“Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving too readily, we can be badly hurt."

There are a rare number of games that manage to make me feel ultimately conflicted. The Witness manages this throughout the duration of its playtime. It is somehow flirting between being simultaneously creative and frustrating. Is it brilliance or pretention? Who can say really, all I know is this game was equally both with its various challenges and ideas. While I laud the ability to use a single concept in such a multi-faceted manner as to make hundreds of possible puzzles out of, I must say it comes with a drawback as well. A simplicity that can be boiled down to it being the same idea over and over just repackaged. Combined with inadequate conveyance of the rules, or clearly interfering with the rules to just make things complicated, asinine, and more tedious than clever. This Witness struggles to stay consistent. For every A-hah moment you have, you will be trumped by nonsensical clues that take far longer to work out yourself than is enjoyable. While I wholly respect the intention, I felt the execution wasn't up to snuff. The thread of your experience will hinge on these purposeful choices. I found it to be a headache from a logical design aspect, and normally when I came to what conclusion was the correct one, I just felt bitter. The beauty of simplicity is lost when you decisively overcomplicate it for needless padding and roadblocks. For every solution only more, and more and more. No great reward lies beyond it all, unless the answer is your greatest satisfaction.

We hereby award: The Bronze Seal of Recognition