I have a high tolerance bar for repetition, trial and error, and so on, but Outer Wilds really got to me in ways that few other games do. And that was the last thing I expected of it. Okay, there's a time loop, but they add more time limits on top through an oxygen meter, a fuel gauge, crumbling environments, sand pouring in to close off areas and various scheduled events -- almost every planet has an additional internal timer of some sort. Compounding this, the game doesn't shy away from immediate failure states, requiring you to start over and regularly wait out another timer. It is so punishing for no apparent reason other than to further gamify what otherwise largely amounts to a "walking sim". I sorely missed mechanics that mitigated repetition (beyond taking a power nap), which can be found in games as old as Majora's Mask or as recent as Minit. At times, it feels as if Outer Wilds is not confident that its ideas can be compelling enough to stand on their own without these layers of challenge.

At a conceptual level, Outer Wilds does incredible things. However, my experience was that I was way into everything but playing it. I usually enjoy simply walking around in games like this -- exploration is fun to me in and of itself. Why they found it necessary to add pseudo-survival layers to it, I do not understand. It makes the play more explicitly gamey, sure, but the gauge and time management were not additive to me.

I feel like there needed to be further incentives on the other end and preferably more than notes with lots of proper nouns in them. I spent roughly seventeen hours to complete the game and encountered around three explicit puzzles. I wanted a more meaningful drive to push forward beyond a trail of notes with some exposition; I hoped for more interesting moments rooted in gameplay as I got further, but what I got were largely... notes. There were also stunning environments, which normally I would've found sufficient, but, as I said, I felt unable to fully enjoy them because of doom clocks, survival layers and the specter of repetition.

This also brings me to my greatest surprise: Outer Wilds doesn't really have puzzles as such, despite others describing it as a puzzle-exploration game. In my experience, it's mostly a quest to find a number of keys to open locks, whereby the keys are coded as knowledge (or, inaccurately, "clues"). Because that knowledge is often so singular in its use, there was little more puzzling needed than literally doing the thing a note told you to do. It rarely asks you to apply knowledge in creative ways and synthesize conclusions about mechanics on your own. That's what makes a puzzle to me -- not a binary state of being in the dark about something until learning exactly how it works.

Sometimes, if the game hasn’t yet spelled it out a dozen times yet, you can get a little creative but more often than not the game won't give you the chance to, so the end result is a game generally wanting in what I expect of puzzles. The amount of times this game circles around a certain phenomenon that you could conceivably figure out within less than an hour of playing is emblematic of the game's puzzle philosophy. There is a general lack of confidence in the player’s interpretive abilities and an overeagerness to show you new cool stuff at the cost of a more organic mode of play. And while there's a case to be made that you can experiment in certain situations, that once again leads me back to my initial point about the time loop making it frustrating, because each attempt is going to be prefaced by the dead air of redoing the steps you took to get to wherever you were previously.

Much of the game’s narrative is told through various types of notes that you pick up along your travels. An uninteresting and tired delivery system thereof, in my opinion, and the sheer number of notes you come across is overbearing. The time spent casually reading them also feels at odds with the sense of urgency otherwise pressing down on you, even though time stops as you do so -- a rare compromise for this game that begs the question why this wasn't extended to other areas of its design. Because the game has little sense of economy of information, I was grateful that the computer on your spaceship keeps track of notes and draws connections for you. Yet, I can imagine a version of this game that exercised more restraint and asked you to organically make those connections yourself. I think I may have enjoyed that more. But Outer Wilds often doesn't trust the player enough to allow for things like this.

At a more fundamental level, the spaceship and character controls can be a pain, but, okay, it's space -- fine. Accurately confounding. There are also things like the button layout being unintuitive. For a game without seriously disruptive technical issues, too often it "felt" bad when playing. It made basic things more difficult than I wanted them to be when I was already prickly about friction elsewhere.

There are many interesting concepts here, but for some reason it really makes it painful to get to them, and (the payoff of) cool concepts alone don't make a game for me. The "in between" needs to be compelling too. I think of experiences like The Witness, FEZ and The Stanley Parable in comparison to this, and they all have elements in common with Outer Wilds. Yet they have things like brevity or satisfying moment-to-moment mechanics to make for more well-rounded experiences. It has a bit of all of those games in its DNA, but Outer Wilds doesn't come together as neatly.

The coup de grace to my goodwill was delivered by its pre-ending sequence, which is one of the most profoundly disruptive things I've played in a long time. It combines the two factors I disliked most about the game in a neat package: timers and instant death states. As a result, I couldn't quite settle into the ending the way I'd have wanted to. And those closing moments were truly inspired at times, evoking a pitch perfect sense of fear and awe of the unknown -- something the game has a general vibe of throughout and is its greatest achievement, and it really shines in the end. However, the meat of the game being so unpalatable to me wasn't offset by audiovisual spectacles like these. It didn't redeem, justify or override all of that suddenly.

It's clear that players with different sensibilities than mine will get way more out of Outer Wilds, as evidenced by its overwhelmingly positive reception. I personally don't think it's a slam dunk of a game, and it has what I consider a number of deep issues that weren't addressed much in the reviews I had read. Hopefully this'll help some people make a more educated decision on whether this game is for them or at least help set expectations.

Lastly, I should add that I didn't go into this knives out and ready to rip on the game for contrarian cool points. I genuinely thought this would be my jam, because it had all the signs it would be.

