One of my first reviews was Antichamber. It was an immersive, first person game that for some reason was fascinated by line-puzzles even whilst it was breaking the conventions of gaming. A perfect metaphor would be if people used advanced sonar technology to play Pong- OHWAIT.
The Witness, available on the PC and PS4, comes from the developer of Braid; which, whilst being a good game, was often too clever for its own good. You really had to have a walk-through at hand if you wanted to get through the game before the weekend was up. I also became annoyed by how the game used time to fiddle around with blocks and enemies when on the side it was also completely tearing down the typical 'rescue the princess' narrative. These two elements just didn't seem related, compared to Dark Souls where the game was driving towards one whole.
The game is about...um...I don't know. You play as...someone who is on a quest to do...something. There are scattered audio-logs lying around, but these are exceptionally vague and only really serve to de-construct games with random audio-logs lying around. Like Braid, it's an element that just doesn't seem related to anything. Not to mention these logs are tiny. I went for a whole two hours without finding any because they're so small and blend in with the detailed environment. The game is trying to hide these logs from you, but when you find them it seems like you should've just left them alone.
The game not wanting you to complete it seems to be a theme. Once you've solved the first puzzle and the island is opened up to you then that's it in terms of hand-holding. You can run around in circles for five hours before shutting the game off and you'd know just as much. I appreciate the open-ended nature of all this, but you could at least give us a gentle spank in the right direction. The very first area you come across is the last area you can complete because it relies on puzzles you've done earlier. You have to go right to the corner of the map to find the one section you can complete in one go without needing to backtrack, because the game has pretensions to 'Metroidvania'-style gameplay in that if you get stuck in one area then you can go to another and come back later.
The difference between Metroid Prime and this however is that it's entirely possible to run around the map without finding any puzzle you can solve. Again I bring up Antichamber because there were several times where I was completely flummoxed due to every option bringing up a dead end. Some of the puzzles require an entire lesson to get a grip of. I never thought I would be begging for a tutorial, but this reminds me of the time I jumped into Microsoft Flight Simulator without bothering to learn the controls - which went as well as you can imagine.
And the puzzles are all variants on the same thing: lines. You draw lines. Sometimes you walk around, but your walking to the next line puzzle. The first thing you do is draw a line, and the last thing you do is draw a line - which is precisely the last thing you want to spend all your time looking at. You have this vibrant, meditative 3D world open up to you, and the developers want you to place your head down and do those maze-puzzles. The developers are clearly those kind of people who play Candy Crush whilst at the Louvre.
This would work in a The Stanley Parable sense; if the object of the game was to not play the game yet by not playing the game you're denying yourself content. But all these line puzzles are key to progressing. If you don't like those hideous logic puzzles your Maths teacher threw at you during the last lesson of the year because the DVD player wasn't working then this really isn't the game for you.
The best puzzles by far are the ones where you must use the environment around you to trace it. My favourite section is the sun temple where you need to use a combination of reflections and sunlight to find the outlines. It starts simple before adding layer upon layer until eventually you're doing some tricky stuff. I managed to complete this section without a walkthrough and I felt so proud of myself...even though this was probably the simplest puzzle in the game. It pleasantly reminded me of Portal in how you begin by interacting with the environment but then you're given the ability to manipulate the environment to explore new possibilities.
In the process I became aware of the environment itself. The theme of an ancient Egypt archaeological site appealed to me greatly in this section, and I began to wonder how it came about. Who erected a site around it? It looks only part complete, so did they abandon it? Is it just falling apart? Who put all these technologically advanced puzzles there? Who locked this ancient ruin out when it's clearly been abandoned for so long? Why use it when anything of value in this temple seems to have been taken away?
I never felt this with any other puzzle, because I'm not looking at the environment; I have my head down in front of a line. Sometimes I would be treated at the end of it to a door opening or a bit of the environment opening up to me...but it just lead to more line puzzles. It's a never-ending spiral of line puzzles. There are no answers to anything other than the puzzles. The game itself isn't one big puzzle, rather it's an endless selection of mini-puzzles that ultimately lead to a really disappointing and vague conclusion. Do not try and get the 'joke' ending, because it'll make you punch the screen.
It's not a meditative experience because it's too brain-teasing - or rather, brain-military-drilling. There's this great flash game called The Loops of Zen (play it here) where you do a series of puzzles with a similar aesthetic to the line puzzles - but these are simple, therapeutic puzzles. They work to the simple goal of leaving no loose ends left. Everything must join up. It's mindless satisfaction as you face an infinite series of problems that involve de-cluttering the screen. Your brain wanders as you play it, and you sink into a half-asleep state as you relax. It takes up just enough brainpower to keep your attention, but not enough to challenge you. That is meditative. This isn't. This feels like the final exam to a four year university degree that I've only just joined.
Perhaps the best and worst part of this is that if you use a walk-through then the game is completely ruined. Whilst that's probably the case with any walk-through, this game is all about learning. You need to start off with the basics in order to understand the more complicated puzzles and adapt. You need to master each and every single mechanic introduced because this variation of the line puzzle is guaranteed to show up somewhere else in another variation.
This is precisely like being back at school. You can copy the person next to you, you can scrape your way through the end of week tests, but if you don't pay attention and just pretend to know everything then come the exams you're going to take a worse beating than Julius Caesar on the Ides of March. And whilst I applaud the game for structuring itself as thus...I hate school. I don't want to feel like I'm back at school. I've already done all that. I worked so hard for my Maths GCSE not so I could take this knowledge into the world, but so that I never had to do an equation ever again. The last thing I want to do when playing a game is to feel like I'm back at school being forced to master a complex skill that'll never lead to anything and that I never intend to use again.
It's interesting I bring up Portal, as Portal worked so well because it begins as a puzzle game but as you solve puzzles and progress then the scope begins to open. Context builds around your actions as it's clear you're part of something much bigger. The Witness is the opposite: the game starts off with plenty of possibilities open to you, but as you play this all narrows down. After the first hour of playing, I stopped and asked: "Is this it? Is this all just a variation of one static puzzle?" Yes. Yes it is.
In the end, the game is just piddling around. I suppose you could argue that all of gaming is just piddling around. Since when has reaching level 50 in Skyrim changed you as a person? But games are all about exploring something, be it an environment, our skill, or our minds. And you can only explore by doing. The puzzles in The Witness are just distractions, rather than the core of the game.
Again, if this was intentional like The Stanley Parable then bravo. But The Stanley Parable worked so well because of how short and easy to complete it was. If it was any longer or any more challenging then the ultimate message/joke would've become stale. In this regard: The Witness is staler than bread that's become a mushroom farm.
If you're a dedicated puzzle gamer who goes into this expecting a hardcore puzzle game, then go for it. Me? The obtuse-ness just isn't justified, and if you're any other kind of gamer then prepare to rage-quit after an hour.
