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The Witness - Reviews Thread

illusionary said:
Has anyone watched Giant Bomb's Quick Look yet? Safe to do so? I'd expect yes, but confirmation would be good if possible.
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It's like the first ~30 minutes of the game, but it tries to avoid actual spoilers, the puzzles shown are pretty tutorial-ish and seem to have no impact on the actual progression of the game. I'd just go in blind if you're that worried.
 
Wow, Jon actually replied to my tweet.
me said:
@Jonathan_Blow Can you tell us when The Witness will be out in the EU? Are we getting it 00:00 EST 26/01, or do we have to wait for the US?
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Jonathan Blow said:
@Sephiroth_VII I believe release on Europe PSN is simultaneous with US PSN, or is supposed to be, but given that these are both big technical systems with lots of stuff happening on both sides, I dunno what that means in reality!
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It's coming out right before I leave in the morning. Maybe I'll buy it and start the download so that it is ready for later.
 
I'm actually flashing back to Indie Game the Movie and really, really hoping Sony has their shit together with launching this promptly and featuring it prominently on the store.

It was the main feature of The Drop, so it probably will have top billing on the PS store this week, but the fact that no one reached out to him to explain pre-orders...
 
toythatkills said:
If it's 6pm UK time on Steam, I'd expect about 8pm UK time on US PSN, and it's anyone's guess on EU PSN but typically they update around 10am, though I don't know if developers can request a later update or what.
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If it's 00:01 PST then it'll be up at 8am uk time tomorrow (on the US store)

I don't think I have credit on there though so might just wait for uk release
 
Hoping to add some more serial killer-like messages to the notepad I used while playing Fez.

QTfpN7L.png
 
Fireblend said:
It's like the first ~30 minutes of the game, but it tries to avoid actual spoilers, the puzzles shown are pretty tutorial-ish and seem to have no impact on the actual progression of the game. I'd just go in blind if you're that worried.
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Thanks. Nah, I'm not *that* worried, so will probably give it a watch a little later.
 
Meaty said:
Thats true for the exact criticisms you do, but not for the score.


As a critic, you must refrain from saying a puzzle game is too brain heavy, or saying a game like beyond two souls lacks gameplay shooting mechanics.

You must judge a game by what its trying to achieve in the way you formulate your criticisms, this way removing your biases on what you wanted the game to be, focusing on what it is. After that however, the score is completely subjective because its either: How well the critic believes the game fulfilled its goal OR How good the critic thinks the game is. Both are subjective and full of nuances you cant quantify or put in math terms.


Theres no simple thing as a "good puzzle game". Its all about wether the people and critics like it or not.
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You're right that the number will ultimately be a total, pure opinion. That's why I don't like individual review numbers (although it is interesting data when aggregated between all outlets, though still not that useful). The content I look for is the description of the game in the review article.

the thing is that theres no objective qualities. We deem things as qualities because they are things we like. Things we apreciate in our comsumption of media. A critic may think The Witness' lack of hand holding is an objective quality, while another critic may think a well done tutorial is something heavily needed in the game.

You read a review to see how good a person thinks a game is. If you wanted to read about all objective aspects of the game, you would read an essay on gameplay mechanics.
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Okay, maybe by objective qualities I should say MEASURABLE or descriptive qualities. Different people may eat a salty food and think it's delicious, awful, etc but you can at least measurably describe the salt. How salty is it?

Having said that, yes there are definitely qualities like that in video games that I expect a critic to remove their tastes from to describe adequately to the interested consumer. Is it a short or lengthy game? Does this vary or is it pretty consistent from player to player? Does the game have a lot of puzzles or not a lot of puzzles? What kind of puzzles? What kind of soundtrack does it have? Is there combat? What is it like? That kind of stuff. You don't have to like or dislike a game to descriptively answer those questions accurately.
 
TimeEffect said:
Who else is left? Wonder if it can climb to the clean 90
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Looking at Metacritic, of the outlets I'm familiar with, I notice that Jim Sterling, Edge Magazine, Polygon (theirs is up as 8/10 but not listed yet), USgamer (noted as in progress), The Guardian, Gametrailers (again up but not listed on Meta) and Kill Screen are missing.
 
The Lamp said:
You're right that the number will ultimately be a total, pure opinion. That's why I don't like individual review numbers (although it is interesting data when aggregated between all outlets, though still not that useful). The content I look for is the description of the game in the review article.




Okay, maybe by objective qualities I should say MEASURABLE or descriptive qualities. Different people may eat a salty food and think it's delicious, awful, etc but you can at least measurably describe the salt. How salty is it?

Having said that, yes there are definitely qualities like that in video games that I expect a critic to remove their tastes from to describe adequately to the interested consumer. Is it a short or lengthy game? Does this vary or is it pretty consistent from player to player? Does the game have a lot of puzzles or not a lot of puzzles? What kind of puzzles? What kind of soundtrack does it have? Is there combat? What is it like? That kind of stuff. You don't have to like or dislike a game to descriptively answer those questions accurately.
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Yeah, I can completely agree on what you just said.
 
I basically wrote off this game when it was announced, but I'm intrigued by the critical acclaim. Puzzle games have never been my preferred genre, but I'll be picking this up eventually.
 
The1Ski said:
Spoilery?
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I would say no. While they did show a couple areas I had not seen in trailers, I did not see anything at all that I would call a spoiler. They lead the review by saying everything they show is from very early in the game, in any event.

But if you are cautious, just listen to the audio; it's a good review.
 
This is going to be one of those games for me where I look at all the reviews and just scratch my head. Do not get the appeal here. Glad people are liking it though.
 
Nice review vid from GameTrailers but I have to give people a heads up: It shows a lot of stuff that Brad deliberately tried to avoid showing during the Giant Bomb quick look. Just new puzzle mechanics and some discoveries that might have more resonance when discovering on your own. By now I think people know to avoid videos like this if they prefer to be more surprised though.
 
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