This. Anyone who has followed Tom Chick for 15 plus years could tell you in advance he wasn't going to like The Witness. Doesn't upset me. He hasn't ever really liked puzzle games. His site, unlike many others, focuses on HIS opinions(for the most part), so this review was inevitable.
This quote, especially the bolded part, is a perfect example of one of the worst things in videogames. Apparently, playing a game for its own sake is not worth the time. Instead you need arbitrary rewards or collectibles or a story to keep going. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with putting these things in your game. But a game that eschews rewards to keep your attention, instead rewarding you with the pure joy of play is a beautiful thing.
Couldn't agree more here. When I'm enjoying a game that prioritizes engaging gameplay over everything else, the best kind of reward would be either more of that sweet gameplay or something that would enhance it.
I don't actually find it that mentally engaging is my problem. When I run across a new "word" in the game's language I'm either looking at something that is relatively easy to figure out, or I haven't found the part of the game that gives me the relatively easy tutorial panel(s). I don't bang my head I just make a mental note and return later and at this point that has always worked. In Metroid I don't waste time trying to bomb jump when I know I'll be given another tool later that will make things easier, or more clear.
I just imagine this game with a neat narrative or lore like Portal and can't help but want to play that where the cool context has more noticeable meaning other than a fancy looking holder for puzzles.
But isn't every game a fancy holder for some core gameplay function?
I certainly don't see how "lore" would improve the gameplay at all. In Metroid or Souls it makes sense because the point of the game is discovering the environment, and story gives depth to the environment. Witness does have a nice environment, but that's to give depth to the puzzles rathe than the other way around.
Why do people get angry with negative reviews about this game? I don't get it. Do you expect the game to be loved by just everyone even if it caters to a very specific niche? (people who like line puzzles)
Reviews are personal, made by people with specific preferences, of course they are going to be subjective and related to the person who wrote them.
I personally dislike the game and I quite agree with a lot of those reviews. Different strokes for different people I guess, like it has always been.
Why do people get angry with negative reviews about this game? I don't get it. Do you expect the game to be loved by just everyone even if it caters to a very specific niche? (people who like line puzzles)
Reviews are personal, made by people with specific preferences, of course they are going to be subjective and related to the person who wrote them.
I personally dislike the game and I quite agree with a lot of those reviews. Different strokes for different people I guess, like it has always been.
Why do people get angry with negative reviews about this game? I don't get it. Do you expect the game to be loved by just everyone even if it caters to a very specific niche? (people who like line puzzles)
Reviews are personal, made by people with specific preferences, of course they are going to be subjective and related to the person who wrote them.
I personally dislike the game and I quite agree with a lot of those reviews. Different strokes for different people I guess, like it has always been.
No one is even the slightest bit angry. This is a review thread, and we're discussing elements we agree and disagree with in reviews. If you find yourself thinking that someone criticizing a negative point of view must be "angry", then it means you probably have internalized your opinion to such a degree that you're taking these criticisms personally.
It's OK not to like something. In fact I love people who disagree with me, it gives me something to engage with. But if you're in a discussion thread about those opinions and you're sharing them, you can't take offense when someone picks it apart critically.
In this post for example you gave nobody anything to work with about your view, and instead felt the need to try to postulate about people's emotional states. That speaks to a certain insecurity you feel about your opinion.
Pretty weird of a game to have so many 9s and 10s and then 2 4s. Is this a case of two reviewers not being able to figure out the puzzle and docking the game heavily on that aspect? Don't see this too often. Nonetheless, amazing reviews. PS4 about to hit several home runs this years with some of their games, though I am hoping TLG and Horizon actually live up the hype if they come out this year . :\
You need to read again the previous page of this thread.
As for me, I disagree with the "perfect game" reviews but I'm not calling the reviewers "the worst critic" etc. That's his opinion on the game and I'm fine with that. Happy that this game is that good for some people and that's why diversity is a good thing. I don't attack people who don't like what I like.
You need to read again the previous page of this thread.
As for me, I disagree with the "perfect game" reviews but I'm not calling the reviewers "the worst critic" etc. That's his opinion on the game and I'm fine with that. Happy that this game is that good for some people and that's why diversity is a good thing. I don't attack people who don't like what I like.
