Review of The Witcher 2

After four years in development and an impossible amount of hype behind it, The Witcher 2 has finally seen release. Being one of the most anticipated games of 2011 despite being CDProjectk's second title ever to be released in a year when Duke Nukem Forever, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Modern Warfare 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are all being released may have set expectations too high. What's amazing is that The Witcher 2 manages to live up to that hype and become a definite Game of the Year contender. What makes The Witcher 2 stand out is the sheer amount of replay value that the game has in addition to all of the minute details in the game. The developers certainly didn’t cut corners in any noticeable area and the attention to detail is one of the highest that I've seen in any game to date. CDProject went above and beyond to add as many subtle details to this world as they possibly could but the game is better off for it, all the while mixing Zelda-style combat in with a story of political intrigue that will keep players guessing up until the game's last few minutes with a final confrontation against the game's antagonist.

The Witcher 2 begins as a good sequel to an RPG should, with Geralt already being extremely powerful and level-ups increasing that power rather than granting new abilities. Moreover, the first level - while short - is one of the best two hours that I've ever played in any game. It's truly cinematic, action-packed and one of the best intros to any game that I've ever played, even if it doesn’t prepare players for the true sense of exploration that the rest of the game provides. While linear in contrast to the open-world gameplay of the following three levels, the first level is a great way to hook gamers right off the bat while establishing the setting and characters to new players.

Moreover, the setting is genuinely mature. This isn't some childish good elves vs. evil orcs fantasy setting, it's one that manages to come across as dark, realistic and morally complex and doesn't pander to its audience with decisions that are either purely good or evil. For instance, one of the choices presented to a player is whether or not to kill an absolutely despicable monster if doing so means that you'll become a pawn of the main villain and work towards accomplishing his goals. It's those types of decisions that force players to examine what they would do in real life rather than trying to gain points on a karma meter. In fact, the choice that determines how the final two levels play out requires players to make a decision based on how they feel about an equivalent to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Incorporating that type of real world morality into a game rather than objectively good or evil decisions is one that more developers need to present to players. The fact that the story assumes that players are intelligent means that even the Die-Hard 2 level of profanity doesn’t manage to make this game seem immature while it would normally come across as juvenile in other titles since the execution is done so well.

The story itself is well written and flows well, knowing exactly when to pull off a plot twist but the localization could be better as some of the prose sounds awkward but it doesn't manage to get in the way of telling a great story and is really no worse in this regard than Final Fantasy X was. It's not that the writing is“bad” but that it's obvious that the game was translated.

The real problem with the localization is the voice acting. It's very hit or miss. Many of the more minor characters deliver wooden performances in irritating voices which detracts from the fact that some of the actors, particularly Mark Healy and Eiry Hughes manage to pull off great performances as their respective characters.

Outside of the uneven voice acting, the sound design is incredibly effective as the soundtrack sticks out as among the best I've ever heard in my life. It's a highly memorable suite of music that reminds me more of the score for an epic fantasy film like Ben Hur or Lord of the Rings than it does a video game soundtrack. It's by far one of the best scores for any game that I've heard in years and deserves praise for all that it does right in creating atmosphere. The best piece of music so far is the truly unnerving music that plays as Geralt enters a haunted mist which succeeded in genuinely scaring me with ominous whispering which is really, really hard to do. The fact that the music turned out so well is even more surprising given that this is still only CDProjekt's second game.

As far as graphics go, The Witcher 2 is the best looking game that I've ever played. After initially starting the game on medium settings, I decided to increase the graphical fidelity in order to keep Geralt's hair from looking distractingly bad in contrast to an otherwise extremely high res world and I'm glad that I did. Once I set the graphics to high, I witnessed exactly how amazing CDProjekt's new proprietary REDengine is. The Witcher 2 already manages to dethrone both Heavy Rain and Metro 2033 as the best looking game on the market right now and the option for CDProjekt's new ubersampling technology which remains playable on all but the most expensive hardware will ensure that The Witcher 2 will be a benchmark game for years to come. Moreover, The Witcher 2 manages to do forests right. While most wilderness settings in games usually consist solely of a handful of trees that are spread far apart from each other and some poorly textured grass, The Witcher 2 manages to do a wilderness setting right in a way that I've only managed to see done will before in Crysis and Metal Gear Solid 3. I'd frequently stop running around just to take a better look at my surroundings since everything around me looked so beautiful that I couldn't help but admire all of the work it took to create this world.

