The Witness - Reviews Thread

Seems to be incredibly divisive around whether you have the patience to solve the puzzles.

I really haven't looked at much about this game besides a few screen shots. It looks up my alley, is getting phenomenal reviews, and I loved Braid.

Did Jonathan Blow do this whole game on his own like Braid?
 
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Great reviews, reading through them right now, getting excited and sad i won't be there day one, but patience is a virtue =(
 
Kerned said:
So you didn't even actually play it? Okay then...
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Hence why I said I'll reserve full judgement. I can still comment on how the puzzles are set up... which can be endlessly frustrating.

I'll give it one thing, it definitely sticks in your mind. Out of frustration sure, but hey, it still sticks.
 
Some really good reviews. I am pretty sure I am there tomorrow. Interested to see why some people did not like it and their complaints though. Ill check a couple out.

Kinda surprised to see IGN give it a 10, does not seem like their game for some reason.
 
ebullientprism said:
Maybe he meant (and thats what it sounds like) the pacing wasnt good. I can see how it would get annoying if the game keeps moving you from one puzzle to another without anything of interest happening in between. Imagine if Portal was just a series of test chambers with no exposition, dialogue or anything else worthwhile it would get boring at certain point. Never mind 40 hours of it.

/Shrug.

I am gonna wait for impressions from other forumites, this just seems like the kind of game where press fall over themselves to shower praise on. Emperors new clothes.
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The entire game is open world. If you're stuck, you can move on to another area, or just go exploring. Reaching the initial ending requires ~65% completion or so. The pacing is up to the player.
 
Well hell, here's another $40 I wasn't planning on spending. I'm absolutely going to stop reading reviews so I can hop in as blind (and as ready to be frustrated) as possible.
 
Lovely reviews. I'm impressed and I am confident reviews of this quality will help encourage those put off by the price to purchase the game.
 
toythatkills said:
This is beautiful:



Not only is it marked down because the puzzles were too hard for him personally to solve, but it was also marked down because he had to keep solving puzzles. In a fucking puzzle game!

What an idiot.
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He's entitled to his opinion, dude. If he felt the puzzling was too dense or too difficult, that doesn't make him an idiot. That makes him someone who prefers less roadblocks to his exploration of the environment and story. Someone isn't an idiot just because they have a different sweet spot for how these things should be balanced.

It's better to have a spectrum of opinions from people with various levels of enthusiasm for puzzling, rather than everyone saying the exact same thing and chucking perfect scores at a game that clearly isn't for everyone.
 
I was going to hold off getting this game and I still probably will, but these reviews are making me want to get this tomorrow.
 
KodaRuss said:
Some really good reviews. I am pretty sure I am there tomorrow. Interested to see why some people did not like it and their complaints though. Ill check a couple out.

Kinda surprised to see IGN give it a 10, does not seem like their game for some reason.
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IGN has a staff of over 50 people. Every game is going to be at least one person's type of game. I kind of wish Marty would have reviewed this as I'm just more familiar with his tastes, but I think I'm just going to buy it and beat my head against the wall for the next couple months until Uncharted comes out.
 
In the pricing thread last week, I said this:

mclem said:
Not necessarily averse to this, but I'm a huge fan of - and, as a consequence, highly critical of - adventure game puzzles, and so for full price I'm less likely to look favourably on mediocre ones. Will still pick up, reviews may make that sooner rather than later.
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Sooner.
 
GhaleonEB said:
The entire game is open world. If you're stuck, you can move on to another area, or just go exploring. The pacing is up to the player.
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If moving on to another area is just moving on to do another puzzle then I fail to see how that helps with the complaint of the game just being a series of puzzles. I like doing crosswords but I dont want to do 10 of them in a row. And asking me to do a different crossword to break up the monotony isnt helping.

Again, FWIW I dont know if that is the case or not. I am merely saying the reviewer might be making a valid point which is being dismissed off hand by people.
 
Must be super comforting for Mr Blow to see these reviews, especially after having pumped so much (nearly all) of his money and time in to it. Here's hoping it sells well.
 
jiggles said:
He's entitled to his opinion, dude. If he felt the puzzling was too dense or too difficult, that doesn't make him an idiot. That makes him someone who prefers less roadblocks to his exploration of the environment and story. Someone isn't an idiot just because they have a different sweet spot for how these things should be balanced.

It's better to have a spectrum of opinions from people with various levels of enthusiasm for puzzling, rather than everyone saying the exact same thing and chucking perfect scores at a game that clearly isn't for everyone.
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Yeah, but criticizing a puzzle game for having challenging puzzles is like criticizing a book for having complex dialogue and characters.
 
