It is great at what it does, only problem is, it does not try to do that much

User Rating: 7 | The Witness PC

The witness is a pure puzzle game. With over 500 “standard” puzzles and over 100 more “environmental” (hidden in the environment) puzzles it will keep you occupied for dozens of hours. If you are a puzzle fanatic, this is the game you have been looking for. If you are a more standard player just looking for a game, this might be acceptable, but it be missing a lot of features which is could have had. At several places in this review I might make a comparison with the puzzle game – Talos Principle – which I find of comparable genre (puzzle games), but overall I consider it superior to the The Witness. If you are an average gamer looking for a good puzzle game, try Talos first. Now to the game at hand.

Graphics 7/10

The witness takes place on an abandoned island. Now it is not only abandoned by humans (who all seem to have turned to stone), but by all manner of animals as well. It simply is completely and truly devoid of animal/human life, only plants left. So it is not possible to judge any human / animals models, as there are none. As to environmental graphics they are acceptable, but for year 2016 not really awesome. In comparison Talos despite also being “just” a puzzle game (instead of an AAA shooter) has better graphics.

Sound 4/10

The developers made a choice very early not to include music in the game as they wanted the abandoned island to be truly abandoned. This might create a good atmosphere in some parts of the game, but frankly most of the time this is just boring. They could have gone for a soft, quiet, dreary and mysterious soundtrack which would have captured the lonely atmosphere just fine, but, well, they didn’t. As to environmental sounds and puzzle sounds, they are few and far between. In all honestly I was not impressed with the sound part of the game.

Story 6/10

Fairly boring usual stuff. You are stuck on an abandoned island. There are recording around, but in vast majority they consist of quotes from famous people or books. There are a few hidden videos, yet again they don’t explain the predicament, but are interviews or parts of shows. A lot of times these are very long, like over 5 minute long and after a few of them you might get pretty bored. I know I did. The ending also does not explain anything, actually nothing at all happens. Only the “special” ending has some sort of implication, but again fails to explain anything properly.

Gameplay 8/10

As mentioned in the start, there are two types of puzzles. The “standard” puzzles are the usual ones. You usually get a sort of check-board where you need to trace a pattern / a line from one side to the other. It starts very simply, for ex. that you have to go through certain dots while doing so. But eventually it leads to complex puzzles for ex.: certain types of symbols have to be divided by a line so, that always 2 of each are on each side; other types of symbols have to be divided so that they are not together with equally colored symbols; sometimes you have to trace a pattern you get by looking around the environment, for ex. the how trees grow in the distance across the lake; at other times you will have to trace tetris patterns on the check-board; and yet at other times listen to prerecorded birds sounds and trace a pattern according to the tune; etc. Truly the author has been very inventive and there is a fair amount of different puzzles. If these 500+ puzzles are not enough you have over 100+ environmental puzzles, where you have to trace a such a pattern in the environment, for ex. in a river, usually looking from a very specific angle.

Yet, the problem is, this puzzling is all that the game does. There is no jump functionality for example, you cannot fall from a cliff and quicken your way down the mountain. You are able to run with SHIFT and it absolutely great to keep running all the time, but there is no auto-run option, so your pinky will be sore. It is stuff like this where you question yourself, yes the puzzles are great, but maybe if also the gameplay around them was through of, it could have been ideal.

Replay value 7/10

Well even if you finish this game, you can keep playing it to get all the puzzles and achievement, so replay value is there. However, the “special” ending I mentioned is not unlocked via completing all the puzzles in the game, which is a darn shame, and instead is hidden so that you might never find it, or find it randomly without any problems.

All in all the game is great at what it does – puzzles. But do not expect anything else from it, because it fails at anything else. If you are puzzle fanatic, go for it, if you are an average bloke, then go for it if you are in the mood for puzzles, if you aren’t in that mood particularly, give the game Talos principle a try first. It’s more easily digestible.