The characters are just as detailed as the environments. Everything from scars on faces to outfits made out of realistically detailed cloth and leather that change texture when it rains help to bring the characters of The Witcher 2 to life. The fact that even the shopkeepers and quest givers have personalities helps to make The Witcher 2 even more immersive. The fact that each and every NPC reacts to the weather and time of day just manages to suck me in that much more. This game looks and behaves perfectly and hopefully more developers will be licensing the REDengine alongside more established engines since not only does it looks great on high-end PCs but it's well optimized for less powerful machines (I only have a Radeon HD 5670) in addition to being highly flexible regarding scripting. Now that Source and Unreal 3 are beginning to show their age, it’s about time that some of the new engines debuting with games this year manage to move technology forward.

The one true weak point in the Witcher 2 happens to be the control setup. While the hack-and-slash gameplay is quick and responsive, there's still the issue of the lock-on button which manages to make battles far harder than they should be. I truly loathe having to hit the Alt key in order to lock onto my enemy. If I don't then Geralt will randomly attack other enemies on the battlefield. I was able to fix this issue by reassigning the lock -on function to the G key which may still be out of the way but anything is better then the Alt key in a game that expects you to block attacks on a dime and it's a shame that the absolute worst choice to place a combat key was utilized. This makes the default control scheme much harder to use than it needs to be. Moreover, the game seems like it was designed to use a USB gamepad instead of a keyboard and mouse which I sadly don't have and that makes the game's lack of a console port that much more baffling.

Control issues aside, the Witcher 2's story, replayablity and graphics manage to make it the best PC exclusive title made in years. The fact that it came from a still new developer with limited experience just makes it that much more of an amazing feat. While it's still too early to say what the Game of the Year will be, The Witcher 2 stands out as a strong contender for the title with not even half over.

Pros – Intelligent storyline with truly difficult choices that shape the rest of the game, impressive new proprietary game engine, the best graphics seen in a game to date, the opening level sucks you in and refuses to let go, engrossing soundtrack, memorable characters, immersive setting

Cons – Localization and voice acting aren't perfect, there's still no console version for a game designed for a gamepad, the lock-on key is placed in an awkward place

9.3/10

Why People Priase The Witcher 2 for Many of the Things That Went Wrong With DA2

After playing through The Witcher 2 and seeing that the game made many of the same decisions that Dragon Age 2 made that people usually criticize DA2 for, I'm trying to rationalize why TW2 gets so much more praise. I sure that for some, it might be because TW2 has recently managed to one-up Crysis 2 and Metro 2033 as a graphics benchmark (let's face it, this game is beautiful and ubersampling is unplayable, making it a perfect benchmark game) but I'm looking more at this from a perspective of game design rather than graphics.

1. A three-act structure.
DA2 got a lot of criticism for taking a world that was once open and then making it both confined and linear. TW2 did the same thing but the difference was that each act took place in a different location. DA2 could have been improved if either Kirkwall changed with each act or if the game took place in a different city in each act. Moreover, TW2 whet players' appetites for more while DA2 just made people happy that the game was over due to the reused dungeons and A button mashing. Also, TW2 built up to act 3, DA2 simply dumped the final act onto you abruptly and then randomly hit you with the fianl quest just as quickly. There was no real indication of what players where going to fight or what they were doing in DA2 while TW2 gives us Letho as an antagonist right off the bat. TW2 simply told a better story because of it due to it being more focused since a linear story needs an objective set for the protagonists right off the bat.

2. The took a turned based system and made it hack and slash
The real issue with DA2 was that it went halfway there and as a result felt clunky while TW2 feels fluid as an action RPG. DA2 is just uneven and I find my self mashing the A button as fast as possible to make sure that I increase my DPS instead of focusing on mobility like a true action RPG should be doing. DA3 should be either a pure action RPG with the ability to dodge and more interesting boss fights and less of a turn-based/real time hybrid or go back to DAO's combat system. The current combat system tries to appeal to everyone and instead appeals to nobody. Giving consoles auto-attack back made the game feel like DAO again which fixed this problem but did so far too late and DA3 should have this available as the default option.

3. Too few abilities and too many upgrades
This is actually a criticism with TW2 that I have but no game is truly perfect. It needs to be improved with both games and is really my biggest complaint with TW2. Hopefully both series will offer players more options for abilities in combat instead of wasting level-ups on upgrading abilities that the player already has and DA3 will actually go back to allowing players to select lockpicking upon level up instead of taking four levels to learn how to lockpick at the cost of other stats.

4. A cliffhanging ending that sets up an expansion pack to nickle and dime players
The issue here is that TW2 whet players appetites for more while DA2 made gamers happy that it was finally over since they no longer had to deal with the tedium. Less pointless delivery quests and reused environments would have gone a long way towards making gamers feel like they wanted to buy the post-endgame DLC. Also, months after release, DA2 didn't solve the conflict that the endgame created, we only got an item pack that nobody wanted.

5. Bugs at launch
TW2 currently has a number of bugs, including a memory leak. DA2 was also incredibly buggy at release. The difference is that CDProject have said that we'll be getting a patch in a few days, DA2 took a month to patch. The same comparison could be made with Fallout: New Vegas, the game was patched only about two weeks after launch which cleared up a number of issues. Bioware not fixing their product in a timely manner showed that they didn't care about their fans.

6. A Mass Effect-style dialog system
The real problem was the fact that Hawke's personalities were forced on players, instead of letting players choose what they wanted to say in each conversation rather than selecting their version of Hawke at the beginning of the game. Also, TW2 gave players more persuade options and Geralt's personality was mostly based on persuade choices that upgraded the more you used them. DA2's dialog system was a wreck and didn't even give players a neutral/laconic option on the wheel while persuades were few and far between. The dialog wheel is fine, but ditch the personalities and give players more situations to persuade people

Now for things that TW2 did right that Bioware could learn form

1. Optimization
TW2's low settings actually run very, very well on most people's machines while DA2 on the 360 had characters expanding and contracting during cutscenes which said to me that DA2 was a bad PC to console port that didn't take advantage of lesser hardware. This was really a slap in the face after Bioware promised that DA2 would run better on consoles. Crysis 2 is yet another good example of a good PC to console port while the Assassin's Creed games are good examples of good console to PC ports (if you ignore Ubisoft Montreal's horrible DRM). If consoles are that much of a priority. Just remember to not punish players for not having a gaming PC or choosing one platform over another.

2. Minigames
TW2 offers some good minigames that were genuinely fun to play. Final Fantasy VII and Fable 2 are also good examples of this. DA2 only offered distractions in the form of delivery quests that had no story behind them for a miniscule amount of gold.

3. Graphics
Playing TW2 at medium or higher is a great experience but DA2 stylized their graphics just to get away with cutting corners. While DA2 will probably age better, it's still a low-poly game that didn't detail its world enough.

4. QTE's
I personally loved these as they made conversations and cutscenes interactive and reminded me of Heavy Rain. It's a shame that DA2 didn't have these since ME2 did.

5. Exploration
I LOVED exploring in TW2, particularly since I'd frequently discover areas that sidequests wouldn't take me to. DA2's Wounded Coast was just a linear strip of land that could have been expanded.

6. Choices that actually matter
Act 2 in TW2 played out completely differently depending on how you planned on resolving the final quest of Act 1. DA2 played out the same way regardless with only a handful of decisions truly mattering. More mutually exclusive quests and ways to change the plot over the course of the game would have gone a long way to improving DA2.

7. Uncensored Nudity
The sex scenes in both DA games just looked awkward. They were done better in DA2 but mostly because the devs didn't bother to model underwear with invisible male genitalia sticking out penetrating through a pair of panties anymore due to a short dev cycle.

Pokemon Black (and, by extension, White)

Pokemon Red was the first video game I ever bought and I haven't missed a single generation since then. That said, I went into Black/White with a fair amount of skepticism: it was trying to be different, trying to age with its audience, and that could mean either a fresh new perspective on the beloved franchise or a failure of fixing something that ain't broke. As it turns out, it's still pretty much just Pokemon.

