Look, there are a lot of great games this year. Doom,
Hitman, Rise of the Tomb Raider, just to name a few. But, there is only one
game for me that really stands above the rest as something really special.
The Witness is a game that drops
you straight in. There is no cut scene, there is no exposition, it just plonks
you into a corridor and lets you work it out for yourself. There are a few
games that do this, think Limbo and Inside for example, but none that do it
with quite so much style.
I don’t know if it is something
to do with it being first person, or because the art style looks so bloody
great, but this is a world that I immediately want to explore.
The game gently leads you from
one puzzle to the next without you feeling like you are being forced down one
specific path, and the clues it gives you, if any at all, are so subtle that
sometimes you can be staring at the screen for half an hour before you notice
what suddenly seems so obvious.
It is a difficult game to sell
anyone on without giving away the answers to some of the puzzles, but I do have
to mention the ruined temple in the sand. I was in there for an hour before I
worked it out, and when I did I felt like the cleverest (most clever?) arse in
the world.
How can a game that is pretty
much just thousands and thousands of line puzzles be fun? It just is. Play it,
love it, accept it. And if you don’t love it then that’s okay. This is my game
of the year so far because only two games left me with an actual fully formed
smile on my face. Doom was the other one. But I can’t play that anymore because
I am stuck in hell and just keep dying, because I’m not actually that good at
playing games. But The Witness? The Witness I can play.
Will it stay my game of the year?
We’ll see what happens when Call of Duty comes out. I haven’t really enjoyed a
CoD game since Modern Warfare 2, but I have a sneaking suspicion this year is
going to be something quite special… Oh and Forza Horizon 3.
Anyway, I’m going to go and play
ReCore now. I’ve heard it’s a big pile of wank, but people said that about
Sunset Overdrive and I really enjoyed it. Byyeee!!
