Available on PC, Xbox One
We played on Xbox One
Lots of games pay homage to other games in some way. Some of them pay so much homage to another game, that they hit you over the head with their love of that game. That is what The Turing Test is. It’s not bad by any stretch. In fact it’s quite good. It just screams Portal way too loudly.
The Story
In The Turing Test, you take the role of Ava Turing, an astronaut who is awoken from cryogenic sleep because there’s an issue with her crew. All of the other crew members of the ship have gone down to the surface of Eurpoa. (why is it always Europa in these sci-fi games) The friendly (or maybe not so friendly) AI called T.O.M has lost contact with the ground crew and decides to wake up Ava. She jumps into her suit and takes a lander down to the surface herself. There she makes her way to the compound where the rest of her crew were supposed to living, but it’s strangely empty. None of the crew members are there, but the compound has been broken down into several areas that Ava must pass through in order to proceed. I won’t spoil the story for you. It’s actually the one aspect that separates it from Portal.
The Gameplay
Here’s where the Portal-screaming comes in. The game is played in the first person. In order to solve the puzzles and move to the next area, you use a special tool to extract and shoot power to open doors and accomplish other objectives. For example if there’s a box with power, you can extract it. That box will lose power, but then the power can be shot into another box that will open a door. That’s the simplest basis for the puzzles, which increase in complexity as you progress through the game. Where you were moving yourself around in Portal, you’re moving power around in The Turning Test. The window-dressing is different, but the two games play very much alike.
The Rating
The Turing Test is rated T with descriptors for violence and mild language. Both the violence and the language are mild. Most of the violence comes later in the game.
The Takeaway
The Turing Test is great execution of first-person puzzling. The rate of difficulty rose at a good pace and the puzzles were not only complex, they were satisfying to complete. I really enjoyed the game despite the fact that I couldn’t get comparisons to Portal out of my head. But then, there are a lot worse games to emulate than Portal.