I bought Black and so that will be the game I'm reviewing, but the differences between the two games are few. If you're wondering which version is right for you, I'd recommend looking up a list of the Exclusive Pokemon in each game and decide which you'd like the ability to catch without trading. There's a small amount of aesthetic change, so the other thing worth asking is: Do you prefer a rural-style (White) or an urban-style (Black)? If you're still unsure, flip a coin, or get whatever version your friend doesn't.

The battle system hasn't changed from the old games. For anyone who's managed to avoid the series this long, a basic rundown is: With a unique team of six fighters with different strengths, weaknesses, and carefully chosen attacks, the player strategizes their way through battles with NPC teams. There are numerous ways to play, whether by hitting the opponent with status effects, switching out your party to best take advantage of their weaknesses, or just plain hitting them with brute force (which, despite the in-game insistence of otherwise, is a legitimate tactic when fighting NPCs).

The changes in the gameplay mostly stem from side-effects of the battles. The Random Encounter rate is off the charts annoying. Prepare to blow all your hard-earned cash on Max Repels. I literally, on numerous occasions, have run from an encounter, taken ONE MORE STEP, and got hit by another wild Pokemon. This would be made a little less annoying if these encounters gave any decent XP, but they're almost never worth fighting. To make matters worse, if you're only a couple of levels higher than the wild Pokemon, the battle can actually be difficult and still fail to reward you for bothering to fight it off.

As like all Pokemon games, this one strips away all the old special features of the previous generation and implements their own unique features. In this case, that's mostly a bad thing. Black completely drops the Pokewalker and introduces a "seasons" system that change what an area looks like on any given month. It's not a bad feature, but its uses are limited and it's restrained by the fact that it takes some thirty days to reach a new season. Some of us can beat the entire game in less than a month; when exactly will we have the chance to notice the changes between spring and winter if we started in spring?

They also made the touchscreen as useless as possible. While the Poketch wasn't particularly innovative, it was still handy to have on the bottom screen. In Black, the bottom screen is devoted to the C-Gear: an optional device that monitors for other players and saps your battery life. What were they thinking with this? Why does it need to constantly be on the screen? Where exactly does Nintendo expect people to play this game? Shockingly enough, I don't pass by many trainers in my own home, or on mass transit, or even at school, making this feature nearly useless. While I'm sure others will take better advantage of this than I can, I don't think anyone can justify why it would steal the bottom screen from something universally useful like a menu.

Speaking of removals/additions from game to game, Black won't let you catch any previous generation Pokemon until you beat the game, forcing you to let go of any biased parties and start completely fresh. In theory, this is great and makes the franchise almost seem brand new, but the selection of Pokemon is painfully sparse. I spent most of the game looking for a fire-type I liked and, when I finally settled on Litwick, its stats dragged it down to be the worst Pokemon in my roster. I constantly felt like I was looking for a fifth or sixth party member to round out my team, and each critter I tried out turned only into a placeholder.

The graphics are pretty standard for the DS, but they up the level of what we've come to expect for Pokemon. Some of the changes are just gimmicky -- like the Pokemon jumping about during battle -- and are hard to even notice until you go back to the older games and get startled by the comparatively mundane graphics. The environment still uses the standard bird's eye view with no diagonal movement, but every so often the world turns almost three-dimensional. One extra-long bridge seems to serve no purpose other than to show off the shiny new graphics of the skyline ahead.

The music is neither great nor awful. Some tracks are catchy, while others get played a few times too often to be enjoyable by Gym #8. They retain the feeling of previous games and have remixed certain tracks yet again, such as the evolution song. The biggest change I noticed was in the battle music: Whenever the player's Pokemon falls into red HP, not only does the game start playing a constant, anxiety-inducing "bee-boop, bee-boop, bee-boop" sound at you like all the previous games, but it also alters the BGM to be more frantic and edgy. That feature single-handedly made me want to play on mute -- the last thing I need during a tense battle is another element to put me on edge, not to mention the times my party fell to low health five seconds before I one-hit KO'd the Quick Attack-using enemy; there wasn't even an inkling of real intensity and the music only made the scene laughable.

