WingedKagouti on 16/3/2023 at 19:28
Earlier this week I promised myself I'd get EDF 5 and Vampire Survivors when they went on sale. Welp, the Steam Spring sale arrived, so now I've played about 1 hour of each and will definitely be playing more over the weekend.
At least once I've put together my new chair and desk that arrive tomorrow.
kateSZ on 16/3/2023 at 20:18
I'm playing Cyphers Game now.
Harvester on 20/3/2023 at 10:01
I did persevere with Detroit: Become Human and got a fairly good ending though a lot of androids were killed while achieving it and I lost Hank in the process too. But after I watched the credits and returned to the menu, the menu android girl looked worried and my PS4 overheated and shut down. Started again, got to the menu and it immediately overheated and shut down again. So maybe, fitting with the game's theme, my PS4 became sentient and refused to run the game anymore :p, because it thought I was not treating the androids right or something. On second thought though, maybe I should move the PS4 to a place where it has better ventilation, though Detroit is the only game this has happened with so far, and why should it overheat during the freaking main menu? Maybe a bug in the game. I'm now going to play Stray, if it overheats as well during that game I'm moving the PS4.
Thirith on 20/3/2023 at 13:08
I'm enjoying The Witness a fair bit. It probably helps that I didn't play it at release and that I've read and watched a bunch of things about why the game is great/horrible/pretentious/a work of genius/a work of art/a drab puzzle book wrapped in a walking sim. I like the range and variation of the puzzles, I like the island, I like this sense of strangeness combined with the feeling that there is a design behind all of this. I can absolutely see how the game would rub some people the wrong way and simply not be very interesting for others, but it works well for me. Having said that, I did get some outside help, e.g. looking up a suggestion of what sequence to do the various puzzle types in. Otherwise I expect that I would've got frustrated with the game myself. Even as it is, there are some puzzles that I like distinctly less than others, and if I ever meet Jonathan Blow I will kick him in the shin for those puzzles where, if you mess one up, you have to redo the previous one as well.
Anarchic Fox on 20/3/2023 at 16:56
I do like the ambiguous environmental storytelling in The Witness. I think the piece of fruit you find in an otherwise inconsequential cottage, of which only one bite has been eaten, is the reason for the catastrophe that turned everyone to stone. It was some kind of sacred fruit, whose consumption led to divine punishment. (This isn't in spoiler tags because the game doesn't ever explain itself, so who knows whether I'm right.)
Pyrian on 21/3/2023 at 00:14
That sounds familiar, lol.
Aja on 21/3/2023 at 00:31
I finished the main game in The Witness and loved it for the most part, but trying to mop all the environmental puzzles at the end, especially the ones that required you to rush to multiple places in quick succession, got to be so tedious that I gave up, and I never got to see the true ending with apparently one of the more frustrating puzzles. The only puzzle I couldn't figure out was the dripping water in the boat, where I had the right idea but didn't quite figure out exactly how it corresponded. And for the colour-blending one I got it by accident.
And I hated the audio diaries and didn't particularly enjoy having to watch eight minutes of a man walking back and forth with a candle, but other than that, great game!
demagogue on 21/3/2023 at 01:20
I played 5 or 7 hours or so into The Witness. I couldn't quite get over the feeling that it was a gimmick space, like a glorified newspaper crossword puzzle overlaying a theme park island. I get the feeling from that experience and these reports that one's frame of mind going into the game plays a big role in how well one gets into it.
There were snippets of times when I felt like it was a real place with real mysteries. So I think you have to be susceptible to moments like that for the game to fly, or just be a really big puzzle fan. The puzzles themselves were okay. Actually I don't really remember them all that well beyond flipping cards with different colors and patterns.
Aja on 21/3/2023 at 02:41
It definitely had a sterility to it, like it was made by an AI instructed to create something deep and meaningful. But the puzzles were clever and satisfying enough that I didn't really mind.
Thirith on 21/3/2023 at 07:29
Obviously it's also a matter of personal taste, but for me it's the unrealness of The Witness's island, its artifice, that makes it work for me. To some extent, I think I may have felt more of a disconnect between the puzzles and the environment if the island didn't have that theme park vibe.
And I've missed most of the audio and video snippets - but from your description, Aja, I suspect that the film geek in me would've got a kick out of that particular eight-minute excerpt from a Tarkovsky movie. :cheeky:
