Relativistic Ramblings

Review: The Talos Principle

Good puzzle design, an enigmatic narrative, and an excellent soundtrack combine to make this a great experience.

Behold, child. You are risen from the dust, and you walk in my garden. Hear now my voice, and know that I am your maker, and I am called ELOHIM. Seek me in my temple, if you are worthy.

Thus begins The Talos Principle, with a fatherly, yet commanding voice coming from everywhere and nowhere. The words, more than subtly inspired by Genesis, invite you to start your quest to solve increasingly difficult puzzles, for whichever reason. But it is not just the mechanics what will challenge you; your enigmatic circumstances will also have you befuddled in this philosophically heavy game.

Top 3 female gaming characters

For all the exploitative design, games provide solid female characters, too.

Happy International Women’s Day! Female gaming characters don’t have a reputation for being feminist-friendly, but there are many exceptions. In that regard, allow me to highlight a few of my favorites.

F# tip: Tell the user which condition failed

Let F# types guide you to better user experiences and stopping terrorists.

Error screen with a sad smiley and the text "The operation is not allowed because a boolean expression evaluated to false."

Boolean logic is central to many business rules. But sometimes it’s not enough to know whether a chain of conditions evaluates to true or false; we might want to know which of the conditions failed. F#, unsurprisingly, lets us model this in a very succinct, composable, and completely type-safe way. But there are pitfalls – sometimes, a seemingly simple and pure function just won’t cut it.

Review: Cradle

Cradle is an interesting and imperfect narrative puzzle that may or may not be a tad bit too smart for me.

Cradle wallpaper showing a female android

You know you should prepare your mental faculties for a potentially challenging experience when the development studio is a Ukranian four-man team called Flying Cafe for Semianimals.

Their first game, Cradle, is a first-person exploratory sci-fi adventure released in 2015, and a game I find rather difficult to review. One reason is the game’s short length making it hard to avoid spoilers (which I also experienced when reviewing Abzû). But more importantly, I get the distinct feeling that the game had some deeper layers that were lost on me. Regardless, quite a bit can safely be said, and there are a few bones I’d like to pick.

Mini-reviews: Rise of the Tomb Raider and Firewatch

Good storytelling trumps impressive graphics any time.

Rise of the Tomb Raider and Firewatch banner

My game backlog continues to shrink (albeit slowly, having had to prioritize other stuff the last few months), and two more games can now be struck from the list. With one of them being depressingly boring and another being quite short, I opted for one more round of mini-reviews – which, looking at my current backlog, will probably be the last pair of mini-reviews in a good while.

Mini-reviews: Superhot and The Turing Test

Neither gets my unreserved recommendation, but one of them can certainly be worth a closer look.

Another warm summer’s day, another two games completed. (Hey, don’t judge.)

I think the mini-review format I experimented with in yesterday’s thoughts on Abzû and Manual Samuel worked quite well, allowing me to jot down some thoughts on my experiences with them without having to spend too long writing a proper review critically observing any and all aspects of the games. With a few more fairly short games on my backlog, I figured I’d repeat the format. Today I’ll be looking at a first-person shooter with a distinct twist, and a first-person puzzle game desperately wishing it was Portal.

Mini-reviews: Abzû and Manual Samuel

Two great, short and very different games for a rainy day (or a sunny one, I’m not judging).

Having “saved up” games for six months, my backlog of games has started to grow, and while I like to put my thoughts to the paper, I also want to prioritize actually playing games during the summer holidays. Since several of the games are also very short, mini-reviews seemed to be a good solution.

Review: Owlboy

While not perfect, Owlboy is masterfully crafted on all levels and is well worth experiencing.

Originally announced in 2008 and released in late 2016, Owlboy is a pixel-art platformer almost a decade in the making. It’s developed by D‑Pad Studio, an indie developer based in Askøy just outside my hometown Bergen, and was very well received by the international game press upon release, with a Metacritic score of 88 – no small feat seeing that Norway isn’t exactly known for internationally acclaimed games (those of FunCom being notable exceptions).

Lest you worry that the developer’s geographical proximity to yours truly will impact this review, do not fret – I will hold this game to the same ~~high bar for what I consider worth spending my time on~~ exceedingly high ethical standards I always have when reviewing games.

“Olsvik church in sunset” post-processing

Step-by-step development of one of my images.

I thought I’d start something new on this blog: Writing about how I’ve post-processed some of my photos. First out is my recent image “Olsvik church in sunset”.

Linux – I’m giving up again

Ideals and patronizing Microsoft policies be damned – I’m coming back to you, Windows.

Every few years, I have a brief stint with Linux as my primary operating system (dual booting with Windows for gaming etc.). Each time I try Linux, I hope “they” have finally fixed all the little annoying details that made me quit last time. And this time, I thought it was finally for real, and I lasted longer than ever before. But in the end, like every other time, I left disappointed.