting to play them a bit harder since this was still pre-Wii U and pre-Switch time. Few years later after the game's release, I finally delved into the open world Breath of the Wild offers.

Open your eyes

The game starts with Link waking up after a regenerating 100 year slumber. After walking out of the Shrine of Restoration Link finds himself on the Great Plateau which is already relatively large area to explore. The Great Plateau is on a high cliff so Link can't leave it before he finds out what his quest is - to defeat Calamity Ganon a huge beast he failed to defeat 100 years ago that devastated Hyrule.

When you reach this point after hours of game play you might still think that this game will be similar to previous Zelda games but it is the moment when you will fully realize it is not as you are suddenly given a freedom that seems to be very rare in games.

Once you makes it out of the Great Plateau it is up to you if you will follow up on one of the main quests or you will just go explore. Each of the locations you are supposed to reach is marked on a map on your Sheikah Slate (one of ancient technology gadgets, helping you on your way). The blinking dots are, as you will notice, in unmapped areas.

In order to get a map you need to climb a Tower and scan the area. This may sound easy, and at first it is, but the further from the central Hyrule the harder it gets to reach and climb the Towers. Thankfully when you triumphantly reach the top of the tower and activate it, you will be able to use it as a fast travel point. From the Tower you can look around and find places of interest that you can mark on the map thanks to Scope function (by pressing the right thumbstick) and then just start a new adventure of getting there. It felt like going geocaching when doing this, just going straight in the direction of the coordinates. Reaching the destination this way may turn out to be a very difficult but it is doable as Link can climb and swim or fly over things on a paraglider. He can get anywhere!

Link cannot do these activities indefinitely though, they all depend on his stamina. When you run out of it, Link either starts walking if he was running, starts falling of a cliff if he was climbing, drowns if he was swimming etc.

Shrines

There is plenty of places of interest for you to discover but the obvious ones are Shrines - there's 120 of them or even more. In order to find some Shrines you need to complete a quest/puzzle. The Shrines on the Great Plateau serve as a tutorial ones each giving you a rune - an ability you can use. The first two runes allow you to create either spherical or a rectangular bomb out of a thin air and detonate it. Another rune gives you the power of Magnesis which allows you to move metallic objects. The fourth rune - Stasis - allows you to stop time of an object for few seconds. The Shrines outside of the starting area are some sort of mini dungeons that offer a trial - mostly physics based puzzles that usually take minutes to finish. Often you will need to use Link's rune abilities, sometimes the puzzles will be controller motion based and some are combat trials where you 'just' face a Guardian.

The Shrine puzzles can be solved in variety of ways so you don't need to find the one and only way to solve them which is good. Either saves you frustration or makes it more fun. At the end of each shrine a monk will give you an Spirit Orb. Four of these Orbs can be traded for a heart container or stamina container. At first finding Shrines will be easy but later on finding them or reaching them will become a puzzle of its own.

Surviving

The world you will be exploring has rules and if you learn them you will survive. Most of the rules you'd expect from real life. The first time you will try to enter a snow covered chilly area you will find out that Link starts to lose hearts while shivering with cold. At this point you might realize that the temperature indicator on the screen has a reason to be there. The first storm may be also a revelatory experience when a lightning hits you before you realize what is wrong (Link having a metallic object equipped).

Items in Breath of the Wild break. This will force you to change weapons often, discover their advantages or disadvantages or sometimes simply decide not to use them and save them for either different activity or different encounter. For example, if you want to chop trees you may want to use an woodcutter's axe, if you want to mine ore you may want to use use iron sledgehammer and if you want to break someone's shield you want to use a heavy weapon. There's plenty weapons around and enemies also drop them and I don't mean as a 'drop' when they are defeated. If you stun them, they will release their grips on weapons or shields so you can snatch them and use them against them.

Day and night are also different. During the night there are undead monsters lurking that will come out of nowhere (the ground). Note that undead monsters don't die. On the other hand flesh and blood monsters also need to sleep and you can sneak up to them.

Fauna and flora differs in different regions and some can only be encountered during the night or certain weather. If you think this is something for decorative purposes, you are wrong. One of the activities you will most likely do a lot in the game is - cooking. Eating food is what recovers Link's hearts. Cooked food can recover more hearts or even give him special abilities (resistance to cold, higher attack etc.) and for that you need to look for different kind of ingredients.

There is no cooking tutorial but each ingredient or monster part has a description which will give you a hint on what it does (it follows a simple logic). Once you figure out the rules for cooking you can prepare all the meals and elixirs you will need on your adventures. While trying you might end up preparing a 'Dubiously looking food' (that is actually edible).

In order to survive in the wilderness you will also need to learn how to fight. At first just picking up a tree branch and beating up Bokoblins with it will be good enough but for stronger enemies you may need to either come up with a combat strategy or learn how to parry. You have access to melee weapons and ranged weapons (just bows). There's a wide variety of them and you will always want to have certain types in your inventory. The inventory slots are very limited. There is a way to get more but at a cost - you need to find the creature that can give you more slots in exchange for Korok leaves that can sometimes be hard to find (mini puzzles).

Verdict

Breath of the Wild feels definitely like a Zelda game even though it is vastly different. It feels more like playing a game from decades ago when you were simply thrown into the game and it was up to you to figure out what to do and where to go next. There are no endless tutorials and you don't need to blindly follow a scripted story. Instead you are free to roam a huge open world and if you wish you can complete the 5 given main quests one day. I highly recommend doing the Divine Beast quests because those are nice little dungeons. The world in Breath of the Wild has its mechanics and it is up to you to adapt. While Link doesn't get any better in terms of stats for example, it is you who gets to know the world and mechanics better. The more you discover the easier is to survive. If by a chance you haven't played this game yet, go get it and play it.

And if by a chance you can't play BotW just yet, go visit Breath of the Wild world in VRChat. Honestly, the way how the game works this would be great in virtual reality. Doing backflips wouldn't probably work but there are many things that would work and I treated the game more like a VR one rather than a traditional one.

Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)