I just read it. No one's angry. I also don't see anyone calling Tom Chick the worst critic (to be fair, I may have missed it though), but even if they did, that wouldn't be a big deal, because he's been in the industry forever, so it's pretty easy for someone to know at this point if they find him to be a someone they agree with or not.
Figuring out how the desert panels work is not a matter of luck at all. The environment is designed to give you clues and guide you to the solution, remember the tree shaped panels next to the starting area? This part is meant to teach you to be aware of your surroundings.
The Witness is all about asking the right questions; What are those markings outside the ruins supposed to symbolize?
you notice how they reflect sunlight
Does the panel's shape resemble something?
it kind of looks like a sun
Why are the panels here facing different directions, and why are some covered in shadow? etc.
Those "clues" didn't speak to me at all. When I uncountered those panels, I figured out there was a rule pattern to them that I needed to know first and I went on my way.
Same with the puzzles in the village, you can't solve them when you encounter them the first time, I figured out it was the same with the desert temple. The game isn't clear on that. Why would the desert puzzles me solvable now but not the village ones? You should know before starting a puzzle if you can solve it now or not or else the game is just wasting my time.
Why do people get angry with negative reviews about this game? I don't get it. Do you expect the game to be loved by just everyone even if it caters to a very specific niche? (people who like line puzzles)
Reviews are personal, made by people with specific preferences, of course they are going to be subjective and related to the person who wrote them.
I personally dislike the game and I quite agree with a lot of those reviews. Different strokes for different people I guess, like it has always been.
Those "clues" didn't speak to me at all. When I uncountered those panels, I figured out there was a rule pattern to them that I needed to know first and I went on my way.
Same with the puzzles in the village, you can't solve them when you encounter them the first time, I figured out it was the same with the desert temple. The game isn't clear on that. Why would the desert puzzles me solvable now but not the village ones? You should know before starting a puzzle if you can solve it now or not or else the game is just wasting my time.
Im glad a lot of recent games are getting such divisive reviews (Bloodborne, The Witness, Sunset Overdrive). Means the devs feel very strong about certain design aspects even if it means alienating some.
"When I was done, the feeling wasnt elation or even satisfaction. It was that feeling you get when you finally pass part of a game you never want to have to play again. I couldnt shake a vague resentment that Id squandered dozens of hours to no effect beyond now knowing the made-up language of The Witness puzzles."
Every game is about learning a new language, or rather a new way to interface with an interactive thing, the Witness is just more explicit about it. Although given his praise for dogmatic design he seems to prefer more highly derivative interfaces
Well yes, that's what you do in the game unless you just want to explore and call it a walking simulator. You will be solving (mazes/symmetry/tetris) puzzles and if you don't enjoy them, you don't enjoy the game simple as that. On other games you may dislike the story/writing but love the gameplay and keep playing cause ultimately the game is fun. Not this game, hence the "harsh" simplified line puzzles comment.
I love this game, but I really think it's for a very specific type of person.
I was talking with my wife last night about why I like the game so much. She's an adrenaline junkie -- she loves the thrill of being in a martial arts arena and kicking butt.
Well, this game has come to make me realize that I'm an "epiphany junkie". My day job as an engineer is basically puzzle solving over several months per puzzle. I love my job, but this game made me realize why. It's nice to see my customers appreciate my work, but deep down I don't care a whit about that.
The fact that I had all the insights and epiphanies needed to solve the puzzle motivates me to do more.
Well yes, that's what you do in the game unless you just want to explore and call it a walking simulator. You will be solving (mazes/symmetry/tetris) puzzles and if you don't enjoy them, you don't enjoy the game simple as that. On other games you may dislike the story/writing but love the gameplay and keep playing cause ultimately the game is fun. Not this game, hence the "harsh" simplified line puzzles comment.
Those "clues" didn't speak to me at all. When I uncountered those panels, I figured out there was a rule pattern to them that I needed to know first and I went on my way.
Same with the puzzles in the village, you can't solve them when you encounter them the first time, I figured out it was the same with the desert temple. The game isn't clear on that. Why would the desert puzzles me solvable now but not the village ones? You should know before starting a puzzle if you can solve it now or not or else the game is just wasting my time.
