Gaming The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings Review

Sounds awesome. Especially since it's an RPG that doesn't try making things easy for you and hold your hand throughout (ala - for example - Oblivion). Will look to get this after exams I guess.

 

This means I won't have a chance of playing it decently anywhere above medium settings with my GTX260.
I'm still looking forward to a performance review though.

 

Yeah I got home last night only to find my copy hadn't turned up, so I fired up the original. Hopefully I'll have enough willpower to finish before moving on the Witcher 2!

 

I do want to do a technical analysis of The Witcher 2, but it may have to wait a bit - we've got big plans for next week as it is!

 

Really looking forward to playing this! Still got to finish the first one though, and I've got exams and work as well.. :/

Also, cheers for not providing any real spoilers! And I'm glad you didn't put too much emphasis on how it expects you to have played the previous game - you don't hear people complaining about the 2nd and 3rd Lord of the Rings or Star Wars films because they expect you to have watched the first!!

Couple tricks from the first game that people might find useful:

1) Not sure about that amulet thing the article mentioned, but you can set the game to always display text above characters, containers, plants and bodies. This makes it much easier to find those hidden barrels in dark corners, without so much pixel hunting. There's also a toggle key that brings it up - I think it's left Alt by default

2) If you Control+Click on bodies, plants or containers, you can take everything out of it without bringing up the inventory screen. If your inventory is full or you've got already got that type of weapon it will pop up, though, letting you drop what you're carrying if you want the new item.

I'm not sure if these are still there in this game, but I'd be surprised if they weren't!

 

Great game so far but damn I aint played a game in ages which brought my pc to its knees. Had to drop settings to medium.

 

That's good to hear.
Think I'll buy this game anyway. Really, a new PC game without DRM (on gog.com)?! (and a good one at that) CD Projekt deserves my money just for that.

 

Goddamnit. I click on the start new game button and what does it offer me? The chance to import a savegame. I know, I'm weak, but I can't turn that down. I love importing savegames. It makes me happy.

So I guess now I have to complete The Witcher. And I have to do a proper job of it, lest I mess up The Witcher 2. Nuts.

 

I have two 5770, crossfire scaling is meh right now, you should disable the motion blur effects, turn everything to "high" then turn off ubersampling and you should see a pretty big jump, takes out a few goodies (really marginal stuff) but still looks better than any other game I have played

 

Oh hey, this review ended up on metacritic.

@TWeak

Started playing Witcher 1 tonight, I was wondering how to auto loot! Cheers.

 

Wow, never thought I'd see Bit-Tech (well, Bit-Gamer) up on Metacritic.

Clearly you are all sell-outs now.

 

I'm so glad to see this game get top scores. It seems rarer and rarer nowadays to see a developer create a labour of love and they deserve to be rewarded. Here's hoping it sells massively.

 

All I have to say about this game is man, THEY REALLY went crazy on the amount of graphics options, just the way I like it!!!

 

Ah thanks, that's cool I'll have a good look over it. It's a game I'm happy to invest some effort into in order to get the most from it.

 

Sorry for the double post and all, but and I the only one that keeps getting his butt well and truly handed to him on the very first section of the game?? :/ I'm only playing on medium too, crazy. I never thought of myself as a sucky gamer before but this game reminds me of when a girlfriend has her first attempt at playing an FPS on a mouse and keyboard.

 

The exact same thing happened to me. Twice. It's just about the second chapter where I think, "I will not go back into that same goddamn swamp one more time." And I quit.

Now I've read this review and I'm seriously considering giving the game one more go

The only change I disapprove of is the removal of the cards. I'm gonna miss those.

 

You could always make your own custom ones using a printer and card, I've considered doing it in real life after hearing about them in The Witcher Now if only I had pictures of them all....

 

i know. thats what makes it great. you need to use everything at your disposal to get the leg up on your foes. its also best to use hit and run tactics to pick off you foes. Finally a game where i have to combine all my abilities to progress.

 

Yeah, I can see this really is not a 'have a few beers and kick some ass' kinda game like most I play are. I'm gonna have to invest some time in reading the whole Journal, exploring the keys and working out the best route of attack.

I just can't believe I'm having to do that for the very first section of the game I blame in on years of being spoon fed console ports I guess. I don't even wanna admit how many times I failed to pass the 'tutorial' section of the game and had to re watch the Dragon breaking through the castle wall at the start. And I swear, I'm not an incompetent gamer... but I'm sure once I train my brain into actually planning ahead a little more I'll get into the swing of things and be very rewarded for it.

That, or I'll just admit I suck ass at any game worth playing and purchase something brain numbing and easy like BlackOps to make myself feel better.

 

The dragon bit was kinda tough simply because of those poorly implemented QTEs. If you watch the dev diaries on the combat then you'll have an idea on how the game is to be played.