I have a high tolerance bar for repetition, trial and error, and so on, but Outer Wilds really got to me in ways that few other games do. And that was the last thing I expected of it. Okay, there's a time loop, but they add more time limits on top through an oxygen meter, a fuel gauge, crumbling environments, sand pouring in to close off areas and various scheduled events -- almost every planet has an additional internal timer of some sort. Compounding this, the game doesn't shy away from immediate failure states, requiring you to start over and regularly wait out another timer. It is so punishing for no apparent reason other than to further gamify what otherwise largely amounts to a "walking sim". I sorely missed mechanics that mitigated repetition (beyond taking a power nap), which can be found in games as old as Majora's Mask or as recent as Minit. At times, it feels as if Outer Wilds is not confident that its ideas can be compelling enough to stand on their own without these layers of challenge. At a conceptual level, Outer Wilds does incredible things. However, my experience was that I was way into everything but playing it. I usually enjoy simply walking around in games like this -- exploration is fun to me in and of itself. Why they found it necessary to add pseudo-survival layers to it, I do not understand. It makes the play more explicitly gamey, sure, but the gauge and time management were not additive to me. I feel like there needed to be further incentives on the other end and preferably more than notes with lots of proper nouns in them. I spent roughly seventeen hours to complete the game and encountered around three explicit puzzles. I wanted a more meaningful drive to push forward beyond a trail of notes with some exposition; I hoped for more interesting moments rooted in gameplay as I got further, but what I got were largely... notes. There were also stunning environments, which normally I would've found sufficient, but, as I said, I felt unable to fully enjoy them because of doom clocks, survival layers and the specter of repetition. This also brings me to my greatest surprise: Outer Wilds doesn't really have puzzles as such, despite others describing it as a puzzle-exploration game. In my experience, it's mostly a quest to find a number of keys to open locks, whereby the keys are coded as knowledge (or, inaccurately, "clues"). Because that knowledge is often so singular in its use, there was little more puzzling needed than literally doing the thing a note told you to do. It rarely asks you to apply knowledge in creative ways and synthesize conclusions about mechanics on your own. That's what makes a puzzle to me -- not a binary state of being in the dark about something until learning exactly how it works. Sometimes, if the game hasn’t yet spelled it out a dozen times yet, you can get a little creative but more often than not the game won't give you the chance to, so the end result is a game generally wanting in what I expect of puzzles. The amount of times this game circles around a certain phenomenon that you could conceivably figure out within less than an hour of playing is emblematic of the game's puzzle philosophy. There is a general lack of confidence in the player’s interpretive abilities and an overeagerness to show you new cool stuff at the cost of a more organic mode of play. And while there's a case to be made that you can experiment in certain situations, that once again leads me back to my initial point about the time loop making it frustrating, because each attempt is going to be prefaced by the dead air of redoing the steps you took to get to wherever you were previously. Much of the game’s narrative is told through various types of notes that you pick up along your travels. An uninteresting and tired delivery system thereof, in my opinion, and the sheer number of notes you come across is overbearing. The time spent casually reading them also feels at odds with the sense of urgency otherwise pressing down on you, even though time stops as you do so -- a rare compromise for this game that begs the question why this wasn't extended to other areas of its design. Because the game has little sense of economy of information, I was grateful that the computer on your spaceship keeps track of notes and draws connections for you. Yet, I can imagine a version of this game that exercised more restraint and asked you to organically make those connections yourself. I think I may have enjoyed that more. But Outer Wilds often doesn't trust the player enough to allow for things like this. At a more fundamental level, the spaceship and character controls can be a pain, but, okay, it's space -- fine. Accurately confounding. There are also things like the button layout being unintuitive. For a game without seriously disruptive technical issues, too often it "felt" bad when playing. It made basic things more difficult than I wanted them to be when I was already prickly about friction elsewhere. There are many interesting concepts here, but for some reason it really makes it painful to get to them, and (the payoff of) cool concepts alone don't make a game for me. The "in between" needs to be compelling too. I think of experiences like The Witness, FEZ and The Stanley Parable in comparison to this, and they all have elements in common with Outer Wilds. Yet they have things like brevity or satisfying moment-to-moment mechanics to make for more well-rounded experiences. It has a bit of all of those games in its DNA, but Outer Wilds doesn't come together as neatly. The coup de grace to my goodwill was delivered by its pre-ending sequence, which is one of the most profoundly disruptive things I've played in a long time. It combines the two factors I disliked most about the game in a neat package: timers and instant death states. As a result, I couldn't quite settle into the ending the way I'd have wanted to. And those closing moments were truly inspired at times, evoking a pitch perfect sense of fear and awe of the unknown -- something the game has a general vibe of throughout and is its greatest achievement, and it really shines in the end. However, the meat of the game being so unpalatable to me wasn't offset by audiovisual spectacles like these. It didn't redeem, justify or override all of that suddenly. It's clear that players with different sensibilities than mine will get way more out of Outer Wilds, as evidenced by its overwhelmingly positive reception. I personally don't think it's a slam dunk of a game, and it has what I consider a number of deep issues that weren't addressed much in the reviews I had read. Hopefully this'll help some people make a more educated decision on whether this game is for them or at least help set expectations. Lastly, I should add that I didn't go into this knives out and ready to rip on the game for contrarian cool points. I genuinely thought this would be my jam, because it had all the signs it would be.