The way I see it, by the time you reach the desert temple, you have probably been through a couple of areas that are self-contained in terms of teaching and then testing you on a particular kind of puzzle. The player should assume at that point in time that puzzle types seem to be bound by area. Then, when you reach the village, you see a bunch of different puzzle mechanics and you might then assume "oh, this area requires knowledge from several parts of the game." If the player happens to go straight to the temple and can't figure out where they are supposed to find the insight to solve the puzzles, they should explore elsewhere, which they are very free to do.
It has not generally been hard for me to tell the difference between puzzles that require knowledge from the immediate surroundings and those that use designs from other parts of the island.
Im glad a lot of recent games are getting such divisive reviews (Bloodborne, The Witness, Sunset Overdrive). Means the devs feel very strong about certain design aspects even if it means alienating some.
Im glad a lot of recent games are getting such divisive reviews (Bloodborne, The Witness, Sunset Overdrive). Means the devs feel very strong about certain design aspects even if it means alienating some.
True, but I don't think Bloodborne is a good example. It wasn't really that divisive at all, at least not with critics.(only 1 review below an 8 on metacritic) Sunset Overdrive fits much better.
A looooooot of people hate Souls games, even if they are critic darling, SO rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and the Witness reviews are split really hard one way or the other
If I could make my own review I would rate it 9 out of 10
29 hours to complete the game at its basic level, still finding lots of interesting things to do. The game is impeccably designed and a lot of fun if you are open to exploration and not resorting to begging for answers when you run into something you do not understand yet. If you are resorting to this or walkthroughs you end up fundamentally breaking part of the fun and joy that comes with the game and making breakthroughs. I was only "stuck" for maybe 10mins at most, moving on to other things that then helped inform how to better proceed or have better ideas
The way I see it, by the time you reach the desert temple, you have probably been through a couple of areas that are self-contained in terms of teaching and then testing you on a particular kind of puzzle. The player should assume at that point in time that puzzle types seem to be bound by area. Then, when you reach the village, you see a bunch of different puzzle mechanics and you might then assume "oh, this area requires knowledge from several parts of the game." If the player happens to go straight to the temple and can't figure out where they are supposed to find the insight to solve the puzzles, they should explore elsewhere, which they are very free to do.
I reached the village area before the desert temple so I assumed I didn't have the knowledge there too. There isn't even a starting panel like in other areas. They all seem playable. And why? Because if the simple trick was known from the start, the challenge would crumble. The game relies too much on crypticness to be more puzzley than it really is. It's a shame because a lot of the puzzle ideas are good and different and the island is superbly designed (if a bit lifeless)
I'm enjoying the game quite a bit bit it feels too much like passing a technical job interview and everytime I reach a new panel, I can't help thinking "Ok what is the completely outside the box solution this time? The shadows, the sounds, the reflections, the perspective, what is the cheap trick this time? I have to solve it from 2 meters afar? There's just too many potential possibilities. The game can cheat me anytime my changing the rules all of a sudden (
Ex: color filtering glass
). I guess I don't like the feeling of being manipulated.
It's exactly like the Psychomantis boss fight in MGS. Who guessed the trick until the Colonel almost spelled it out via Codec? Cool ah-ah moment but not very guessable. The OT is mainly about asking tips. I think it's quite telling.
Starting a panel without having the certainty you can solve it now is a huge flaw in a puzzle game IMO.
Precisely. The joy of Witness is that it really is sheer, elegant gameplay from start to finish. It's like someone complaining that Chess is shitty because there's no characterization for its Bishops. You don't need to get gears moving in the game to some great machinery, because the game is all about getting the gears moving in the machinery that is your brain. It's like some great wind coming through a cavern to clean out the cobwebs. It's positively invigorating at times.
These people are allowed to like their mindless collectathons or whatever he's pining for in the review, because Chick did fine justifying his position. But his "criticisms" aren't criticisms - they're essentially saying the game is exactly what it is meant to be. If you don't like what "it" is, then it's just saying that you don't like pure puzzle games like that. I don't play Word Bubbles on a phone because I need some overarching narrative or some shit, I do it because the gameplay is fucking fun.
His complaints about Witness being about learning a made-up language are particularly weak though. All games teach you a made up language to play their content. All of them. That language can be interpreted through a series of button presses, but you always must learn that language. That it's intuitive to learn the languages of most traditional games is a function of experience. Since there are no other games like The Witness, he's finding he's starting from square one, and he can't get over it. It's a dramatic failing of critical thinking on Chick's part.