Where this game really stands out in the franchise is its storyline. It's not that deep -- it's maybe not even that good -- but for the first time in perhaps ever it felt like the writers actually tried. They tried to have complex villains, they tried to have a story that made you stop and think, and they tried to make it relevant to the game. Almost all the gym leaders actually play a role in fighting Team Plasma and N is the most memorable villain since Giovanni. He's maybe a little annoying, but I can't remember anything about the leaders of Team Aqua/Magma or Team Galactic, so even if I wanted to slap him across the head half the times I met with him, N was still interesting.

If you're a die-hard Pokemon fan, well... you've probably already bought this. If you've been away from the franchise for a while, this is a good place to pick it up again. If you're tired of the same old, same old... don't expect too much, but you might be pleasantly surprised here and there. If all you want is a nostalgia boost for the old games, just pick up Soul Silver or Heart Gold and be done with it.

Pros:

+ Starts the franchise afresh

+ Good graphics (for Pokemon standards)

+ Gym leaders and other characters are fleshed out more than ever before

+ Game feels aimed at an older audience, from the complex storyline to the increase in difficulty

Cons:

- Waste of a touchscreen

- High random encounter rate

- Too difficult in a monotonous way (i.e., too much slow grinding)

- Not enough cool Pokemon (subjective)

7.7/10

The return of PSN! (For real this time.)

Just when it seemed inevitable that PSN would be down for at least a month, Sony released a firmware update that allowed users to login and change passwords. In fact, anyone who accesses the PSN is required to install the new firmware and anyone who installs the firmware is required to change their password. You can always cancel, of course, but you won't get access to the PSN until these tasks are completed.

The download can take a while, depending on connection speed. My first attempt on the PS3 resulted in 2% completed in maybe one minute, until I decided I just wanted to play a Bluray and I could install it later. One viewing of Cars later and the update downloaded in less than ten minutes. I hadn't bought anything from the PlayStation Store yet (thank God), so Sony sent me an email with a link to painlessly change my password by computer instead of on the PlayStation. Both the PS3 and PSP have new firmware updates, but you only have to change your password once if you own both devices.

The PlayStation Store is not yet up and kicking, but it only makes sense that Sony would return the majority of the Network while it continued to work on securing the most sensitive software. For now, we can enjoy the multiplayer versions of Little Big Planet and Mortal Kombat.

Mass Effect 3 Delayed, two new screenshots released

Learning from the mistakes of Dragon Age 2's embarrassing number of bugs, Mass effect 3 has been pushed back to a Q1 2012 release, with the three month delay ensuring that players will encounter the best experience possible when the game finally launches. This comes only days after the announcement of F.E.A.R. 3's month-long delay.

The new screenshots can be viewed here which depict the return of Kaiden Alenko and Liara T'Soni as well as a new never before seen planet: http://masseffect.bioware.com/media/screenshots/

Mass Effect 3 will also include the return of favorite characters from the previous two games like Ashley Williams, Jack and Urdnot Wrex as Commander Shepard travels across the Galaxy to unite the various races of the galaxy to make a final stand against the Reapers. New abilities include the ability for engineers to create turrets, severing the limbs from organic enemies and being able to make 180 degree turns. Expect one epic ride across the galaxy early next year.

Later this week, be the man who pulled the trigger

Kumawar are always good when it comes down to exploiting headlines and given the recent news of bin Laden's death, it was inevitable that there would soon be a game based on the assassination. While Kumawar has always been accused of pusign the boundaries fo taste, there are few who people living in the First World who'd object to being the Navy SEAL who finally put a bullet in Osama's skull.

The new content will be available this Saturday, so that you too can eventually kill a mass murderer and an innocent women that the fucking coward used as a human shield.

PSN Comes Back Online

After being taken offline for almost two weeks, Sony's PSN will finally come back online this week. The hacker responsible for the PSN intrusion has still not been caught as of yet although the FBI is currently looking into the matter. Thankfully Sony has been working on encrypting user data which should make all PSN users' personal information more secure in the future although a password change is required.

The hack attempt compromised the personal data of 77 milion PS3 owners, more than the entire population of the United Kingdom with over 10 million having their credit card information stored on PSN. According to Sony, credit card data was encrypted and not confirmed to have been stolen as of yet although Sony warns users to keep track of their bank statements in the near future.

The Playstation Store has not yet returned but should be operational by the end of the month. To compensate for the loss of new DLC and PS1 Classics purchases, Sony is offering a month of Playstation Plus to all users free of charge.