I've been looking forward to playing Outer Wilds ever since it came out, I heard pretty much everyone who played it say that it would change your life and I didn't exactly go in with those expectations, but I thought it would be my kind of thing! I have played a good few hours of it now and bounced off it eventually each time, it's probably just not for me! I am not rating the game however because my issues with it are more to do with me than the game. I wasn't interested in reading the Nomai transcripts, I didn't feel like I had a reason to care about what happened to them, nor did I want to find out why it happened. I liked the little puzzles and discovering new things, but the reward was always a little bit more Nomai dialogue. I realised at a certain point that the game was reminding me of my job as a Tech Support wanker. I worked in a job before where each problem we were dealing with we had to resolve in 20 minutes or we needed to escalate it to a different member of the team, so naturally I got quite good at gleaning the relevant information I needed from an email or phone call about an issue as quickly as i could, discarding whatever additional fluff there was and then trying out a few ideas as to what might solve this persons problem, hopefully fix it somehow and then move onto the next one. A lot of the time it was systems I was unfamililar with and I'd just have to try and work it out during this timeframe, basically throwing your head against this alien technology until you can just about get it to work. It got to the point where you don't really care what the problem is or what is going on, just how to make it stop or go away. The outer wilds has a lot more going on than just seeing an email from Wendy again saying that the software she uses isn't working properly and then trying to work out what's going on (puzzle), while basically filtering out any superfluous information that she gives (plot) but it made me feel like I was at work enough to really grind my gears. It's clearly a brilliantly designed thing, of the stuff I found in my few hours with it I really enjoyed the statue workshop and the caverns on the planet that was slowly being filled up with sand. Unfortunately no matter how hard I tried I couldn't help but feel like I was just doing my day job and you know what, fuck that

Reviewed on Feb 22, 2024


3 Comments


2 months ago

man don't force yourself to play a game. I appreciate this kind of games but it's just not for me.

2 months ago

yes ! play for enjoy ! i like you review !

2 months ago

I had a similar experience where I heard so many good things about it, only to eventually realize this game just wasn't for me. I like exploring, but the lack of direction was just frustrating to me rather than rewarding.