* - I really really did not like the game
** - I did not like the game
*** - I like the game
**** - I really really liked the game
***** - I loved the game
Is it that hard to understand that someone might not like the Witness ffs? Is there a need to cherry pick and fabricate in order to discredit? I guess there is otherwise the dissenting voice cannot be silenced by with the "defective person" label.
The Witness is just a bunch of line puzzles, and not liking just a bunch of line puzzles is is as normal as liking a bunch of line puzzles.
Edit: I meant to add a couple more quotes not just Ami, but Android...
everytime I reach a new panel, I can't help thinking "Ok what is the completely outside the box solution this time? The shadows, the sounds, the reflections, the perspective, what is the cheap trick this time? I have to solve it from 2 meters afar? There's just too many potential possibilities.
I think you've misunderstood the premise of the game. What you're describing here is the The Witness, this is the game. Figuring out the method of solving the panels. The act of solving the panels is secondary, it's not about that.
The panels are there to present to you various scenarios and as you solve them you build an image of the ruleset in your mind. You slowly discover the properties of the symbols and solving a panel is merely you telling the game that you have understood and are ready to proceed to the next concept.
Blow said that he's not interested in traditional puzzle design, he says puzzles in other games are not actual puzzles but more like exercises. In Zelda, a "real" puzzle would be in OoT when you drop down from above to break through the spider web in Deku Tree, while an exercise is when you know the procedure and it comes down to applying an algorithm. For example block sliding puzzles don't make you go "a-ha!, now I get it", they're just a mental exercise without an element of discovery about them.
I think you've misunderstood the premise of the game. What you're describing here is the The Witness, this is the game. Figuring out the method of solving the panels. The act of solving the panels is secondary, it's not about that.
The panels are there to present to you various scenarios and as you solve them you build an image of the ruleset in your mind. You slowly discover the properties of the symbols and solving a panel is merely you telling the game that you have understood and are ready to proceed to the next concept.
Blow said that he's not interested in traditional puzzle design, he says puzzles in other games are not actual puzzles but more like exercises. In Zelda, a "real" puzzle would be in OoT when you drop down from above to break through the spider web in Deku Tree, while an exercise is when you know the procedure and it comes down to applying an algorithm. For example block sliding puzzles don't make you go "a-ha!, now I get it", they're just a mental exercise without an element of discovery about them.
I feel the opposite, the puzzles in The Witness feel like exercises or work. You often need pen & paper to solve them, and figure out what "trick" the designer thought of this time. Like reverse engineering the thought process of the designer. That also kills the immersion. When I discovered the
color filtering glass
, it didn't made me go a-ha! but made me roll my eyes instead. "Oh that was the twist this time". What's next? Use a real life mirror to solve the next puzzle?
My main complaint is that when you start a panel you don't have the certainty you can solve it right away so you never know if you are wasting your time or not.
Is it that hard to understand that someone might not like the Witness ffs? Is there a need to cherry pick and fabricate in order to discredit? I guess there is otherwise the dissenting voice cannot be silenced by with the "defective person" label.
I feel the opposite, the puzzles in The Witness feels like exercises or work. You often need pen & paper to solve them, and figure out what "trick" the designer thought of this time. When I discovered the
color filtering glass
, it didn't made me go a-ha! but made me roll my eyes instead.
It's not about solving the panel after you've made the realization. The realization is the game. The panel is there to check if you grasped the concept, and it's complex enough so that it ensures you have learned it before moving on. So you can't brute force it. That's it.
This is why the game is useless to replay. Because then you know all the tricks and the game turns into an exercise session.
My main complaint is that when you start a panel you don't have the certainty you can solve it right away so you never know if you are wasting your time or not.
* - I really really did not like the game
** - I did not like the game
*** - I like the game
**** - I really really liked the game
***** - I loved the game
Is it that hard to understand that someone might not like the Witness ffs? Is there a need to cherry pick and fabricate in order to discredit? I guess there is otherwise the dissenting voice cannot be silenced by with the "defective person" label.
Nothing in my quote implies I have failed to understand his opinion, nor did anyone get the "defective person" label in my post. In fact, I said he did a fine job justifying his opinion in my post (reading is fundamental). Therefore, you are the sole person between us in this conversation who has fabricated anything right now. Additionally, the review is for public consumption. If you put your work up for public, it is ripe for criticism when people find areas that are either incorrect on its face, inaccurate or merely a difference of opinion.
