When comparing The Talos Principle vs Papers Please, the Slant community recommends The Talos Principle for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” The Talos Principle is ranked 7th while Papers Please is ranked 16th. The most important reason people chose The Talos Principle is:
The puzzles in the game are great, but they're tied together with a thought provoking story line filled with mystery and intrigue. A story about a robot with human consciousness who is being guided by a disembodied voice, are they to be trusted? As the story progresses the player is drip fed clues which can lead them closer to the truth.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Great storyline
The puzzles in the game are great, but they're tied together with a thought provoking story line filled with mystery and intrigue. A story about a robot with human consciousness who is being guided by a disembodied voice, are they to be trusted? As the story progresses the player is drip fed clues which can lead them closer to the truth.
Pro Lots of side content
Many Easter eggs and more difficult puzzles as well as an ending in many parts of the game, as well as hidden lore.
Pro Difficulty ramp-up
Starts out easy enough, but gets to some truly difficult puzzles by the end. If you get stuck on a puzzle you can skip it and come back to it later.
Pro Rewards exploration and out-of-the-box thinking
It's hard to explain this without spoiling anything, but there are lots of "aha!" moments you will encounter on the areas if you get invested into the story, making the game deeper.
Pro Great original soundtrack
The soundtrack is very pleasant to listen to and fits perfectly with all the areas and themes present in the game. It varies from calm music, for those heavenly areas where you are solving puzzles, to more misterious and epic pieces for moments when things get... real. It's good to have some nice music playing while your brain is melting from solving the puzzles, or just appreciating the scenery.
Pro Unique puzzle solving through clue based deduction
Papers Please has a unique puzzle solving element. Instead of using mathematical logic, or quick matching thinking, the puzzles in Papers Please involve checking people's background information to make sure everything matches the immigration requirements and following clues to find anything amiss.
Pro Will require making ridiculously hard decisions
There is a fine line to walk while playing, whether it is worth following the rules and ruining lives or bending the rules at the risk of getting caught in order to help destitute people. The moral choices in the game are often difficult and require hard decisions.
Pro Endless mode
Once the main story is beaten there is an optional endless mode for those that want to see how long they can play without losing.
Cons
Con Working with the level editor is difficult (no documentation)
There is not much documentation for the level editor in the game, as the creators primarily use it for themselves. There are of course many hotkeys you could accidentally press as well.
Con Obtuse puzzles, especially with optional content
Mediocre game design all around. Many puzzles are ordered badly or redundant and could have been combined or removed to smoothen the experience, as well as occasionally not exercising the bounds of certain elements (like ranged pickup). The game's optional content is even more worrisome as it often leads you to play hidden object games to look in hundreds of corners instead of using more difficult puzzles. One particularly egregious example is when you have to interpret a message in a very specific way after using a decryption algorithm you may not know about into another questionable input system.
Con Simplistic gameplay mechanic
The gameplay itself, once the player gets a grasp of it can get repetitive pretty quick due to there really being not much deviation from a singular gameplay mechanic.