The Turing Test was a surprise pleasure for me. I figured it’d be just another sort of basic puzzle game and I wasn’t expecting much in terms of story. My first thoughts were about how similar the game was to Portal, including that you play as a female character who is investigating some mysterious facility with a gun that is used to interact with various puzzles. But you can forgive some of that pretty quickly since they used a much more hyper-real sci-fi aesthetic for the game. So I just settled in to enjoy some puzzle solving, thinking that was it, but then the game suddenly hits you with a very interesting story premise.
This facility is run by an AI, and you start learning throughout the story that there is far more going on here that meets the eye. The game pulls you in with the ultra clean environment that hides just enough of a hint of darkness to make me want to know what is lying beneath the surface (also I’m a sucker for most anything Sci-Fi related). For me, the first sign that something was up was when the AI said “The devil makes work for idle hands”. That is never something that you want to hear from an all powerful AI.
The gameplay is kept fairly simple and the puzzles are (for me) challenging but not head-banging-against-a-wall difficult. The puzzles utilize different aspects of your energy gun and focus a variety of ways you can move that energy around the room until you open the door that leads into the next section of the space station. Honestly, if the story hadn’t been as interesting I probably wouldn’t have gone through all of the puzzles, but it really did grab me and kept me interested. That being said, I wouldn’t say it was exactly a mind blowing experience, but enjoyable enough. If you have game pass it is currently on there as of the writing of this review and I would say go ahead and download it. Otherwise, I would maybe wait until it went on some kind of sale to pick it up.
That brings me to whiskey I’ve paired up with this game, Ainsley Brae Oak Cask single malt scotch. This is a highland single malt that has very little/nonexistent peat flavor, has a mild nose, and the main flavors are vanilla, the toasted oak casks (as advertised), and oddly enough a banana flavor in the aftertaste. To me, this scotch was decent, but altogether forgettable. I got it on sale and I would say go ahead and try it because, hey, its still scotch, but not at a price above $20.
Story Mode Scotch 