If you find it troubling that people are going to discuss reviews and disagree sometimes, while at the same time listing why they disagree, mayhaps a thread about reviews for this game on a discussion forum is not the place for you.
Nobody said otherwise. But if you're going to make arguments as to why you don't like it, you can't get annoyed when others point out how silly some of the complaints are or if they provide some push back against that review. If they don't stand up to scrutiny, that's not my problem.
I sadly agree with Tom Chicks review over anything else so far. I want to love this game, and Brad from GiantBomb got me so hype to play it, but so far I feel more like an underpaid handyman than an adventurer or detective of any kind.
I plan to continue playing, but so far whatever hook that has seemed to grab people to make them feel like The Witness transcends a series of increasingly complex puzzles hasn't worked its magic on me yet.
Why do people get angry with negative reviews about this game? I don't get it. Do you expect the game to be loved by just everyone even if it caters to a very specific niche? (people who like line puzzles)
Reviews are personal, made by people with specific preferences, of course they are going to be subjective and related to the person who wrote them.
I personally dislike the game and I quite agree with a lot of those reviews. Different strokes for different people I guess, like it has always been.
People (mostly) are just questioning too pretty obvious outliers. Tom Chick in particular never does himself any favours as he always seems to include some point that's just plain dumb.
In this case he grumbles the game has no purpose. It feels meaningless. For a videogame review this is nonsense as 99.99999% of videogames have no purpose. They are fun in and of themselves but they're huge wastes of time if your looking for purpose (or depth as Chick also implies).
This therefore renders people suspicious he's just being "Tom Chick" and down-scoring for no actual valid reason.
TBH professional criticism is supposed to be based on a certain level of understanding of the medium and to consider beyond personal taste when rating media. On the evidence apart from "not being your cup of tea" The Witness is a well made, solid title with few flaws as a puzzle game. Hence why the outliers stand out as uninformed opinions "this sucks because I didn't like it" vs actual professional criticism. And technically Metacritic is supposed to collate professional criticism not a bunch of "I like it" "I don't like" it forum posts.
Reading the outlier reviews they do seem to be trying very hard to mark the title down for vague reasons that seem at odds with the videogame medium.
It's similar to Alien Isolation where you had a strong grouping of majority of reviews then a few outliers whose justification seemed very tenuous and based purely on taste vs actual game itself.
I sadly agree with Tom Chicks review over anything else so far. I want to love this game, and Brad from GiantBomb got me so hype to play it, but so far I feel more like an underpaid handyman than an adventurer or detective of any kind.
I plan to continue playing, but so far whatever hook that has seemed to grab people to make them feel like The Witness transcends a series of increasingly complex puzzles hasn't worked its magic on me yet.
I'm sure there's at least a few interesting things to discover outside of puzzles and what's immediately observable. However, I'm in it for the puzzle solving and nothing more, and that's the hook not just for me but for a lot of people who are enjoying their time with the game.
Not sure how I feel about the game. I'm like 110 panels in and it was quite fun and challenging at times. But sometimes I feel like the game is a bit too minimialistic, as you get nothing from solving the puzzles other than that "I managed to solve this one yay" feeling.
I want the puzzles being solved to create new landscapes and scenery, or establish some kind of narrative. Like in the Professor Layton games for example.
Now I also hear that you can't solve the puzzles in the village when you first get to it and it's pissing me off. Why isn't the game more clear about that? I tried understanding them for like an hour and just gave up and went somewhere else.
My main complaint is that when you start a panel you don't have the certainty you can solve it right away so you never know if you are wasting your time or not.
It's evident as soon as you go near a puzzle if you recognise the rules at play for that specific puzzle.
If you know the rules for tetris blocks, you can solve tetris puzzles, if you know stars rules you can solve stars puzzles. If you know both you can solve puzzles with both. If you don't know the rule at hand, you use the openness and move on to another area. The joy of the game is that it's not blocked off you can go anywhere and solve anything, in any order. See a tetris puzzle? Mental note and move on until you see the tutorial blocks.
They are completely optional. And even if they weren't, it's basically impossible to miss the very obvious hints at the first puzzle if you spend more than a minute walking around. Now, if you just run around that area with no purpose, then yeah, you'll miss it. But if you simply stop and observe for a bit, you're going to figure it out pretty easily. The game gives visuals hints out like candy.
