Wow, we really do appreciate this much breakdown of our game and we do totally see that perspective.
We were Art heavy for sure and Art does sell games (in both vision, quality and marketing). Art doesn't make it a good game and isn't essential to have a fun game.
I have seen comments like this and we have had similar thoughts but I do think you have to keep in mind the complete package.
There is a start and ending cutscene in our game, there is design through steering the player through the environment with hand placed orbs, there is a difficulty curve and the movement did have quite a lot of dev time to ensure it felt as good as it could. There is tutorial onboarding, designed gates to prevent you from progressing too fast, enemy patrol routes that had to be thought through. There are also elements that aren't obvious such as a semi complicated FOV shifting system based on velocity and a ton of stabilisation/bug fixing around using physics with the jetpack. Main menu/pause system, death, collision blocking volumes over the entire game and a sneaking mechanic. During development we had items to unlock such as a jetpack and a Spiderman like swing rope but the progression didn't fit with the game. Our average completion time is 40 minutes, level design is one of our weaker areas.
My point here isn't to disagree with you but to put a different perspective on the game which is difficult for players to see.
From our perspective we don't feel undeserving of the conclusion that Epic came to as we did work our butts off and managed to achieve a lot. But our design was lacking behind other entries and we didn't have any innovative creative designs that a lot of people strive for. We played it safe, made a cool character with a story objective for the game and tried to make it feel fun, good and interesting to play.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this, if it's changed the way you see the game or if you stand by you original post, we are very interested!
Thanks for your time!