Take the very first multi-panel puzzle, for example. Sure, there are some downright ludicrous twists on this formula a game where you only draw straight lines for up to one hundred hours sounds like something straight out of the gutters of Steam Greenlight. Your character finds themselves on an island loaded with bizarre puzzles and structures, and all of these puzzles involve completing mazes where the core goal is simply to get from Point A to Point B. The Witness builds its magic by forcing players to shift the way they solve problems, so eliminating that thought process would taint the entire experience.Īnyone who has paid attention to any of the press surrounding The Witness knows that all of its puzzles are built upon a shockingly simple foundation. As someone who is downright terrible at puzzles in video games, despite the number of puzzle games I play, it takes a special game to make me enjoy getting stumped. Sure, generalities will arise and curious minds might be able to discern the solution if they try hard enough, but only a Grade A Krampus would deliberately steal away the largest draw of The Witness. If there’s one thing that you should know about what’s to come over the course of this review, it’s that not a single puzzle solution is going to be spoiled. The Witness‘ most notable faults also feel like they’re a direct result of the circumstances surrounding its creation.Įven though its narrative design can feel pretentious and a number of basic quality of life staples are curiously absent, The Witness is a brilliantly challenging adventure that inspires through intense mental aerobics. It’s the type of game that simply would not feel as cohesive if it came from a large studio with a two or three year development cycle. Jonathan Blow and his team have created a puzzle experience that manages to push the limits of the mind, all while maintaining a laser-sharp focus on its core concept. What makes actually playing The Witness truly fascinating is that it feels as though it has seven plus years of intense thought put into it. If you’re feeling daring, you could add the unannounced Sony Bend project to that list. 9, Zelda Wii U, Below, Fable Legends, Hyper Light Drifter and Inside. 2016 is set to be a year where The Witness, which was front and center during the PlayStation 4 reveal event, will allegedly be joined by Final Fantasy XV, The Last Guardian, Doom, No Man’s Sky, Star Citizen, Mighty No. We have arrived at the first entry in the official 2016 Tour of the Games We’ve Known About Forever. A review of this game that doesn’t take the author’s mindset into account would read like the ramblings of a homeless person with an Ivy League degree and slightly too much LSD.Īlso, yes, the previous two paragraphs were a golden example of the hokey review introductions criticized at the beginning of this article. Second, The Witness features some of the most maniacal puzzle design in the history of video games. have been working on the beautiful first-person open-world puzzle game since late 2008. To get an idea of how bizarre The Witness is, we’ll need to first establish two very important items. When it comes to a game like The Witness, the magnum opus of Braid developer Jonathan Blow’s career thus far, reviews that don’t touch on the author’s perspective are going to become very dry, very quickly. The author works as a liaison into the intricacies of that which is being criticized he or she lurks in the background. To the contrary, game reviews, and structured criticism in general, inherently focus on the work of others. It’s impossible to understand the full extent of someone’s opinion if you have no idea of where that opinion came from. On one hand, you want the reader to understand the person behind the critique. This last point presents an interesting conundrum. Nearly all of them are hokey and subtly self-indulgent, since a long form article without some sort of insight into the mind of the reviewer often feels like a book report. There’s dozens of hokey ways to begin a video game review.
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