The problem is that we've become so used to every single game spoonfeeding us everything. It's incredibly refreshing to play a game that basically says "I don't think you are stupid and I am going to treat you as someone with at least some amount of intelligence".
Saying that's impossible to not pick up on what's going on within a minute in response to someone who was annoyed with that section is a pretty bad response. Also, you can take issue with the design of something without wanting to be spoonfed explanations by the game. Much of what I've played so far has rather explicit tutorialisation and then combines different rules it's taught you to create interesting puzzles. That one bit he mentioned is completely different from that, once figured out leaves the area without any interesting challenge.
Personally I didn't find it all that interesting. It's not like you use deductive reasoning to figure out what's going on.
Most likely you either happen to catch a reflection off one of the panels, over-analyse the environment for clues that aren't there, or conclude that there's some trick you don't know about yet. I didn't find it satisfying at all to figure out and it has nothing to do with wanting to be spoonfed.
Just to be clear, I'm nitpicking as most of the new rules have a few introductionary panels and the "cheap" ones are far and few between. The Witness will probably still end up in my Top 10 this year. It's that unique. But the game just tries a little too hard to be clever and mess with the player.
Just to be clear, I'm nitpicking as most of the new rules have a few introductionary panels and the "cheap" ones are far and few between. The Witness will probably still end up in my Top 10 this year. It's that unique. But the game just tries a little too hard to be clever and mess with the player.
I don't see how a ramp in difficulty is being cheap. Any time I got stuck on a particularly difficult puzzle I would spend a bunch of time on it, then walking away and exploring different parts of the island, while the whole time that puzzle is in the back of my head. Even when I stopped for the night I was thinking about the puzzle.
No shit, last night I was thinking of a certain puzzle in the shower and had a fucking revelation. I bolted out of that shower and booted my PS4, solved that mo' fo' starkers.
I literally never had a moment like that with a video game.
I mentioned the ones I found cheap, not difficult, just obtuse.
That said, if I had done the branching trees panels at the beginning, I would have been much more aware of my surroundings.
I disagree with the part of the review you quoted but the part I quoted is fair.
The game is only about trying to figure out the made up, arbitrary, everchanging and unexplained rules of this game, not really the puzzles in themselves. The rules are needlessly obtuse (Well not really needlessly, since otherwise the puzzles would be extremely simple). The difficulty is completely articificial. It relies entirely on obfuscating the ruleset. It's more about guessing what the game designer meant. I, too, could come up with obscure rules like, you have to solve that puzzle in reverse order just because a music is playing in reverse in the room or something.
It's also very trial & error sometimes, like what does 4 small blue squares mean?
Subtract 4 1X1 squares or 1 2X2 square? Which is it?
Other puzzle games like Portal offer difficulty through more and more complex puzzles within a fixed and clear ruleset. Here, the difficulty never increases, it's just that you have to guess a new rule after another.
Are you kidding or have you not played enough to know that a ton of the puzzles are hard even when you're perfectly sure of the rules?
I'm at about 263 panels solved and plenty of them are brutally difficult even when I'm sure of the rules. When there's two or more rules intersecting plus a restricted panel size and broken edges, it gets tricky right quick even if it had the rules explicitly written next to the panel.
Precisely. The joy of Witness is that it really is sheer, elegant gameplay from start to finish. It's like someone complaining that Chess is shitty because there's no characterization for its Bishops. You don't need to get gears moving in the game to some great machinery, because the game is all about getting the gears moving in the machinery that is your brain. It's like some great wind coming through a cavern to clean out the cobwebs. It's positively invigorating at times.
These people are allowed to like their mindless collectathons or whatever he's pining for in the review, because Chick did fine justifying his position. But his "criticisms" aren't criticisms - they're essentially saying the game is exactly what it is meant to be. If you don't like what "it" is, then it's just saying that you don't like pure puzzle games like that. I don't play Word Bubbles on a phone because I need some overarching narrative or some shit, I do it because the gameplay is fucking fun.
His complaints about Witness being about learning a made-up language are particularly weak though. All games teach you a made up language to play their content. All of them. That language can be interpreted through a series of button presses, but you always must learn that language. That it's intuitive to learn the languages of most traditional games is a function of experience. Since there are no other games like The Witness, he's finding he's starting from square one, and he can't get over it. It's a dramatic failing of critical thinking on Chick's part.
