Review: The Witness

Developer: Thekla Inc
Publisher: Thekla Inc

Posted by Brad T on February 26th, 2016 | 4 Comments | Tags: The Witness

Everyone’s raving over The Witness. I don’t get The Witness. First things first, The Witness is absolutely captivating to look at. It’s a feast. I want to see this in VR and just walk around the island. Completely absolutely stunning. Super immersive. Huge. Varied. Ambiance. Mysterious.

Know what isn’t stunning? Removing me from the greatest looking video game I’ve ever seen and making me stare at a grid to solve a snake puzzle. Then making me repeat that 600+ times. So obviously, got to recommend that you find out if you actually like these types of puzzles before playing. Now I’ll fess up, I didn’t hate them all. I enjoyed the ones that involved the beautiful environment that I kept wanting to stare at, those I found quite interesting. The majority I found aggravating or boring. I can recognize this game just may not have been for me.

Maybe I’m being too cruel to a puzzle game. The puzzles are all beatable. Some may require pictures or hand-drawn maps. Some are satisfying. But then again, maybe I’m not being cruel enough. I found the experience about as thrilling as a sudoku book. The Witness is a 40 dollar Sudoku book…of tetromino puzzles. If you like tetromino puzzles, or snake puzzles, or mazes, or hedge mazes, or shadow puzzles, by all means, jump in. Drawing lines with a controller wasn’t an other-worldly experience. It just made me wish I was playing this on a tablet. It’s only the pretty wrapper that’s making me give this above a 50%.

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here.