Gaming The Witcher

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2007/10/31/the_witcher/1

Wide open areas, dynamic weather and lighting, epic fantasy and a classic role-play structure - could The Witcher be the next must have CRPG or is it cursed to be just another mediocre title or worse? There's only one way to find out and that's to read the review!

 

So it's great from a gameplay and story perspective but a bit buggy and the graphics are a little bit of a let down?

My copy of the game is in the post right now, quite looking forward to it, the skill system from that screenshot looks very similar to the VTM system. I think I'll probably love this game.

 

The Witcher is actually based on a great series of books by the same name. The game follows the literatures story pretty well which is uncommon for a game. The amnesia might seem like a cop out on the story but if you read the books it will make sense. It also explains some of the fighting and reasons why Witchers only get the rudimentary magic.

 

i love it.. just two things are not so perfect...
1st, if you die and load a savegame there is no way to skip the cutscenes, so you have to see them again.
2nd, it makes you forget time... dont fire up the witcher at 10 pm... or the next time you'll look at your watch it will be like 4 am....

other than that its a good candidate for Game of the year

(not going to comment on story to keep it spoiler free)

btw, i have not had it crash once yet...

 

Crashes are supposed to be very prone under Vista from what I've found. You can skip cutscenes though - esc for actual cutscenes and just click to skip a line of dialogue.

 

weird.. esc worked for the intro movie.. but not for the ingame cutscenes... well, maybe it was just me going crazy at 4am lol...

 

wow... i so need to get this... thanks for the review, joe!

 

Page 2 of article. Third and fourth paragraph "Over The Shoulder" = OST? Shouldn't that be OTS, or am I getting something wrong?

Sorry to correct your spelling Joe, a very small slipup that has me baffled.

 

Joe

Thank you for a great review of the game. I have been following this game because a friend of mine who is Polish LOVES this character. Apparently, the character is a cultural icon born from a series of books from a famous writer in Poland. From the way my friend describes Geralt, it sounds like he is Poland's Indiana Jones. After reading your review however, I realized that the hype for many in Europe for this game may come from these books. I am going to play it probably and enjoy because I love role playing games that are design in this manner. However, for us, in U.S. is this something new? I don't think so. Especially since we were playing games like Planescape: Torment and the like. Am I going to think its the greatest thing ever. Probably not. But I know it will be fun and solid a solid game.

 

I sense a "hot coffee" type mod coming for this...

 

I, too, can see where hot coffee might work. It's a shame some very modern countries have such a backwards, puritanical view on the human body.

 

looks interesting, might try it some day and hell yeah, I want hot coffee

 

that woman has a nice *****......... cat.

 

hmmm looks awesome, and if i wait till i get a decent rig, and those "issues" should be fixed

 

Lol, I did think the kitten in the crotch was a nice touch. Reminds me of a dylan moran sketch about male genitalia.

Spoiler

"Wouldn't it just be nicer if there was a kittens head there and you just tickled his chin 'til he threw up...or something"

 

I skimmed through the review, so I may have missed it, but I think it's worth mentioning that the combat turns atrocious the moment you drop to ~20 or less fps (IMHO, of course). In addition to making timing combos harder, commands just don't seem to follow through.

I used 4xAF / 2xAA / 1280x800 and had everything except textures on low, and the game still dropped to 10-15 fps in some areas. Most of said locations were, unfortunately, very much combat oriented. This was on a E6400@3 / 2GB / 7600GT / XP.

edit:

The game has, so far, only crashed twice on me, with a bug preventing the completion of one minor quest in act IV.

 

I only got FPS problems in one or two areas and then it wasn't attached to anything I could see and playing through that same bit later had no problems whatsoever. When the FPS did drop though it went through the floor, forcing me to restart, so it didn't effect combat for me.

 

The first polish game I am proud of I think at last World will see that we CAN make good games.
Nice review too, I haven't got a chance to play it yet but it sounds promising.

 

I love this game being playing it the whole weekend. Running @ 1920x1200 with everything at max on a 8800 Ultra.

Its great to finally find a game with good graphics and a proper story line!

 

its a fantastic game love it to bits