People (mostly) are just questioning too pretty obvious outliers. Tom Chick in particular never does himself any favours as he always seems to include some point that's just plain dumb.
In this case he grumbles the game has no purpose. It feels meaningless. For a videogame review this is nonsense as 99.99999% of videogames have no purpose. They are fun in and of themselves but they're huge wastes of time if your looking for purpose (or depth as Chick also implies).
This therefore renders people suspicious he's just being "Tom Chick" and down-scoring for no actual valid reason.
TBH professional criticism is supposed to be based on a certain level of understanding of the medium and to consider beyond personal taste when rating media. On the evidence apart from "not being your cup of tea" The Witness is a well made, solid title with few flaws as a puzzle game. Hence why the outliers stand out as uninformed opinions "this sucks because I didn't like it" vs actual professional criticism. And technically Metacritic is supposed to collate professional criticism not a bunch of "I like it" "I don't like" it forum posts.
Reading the outlier reviews they do seem to be trying very hard to mark the title down for vague reasons that seem at odds with the videogame medium.
It's similar to Alien Isolation where you had a strong grouping of majority of reviews then a few outliers whose justification seemed very tenuous and based purely on taste vs actual game itself.
Ok I can understand that and mostly agree although the "beyond personal taste" is very hard to achieve unless we are talking about somewhat objective things like production values, the technical side and such. Personal preference is always going to impact a review no matter how professional the reviewer is. Anyway props to you for the detailed non passive aggressive answer.
But isn't every game a fancy holder for some core gameplay function?
I certainly don't see how "lore" would improve the gameplay at all. In Metroid or Souls it makes sense because the point of the game is discovering the environment, and story gives depth to the environment. Witness does have a nice environment, but that's to give depth to the puzzles rathe than the other way around.
Not really, The Witness has amazing environments that boil down to not much than very pretty placeholders. The world around the puzzles just feels like it has a ton of potential, and I don't think that is true for every game.
Lore doesn't improve the gameplay, it would for some improve the experience. Lore is not gameplay so I honestly confused to why you said that.
Not really, The Witness has amazing environments that boil down to not much than very pretty placeholders. The world around the puzzles just feels like it has a ton of potential, and I don't think that is true for every game.
Blow has talked about how during development he deliberately ruled that certain environment objects that looked cool weren't allowed to look cool, because it didn't play into the puzzles.
Like it or not, this is part of the game's core design.
Blow has talked about how during development he deliberately ruled that certain environment objects that looked cool weren't allowed to look cool, because it didn't play into the puzzles.
Like it or not, this is part of the game's core design.
I listened to his interviews I'm aware of his design.
Sometimes I just stare at the screen and wonder if most of this game could just be an iOS game where you randomly touch a map to pull up a series of line puzzles.
I want to comment on the criticism that puzzles unlocking only more puzzles, instead of triggering some explicit narrative or world impact.
The audio logs in the game, to me, make it very clear that this is a game about discovery, but not just rational, scientific discovery. It's also about the spiritual element of discovery, especially acknowledging the unknowable. This all clicked to me with a specific log on Zen Buddhism, which evidently practices the comprehension of meaningless or inane questions in order to achieve a certain mental state. So, in the case of the Witness, I feel like we're meant to be provoked into introspection about our own methods of discovery, or just to iterate on it until we reach a kind of meditative fugue.
*edit* I also find criticisms that the world is non-interactive completely off base. You must examine and engage with the environment more in the Witness than in most games, and are rewarded for it with puzzle solutions both on the critical path and off. Furthermore, the beauty, art, and design play into the theming I discussed w.r.t. the audio logs.
Not really, The Witness has amazing environments that boil down to not much than very pretty placeholders. The world around the puzzles just feels like it has a ton of potential, and I don't think that is true for every game.
Lore doesn't improve the gameplay, it would for some improve the experience. Lore is not gameplay so I honestly confused to why you said that.
But that's factually incorrect. The world, its layout, and various aspects of its different regions are very important. There are several puzzles that incorporate the environment directly, some that require a large amount of space, some that can be solved in different ways to control machinery, and of course there's the numerous
+ puzzles hidden throughout the entire island and require you to explore and experiment.