Does any review talk about playing this with someone watching?

I feel like this is a game I could play and my wife could "play" with me too.
 
serenewarfare said:
Yeah, but criticizing a puzzle game for having challenging puzzles is like criticizing a book for having complex dialogue and characters.
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As a review, he didn't like the frustration level. I think a lot of people here are going to fall on that end of the spectrum, so it's fair that a reviewer would feel that way and review it as such.

Others are going to fucking go bonkers for this game, and rightly so.
 
Sounds like the follow up to Braid we needed and deserved.

*applauds Blow*

serenewarfare said:
Yeah, but criticizing a puzzle game for having challenging puzzles is like criticizing a book for having complex dialogue and characters.
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But sometimes that's not what people want from a book. In fact, I'd put money on the statement "most readers on the planet don't want complex dialogue or characters". It takes one look at the top selling novels of any country to work that out. There will be the odd gem on there, but most "successful" books are quick-consumption thrillers.

I respect that reviewer's opinion. I disagree with it, but I can totally empathise.
 
toythatkills said:
This is beautiful:



Not only is it marked down because the puzzles were too hard for him personally to solve, but it was also marked down because he had to keep solving puzzles. In a fucking puzzle game!

What an idiot.
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Eh, I don't really agree with that obtuse games are good games either. So if he couldn't finish it, or muster up the desire to do so, fair play to mark it down.
 
ebullientprism said:
If moving on to another area is just moving on to do another puzzle then I fail to see how that helps with the complaint of the game just being a series of puzzles. I like doing crosswords but I dont want to do 10 of them in a row. And asking me to do a different crossword to break up the monotony isnt helping.

Again, FWIW I dont know if that is the case or not. I am merely saying the reviewer might be making a valid point which is being dismissed off hand by people.
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From what I understand you can move on to a different area of the island and you may learn a mechanic that will help you on puzzles you got stuck on before. It appears you learn as you progress and leaving a puzzle and coming back to it after learning how the world works a little better is expected.
 
ebullientprism said:
If moving on to another area is just moving on to do another puzzle then I fail to see how that helps with the complaint of the game just being a series of puzzles. I like doing crosswords but I dont want to do 10 of them in a row. And asking me to do a different crossword to break up the monotony isnt helping.

Again, FWIW I dont know if that is the case or not. I am merely saying the reviewer might be making a valid point which is being dismissed off hand by people.
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This is a puzzle game. You are on an island with ~700 puzzles to solve. The game mechanics are puzzles, and solving puzzles is the goal of the game. The island itself is one giant puzzle.

His critique amounted to not liking the genre. Which is fine, but it wasn't framed as such, thus the criticism of his review.
 
Brad from Giant Bomb thinks the game is "incredible" and that any problems are minor in the grand scheme of things. He states that anything shown so far is the tip of the iceberg and that the game goes places.
 
I don't give a fuck about reviews 99% of the time but I'm damn glad The Witness is getting great ones! Dude put his money where his mouth is and dumped all his money into it. I respect shit like that and really hope the game sells a ton of copies. I'll be buying mine soon.
 
ebullientprism said:
If moving on to another area is just moving on to do another puzzle then I fail to see how that helps with the complaint of the game just being a series of puzzles. I like doing crosswords but I dont want to do 10 of them in a row. And asking me to do a different crossword to break up the monotony isnt helping.

Again, FWIW I dont know if that is the case or not. I am merely saying the reviewer might be making a valid point which is being dismissed off hand by people.
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Would complaining that a driving game is 'just a series of driving challenges' be valid?

That said, there is perhaps a valid point if the puzzles are samey; if it's just a puzzle book of a hundred sudoku, there's not a lot to gain from heading off and doing a different one instead. That said, though, I'm really not getting that impression from these reviews.

There's a bunch of puzzle-book games from a while back made by Cliff Johnson, the most famous of them being The Fool's Errand - but there's several in the family. Those are fundamentally just a sequence of puzzles, but there's a lot of variety among them (although many are along similar archetypes), plenty of choice over which to attempt, and an interesting metapuzzle holding it together.

If this is a modern version of The Fool's Errand, I'm absolutely up for it.
 
toythatkills said:
This is beautiful:



Not only is it marked down because the puzzles were too hard for him personally to solve, but it was also marked down because he had to keep solving puzzles. In a fucking puzzle game!

What an idiot.
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Sounds like they put the wrong reviewer on this title. If you aren't up for the challenge, it sounds like this game won't be for you.
 
Unfinished Swan gave me crazy motion sickness and I've heard the same happened to some people with The Talos Principle. Really hoping this game doesn't do the same to me.
 
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