Recent reviews by Type Writer

I bought it because it was on sale a couple days ago, but I'm getting a refund.

It's mostly just janky. I think this game would be significantly better without the random element of the sloppy physics system, but I acknowledge that's why a lot of people are interested in it, because it leads to a lot of wacky "whoops I threw my pan full of food across the room!" which is exemplified and encouraged by the "total chaos" optional DLC. I was kind of hoping to use this game as an actual simulator, to learn and practice cooking meals with which I had very little experience, as well as demonstrate cooking those meals to friends, but that's not the experience this game provides.

I mostly messed around in sandbox, making a couple meals I knew by heart, and found them extremely difficult to replicate within the game's systems. Meat doesn't dice properly, moving food from one plate/pan to another is a struggle, and the actual cooking mechanic is bad and doesn't make much sense. Different foods seem to cook at different speeds, and I couldn't tell if that was meant to encourage adding more of the faster-cooking food so that food type matched the others, or if I was supposed to cook ingredients separately and then plate them together by the end. When I tossed a bunch of diced chicken into a pan to cook, three of the pieces just refused to cook at all, and remained raw in a pan full of otherwise-cooked chicken?

I had no inclination to try out the campaign mode, considering the core gameplay was this imprecise. I don't want to do all of this fiddly stuff under time pressure, otherwise I might as well go back working a food service job. Best leave this game to wacky screaming youtubers.

I've never felt like I've been condescended to by a video game itself before. I've been condescended to by writers of video games, and characters in those games, but in this one it feels like the game itself is laughing at me. And I hate it.

"Ohohoho! My game is too artsy to have things like tutorials or clear explanations of the rules of my puzzles! Learn by trial and error! What's that? You wanted a clear explanation of how you solved that puzzle, so you have a better idea of how to solve the next one? Or were you hoping to perhaps get some story and some context for why you are on this island, solving inane line-and-dot puzzles and shooting lasers everywhere? No, I'm going to read out a quote from an astronaut for five minutes. Have fun trying to understand how this is in any way relevant to what you're doing!"

I understand and I appreciate the concept that it's going for; you unlock the map and solve puzzles by learning how to solve them, what can be changed, what the rules are, et cetera. But Outer Wilds did that a hundred times better, not only by actually explaining each one of those wildly different puzzle elements in every case, but by also giving you fun flight mechanics, lovable characters, interesting and interactive environments, and actual gameplay.

The Witness is a walking simulator with one basic puzzle that it iterates on "500+" times, and it thinks it's Myst. It will waste your time. This entire sentence in the store description is a BIZARRE LIE: "There's no filler; each of those puzzles brings its own new idea into the mix." If you really want to see more about this game, or see an analysis of it, or know what's going on in this game, go watch a playthrough, or one of the dozen video essays about this game. Don't buy it, or if you do, get ready to refund it after you check out.

Make colony. Colonists go insane from eating without tables. Everyone dies.
Download mods. Avali Colonists go insane from eating Piru Noodles without tables. Everyone dies in new and interesting ways with ridiculous tesla weaponry.
9/10, go nuts with mods. Devs should add Z-levels into the core game so it becomes the full sci-fi Dwarf Fortress experience.

Fun game, but entirely too much time spent listening to the story through audio logs as you do so, and they spend so long building up to a wet fart of a conclusion to the story through said audio logs that it feels wasted. I wish you could play through this for the first time without them playing automatically, because the gameplay itself is really fun, sprinting at ludicrious speed through incredibly pretty environments. Personally, I feel like this would have lead to a much more interesting story, as instead of having them automatically spoon-fed to you, you could have just been left to speculate on the nature of everything in the game, or perhaps fewer audio logs in general would have struck a good balance.

Special highlights go to the first three-fourths of the Soma Core level, where you're sprinting at absolutely top speed down electric rails that are arcing and sparking as you leap impossible distances across underground crevasses. It feels amazing, especially with the soundtrack behind you in those moments.

Interesting story, but buried under a horrific slog of grinding, repetitive side missions, pointless side activities and incredibly fragile cinematic main missions. Watch a movie version or Let's Play on youtube, you'll have the best experience. The Online isn't worth it either, unless you like grinding even harder to unlock the Heists and have three friends to do them with, or want to pay to do them immediately.

What an utterly hilarious game! Achievements are still a little buggy (but who needs 'em, eh?) And this was just a great ride all the way through!