re: Anyone picking up The Witness tomorrow?

Hmm, I'm getting a little annoyed. I think I'm doing some of these puzzles right.

I downloaded it yesterday and played it for a couple of hours. I'm enjoying it so far but nothing has blown we away yet, at least not in the way Braid almost immediately did. However, this game seems much more ambitious than Braid, so I'm not ready to say one is better than the other. This is also a straight up puzzle game, whereas Braid was equal parts platformer and puzzler. So, if you don't like puzzle games, I haven't seen anything thus far in "The Witness" that will change your mind on them.

Things I like so far:
- The graphics. They're beautiful, but anyone who's seen a screenshot knows that.
- The way the puzzles slowly teach you the rules of the world and build on one another. You'll come across puzzles that you have no clue how to solve and then return to them later because now you know what the puzzle is asking of you based on other things you went and solved. Obviously, countless games do this with items or character abilities (Zelda, Metroid, and loads of RPG's) but this game does it with your growing knowledge of the world.
- The quality of the puzzles. I know many have said, "LOL - prettiest game of snake ever" but it is impressive the ways a relatively simple maze can be iterated on. I was going to explain some examples here but changed my mind because I don't want to spoil anything for anyone. I'll just say that I haven't felt like, "Ugh, I'm tired of doing these line mazes"...at least not yet.
-The quantity of puzzles. There are SO MANY puzzles. If you get stumped on something, there are probably at least 10 - 20 other ones you can go try. Compare this to something like Portal (one of my favorite games ever) where if you can't solve the puzzle you can't advance the game, and this is a nice change.

Things I dislike so far:
- I'm playing this on PS4 and I wish the cursor sensitivity was higher. There's no way to change it in the options, though. I'd like to be able to look around faster.
- The audio logs you can find. My position may change on this but so far I've found about 5 or 6 of them and they all seem really disconnected with no unifying theme. I have to believe that will change as I find more, but I have a fear they won't or I won't find enough of them to piece the story together. And that's my other complaint. The maze puzzles themselves are sometimes hidden but easy to spot. The audio logs, however, are really tiny (like the size of a thumb drive) and sometimes hidden in the most obscure locations.

I've typed up enough but I may share more as I play if there seems to be any interest on this board.

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Other than the cursor is the PS4 version fine? Or is this a PC game?

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Other than the cursor being a little slow for looking around, I haven't seen anything that would make me recommend buying it on PC over PS4. I haven't seen any framerate issues and I have difficulty imagining the game looking better than it does given the art style that was chosen.

I wish Blow would get over his grudge with Microsoft and release it on Xbox. I really want to play this and it's my only outlet.

Played about 4 hours last night.

I am having a great time but also am frustrated. I like the idea of a the puzzles, but some of them are not well executed or at least they are cheap difficult. Like the puzzles with the shade from other objects in the orange tree area. I figured out what the puzzle was but trying to basically count pixels to figure out where I should/shouldn't travel with my cursor is frustrating.

I also had to get over my OCD about completing every part in order...I walk away from some puzzles almost twitching because I want to figure them out, but have no idea how.

Not much needs to be said about the graphics, they are great...love the art style and the amount of color.

I have only found 2 "flash drive" type things and have no idea what it all means, but I am intrigued with the whole pointing all the light beams at the one location, assuming it will unlock/reveal something.

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I wish Blow would get over his grudge with Microsoft and release it on Xbox.

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I know he denied it recently, but I suspect it will eventually make it's way to Xbox One, not to mention every platform that can support it.

I haven't made it to the sound puzzles yet.

Do you find that if you explore farther away from the starting point that puzzles get more "difficult" or at least you have to have learned more from previous puzzles, since they seem to build on each other?

I ask because I have explored quite a bit of area but haven't gotten to this sound puzzle area you are speaking of...at the same time I have been to the shade puzzles which are relatively close to the start and IMO not too terribly hard.

I also want to keep exploring but again, I am OCD, so if I somehow find a easy set of puzzles on the other side of the map I almost don't want to do them yet, even though I maybe should to learn a new puzzle type which may help me with puzzles closer to where I started.

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I'll also add, one of the worst feelings in this game is when you solve a puzzle but have no idea why that solution worked. I came across a few like that, which I can only assume were there to teach me a concept beyond what I'm able to grasp at the moment.

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Yeah, that is happened to me quite a few times. Then when I came across a similiar puzzle later on, I failed miserably, making it even more frustrating.

I got into the building where puzzles have that little kinda tri-corner mark on them. I solved about 3 and thought I was getting the hang of it until I just hit a complete fricking wall. Apparently I just got lucky or unknowingly brute forced my way through.

I've completed the shady trees and the keep hedges so far. Haven't explored much beyond the things listed here. I love the game so far.

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I got into the building where puzzles have that little kinda tri-corner mark on them.

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I've seen those but haven't attempted them yet.

Last night I completed the sound based puzzles, which I enjoyed (Myst had a very similar puzzle) but felt could have been a little better designed. There's an element to them that's just a little frustrating and unnecessary, imo.

After completing those, I wandered into an area that seemed to serve no purpose, but it was graphically distinct from everything around it, so that didn't seem right. Then I discovered something that sort of blew my mind and now I'm looking at the game in a totally different way. I don't want to say more, because discovering it on your own is so satisfying. I took what I learned from that experience and returned to a few areas then made my way over by the orange trees and unlocked a path to what looks like a quarry.

I still don't know if I like it more than Braid, which is admittedly a silly comparison, but I'm liking it more each time I play it.

ETA: I've found that using your phone's camera and a notebook for sketches is essential.