The Witness

The Witness is going to be a special review.  This is a game so far from my comfort zone that I almost didn't download and play it.  The only thing that drew my attention was the beautiful scenery similar to what you see above.  At the very least I thought I'd just have a relaxing walk through and take some screen shots for my Xbox backgrounds and I'd be done.  I didn't have high expectations going into the game which may be why I was so surprised once I started playing.

The Bad:

No directions - So you can literally go anywhere on the map after the first bit of puzzles and there is no real direction. You don't even have an idea of what the purpose of your character is.

Puzzles - Yes the game is built on puzzles but without directions you don't know where to start or what the puzzles require, which again, yes, I know that's part of the game.  But when I'm meandering about and I run into a puzzle with black and white dots all over and 100 squares and no idea how to active the puzzle that causes some issues.  There are also no hints on the more difficult puzzles which means you may get to a certain part and then never pass it.

Difficulty - Not gonna lie there were times I had to look up the answers to the puzzles on Google because the way you solve the puzzle is a bit ridiculous.  Cool, but how in the world would I even think to do some of these things.

You can't die - Can't walk off a ledge, no fast travel, no bad guys. So it feels a bit slow and monotonous at times.

The logic is strong with this one - Seriously the level of awareness and dot connecting (pun intended) is surprising and confusing at times.  You'll have times where you were like "I don't know why I did that but it worked" and times like "I can't believe that's what I was supposed to do".  The game makes you feel like an idiot and a genius at the same time.

The Good:

It's beautiful - Again it's one of the main things I require of a game, and in this game's instance, it is the only reason I even downloaded the game. The scenery is done in an interesting way not photo realistic but bright vibrant colors and beautiful shadows and reflections. Even if you aren't great at puzzles download this game and just admire the beauty.

The puzzles - I wrote them as a bad but if you manage to find your way to the first set of puzzles they tend to work you up to a higher level of difficulty.  They span a range for your senses, meaning they require audio, visual, or symbolic understanding to solve, others where you have to bend or break preconceived rules, and others yet that require imagination and geometry to solve.  Again you'll feel like a genius when you solve something but an idiot if you can't figure something out.  I would suggest having a pen and paper near by as they do come in handy.

The mystery - Again part of the bad of this game but also part of the good.  Your character starts in a cave and makes their way out to a beautiful landscape, but you do not see anyone else around.  Your first couple of puzzles you don't see people and if you go in a particular direction away from the town you won't see anyone again.  However once you reach the town you will start to realize something terrible has happened and even though you are in this amazing nature filled area, you start noticing people have been turned to stone.  The game centers on you sort of figuring out what happened.

The coop - I can't play this game alone.  I do fine with most of the puzzles but when it comes to memorizing, my brain just doesn't work that way. Enter my wife.  She's a genius and she can solve most of the puzzles I can't and she doesn't seem to hate doing so.

Surprisingly fun - I really didn't think I would play this game for very long, but it was hard to put down.  There were frustrating parts and exciting aspects as you figure things out or change landscapes. Overall though it had a good balance of easy to increasingly difficult puzzles and is worth your time.  It may even make you feel less guilty about playing a video game as I would put this on par with doing a Sudoku or a Crossword puzzle.  Easy-Hard difficulties.  Great for preparing for a GRE for all my higher ed friends.