REVIEW

The Turing Test Review

by Ford James, August 27th, 2016

Portal has inspired a lot of similar games over the last decade or so that have tried to emulate and improve the formula, but none have really managed it except for the sequel, Portal 2. The Turing Test from Bulkhead Interactive is another title that’s even more similar than most. You have a robot narrator called T.O.M in the same vein as GLaDoS and you progress through sectors as opposed to chambers but their function is identical. The majority of the game is contained inside an enormous facility with the inspiration being clear for everyone to see, but it’s a tough ask to be a better game than what many consider to be one of the best games of all time.

Thematically, Portal is undoubtedly the main inspiration. To describe the game more effectively however, it’s like Portal meets 2001: A Space Odyssey, with Alan Turing’s famous test being the concept built upon. For those unaware, the Turing test in real life is “a test for intelligence in a computer, requiring that a human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being by using the replies to questions put to both.” So it’s pretty easy to predict and understand the direction the story takes overall after the first hour or so, though there’s still a lot to discover and unravel.

You play as Ava Turing; whether it’s coincidental or if she’s a descendant of Alan is unconfirmed. You’re an Engineer for the International Space Agency (ISA) and you’re woken up from cryostasis by T.O.M, the A.I. overseer of the space station who appears to be in a state of emergency, as the ground crew aboard the space station have all gone missing. After hopping in a drop pod down to one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, you have to navigate and explore the research base to find the lost crew.

The main strength of The Turing Test lies in its narrative. T.O.M, the Technical Operative Machine acts as the narrator while Ava asks questions and makes observations, but a lot of the story is found out by investigating the computer terminals found along the way. Audio logs and information about the crew give you a lot of clues to the characters’ backstories and piece together the mystery about where they’ve gone. Players with inquisitive tendencies and no urge to rush from room to room will be rewarded with additional story pieces and information.

As you progress, the puzzles and sectors have a smooth difficulty curve, gradually introducing more mechanics that tie in nicely with the story. Power cells can be used for various things such as moving platforms, opening doors and activating giant magnet hooks to move objects across the confined area. Each puzzle isn’t especially long, with 70 sectors in total compared to the 19 in Portal although the ones in the later chapters will leave you scratching your head for quite a while, due to additional mechanics and tools that tie into the story. Each chapter also contains an optional puzzle too with extra lore and information at the end, for those completionists out there.

There’s an underlying creepy vibe throughout the entire game, which isn’t helped with the intermittent humanoid figures you see walking at the end of some puzzles when you initially enter. It’s far from a scary game, but feeling uneasy and wary is undoubtedly the effect Bulkhead wanted to evoke from players. There’s no especially dark areas either, with each area being flooded with bright lights and white walls, although the excessive use of lens flare can be quite blinding at times. , while T.O.M’s typically British accent and robotic demeanour with no emotion makes you feel truly alone.

I keep referring back to the Portal comparisons simply because it’s clearly taken so much inspiration from Valve’s enormous success. The important question is how it matches up. While the puzzle mechanics aren’t quite as revolutionary and innovative as the portal gun, a lot of them require you to think outside the box. One example is how I solved a puzzle by using Ava positioned on a conveyor belt as a blocker for a laser, while controlling a robot remotely to access the switch to a door. It sounds complex and many puzzles have untraditional solutions to what you’d expect.

There’s a lot of moral dilemmas poised as you unravel the mystery, which is where the game really shines. It’s a short game, taking maybe up to six hours maximum if you explore every corner, listen to every audio log and complete every optional puzzle, but the way it plays out truly is remarkable. The voice actors, of which I only know Amelia Tyler who voices Sarah (one of the crew members), do a phenomenal job. Whoever voices T.O.M needs to be the voice of every robot A.I in every game for the rest of time as the British accent works wonders, it’s easy to imagine T.O.M having a handlebar moustache and a monocle. Ava is also a fantastic female protagonist who you can really relate to, being completely in the dark to everything that’s going on and piecing together the story as it develops. Without spoiling anything, the final moral decision to make is perhaps the hardest I’ve had to make in any video game. The weight of the decision hits you hard and you have just a few seconds to decide, and after finishing the game I’ve spent a good few hours contemplating the outcome despite it being the end of the game and obviously having no real world consequences.

The Turing Test really is the lovechild of Portal and 2001: A Space Odyssey. T.O.M is H.A.L or GLaDoS, while Ava is the unmuted edition of Chell and the rest of the crew are Dr. Bowman and Dr. Poole. The similarities with the film even go as far as to being by the same planet, and Ava being awoken from cryogenic hibernation. Unfortunately you don’t get to experience a black hole in game, but the rest of the experience undoubtedly makes up for it. At £14.99, there’s not a lot of replayability but it’s irrelevant as the story is second to none and the puzzles are very satisfying to solve.