SuperBunnyhop's review is up. Probably the first review of this game I agree with.
"It's a sterile purgatory of placid, barricading puzzles."
Maybe the best summary of I've heard for this game yet.
As much as I disagree with his assessment, this review isn't *wrong* about The Witness. It's one take, a very personal one, about what a game like this should be, what it should mean, how it should guide the player, and what qualities the game should have in the way of visuals, music, etc.
It's probably very easy, in fact, to take a critical eye to The Witness, and re-engineer it into a game that fits a mold that is more accessible, more pleasing, to more gamers who are used to games being, well, a very particular way. That The Witness isn't like that, that's its in some ways a very cold, brutal game with very little in the way of typical mechanics, typical sound design, etc., is going to viewed as a strength by people who liked its approach -- holistically -- to everything from the whys and the hows of the design. The game fits together in the same way its most infuriating and complex puzzles do, and like an onion has layered that complexity in such a way to reward those people who like that kind of thing. As cliche as it sounds, the very moment of solving a puzzle in the game, not the next puzzle or even the next 10, or unlocking a laser, or what-have-you, none of that stuff matters as much as each individual puzzle, and likewise none of the puzzles matter in the context of the entire experience. As a player you're either keyed into this style, or its simply alien to you why anyone would think this is a good idea for a game. The game pushes back on the player pretty hard, and that's either going to be an enticing thing, or its going to be alienating.
There's a version of The Witness that is probably everything people who currently don't like The Witness would like, but I think that version wouldn't be liked nearly as much by the people who do enjoy it as it is now. Like some of The Witness's puzzles, the perspective you take with the game kind of changes its meaning, and there are going to be some people who just can't catch the glint.
