#The witness achievements simulator

It’s not bad sign, just a touch weak especially when there’s only the simplistic gameplay to keep up with. As you approach them, you realize how ordinary the pieces are that make up a lovely image rather than how intricate the detail is.

That’s not to say there are not beautiful vistas and locations to explore and see, but many of them feel like they’re mirages. I won’t talk about the tricks with the environments but while it’s a cool trick the graphics just don’t feel up to where they could have been outside of those. There are some interesting tricks with the graphics and when the game pulls this off, the graphics are impressive, the problem is that the graphics become a mixture between impressive and dull. Maybe there was an attempt to stylize the graphics and I can see that almost, but at the same time, the graphics tend to feel a bit flat. In fact, I would honestly say The Witness wasn’t even impressive in 2016 and the fact is it almost feels like a lack of effort.

It’s not ugly, but after playing Obduction, there’s a definite step up in the graphics between the two games. The one thing I noticed as I played the Witness this time is that graphically, The Witness is not that impressive. When I finished the review of Obduction I had a feeling that it was somewhat similar in a few ways to The Witness, so I wanted to go back and replay The Witness and see if it lived up to what I remembered.

#The witness achievements simulator

In fact, I only chose to replay this game because of another “Walking simulator puzzle game” Obduction. There is quite a lot to see and explore but it’s all about that experience of walking to the next location or finding that next puzzle.

In The Witness, you solve puzzles, but for the most part you need to find those puzzles, you do this by walking around and exploring. I previously have talked about walking simulators on my reviews, and while a lot of people use that term in a negative facet for games, thinking it demeans the contributions of the game, I like the idea of a walking simulator because it illustrates what the gameplay will be like. The problem is it’s not really like Braid, though I don’t think it ever was promised to be like his previous game. He took interesting puzzles with simplistic controls, mostly feeling like you’re tracing a line on a piece of paper, and adding a walking simulator around it. In truth, Jonathan Blow and his team just produced an amazingly solid and unique puzzle game. Fans of Braid wanted to see how The Witness created a similar experience. Sadly, I think there was a bit of build up to it, in that people expected some groundbreaking experience. It’s a puzzle game and it’s as simple as that. To be honest I played The Witness at launch in 2016 on PS4, and had a rather good time with it. A couple of years later Jonathan Blow returned with his new game The Witness. Rather than simply focusing on beating levels, there were puzzles interspersed with the levels and it created a rather novel and unique experience beyond just getting to the end of each level. Jonathan Blow was the lead designer of Braid, an excellent puzzle platformer of a very unique style. Also Available on Xbox One, macOS, iOS, and Nvidia Shield.