{"id":89,"date":"2011-05-23T17:24:16","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T15:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/?p=89"},"modified":"2011-05-23T17:24:16","modified_gmt":"2011-05-23T15:24:16","slug":"game-review-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/2011\/05\/23\/game-review-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Review: The Witcher 2 – Assassins of Kings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review:<\/strong> \u201cThe Witcher 2 : Assassins of Kings\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Gameplay <\/strong>(entirely subjective \u2013 how much fun did I have?\u00a0 Would I play this again?): waiting<\/p>\n

Visuals<\/strong> (graphics quality, atmosphere, realism):\u00a0 9.0<\/p>\n

Audio <\/strong>(includes sountrack, effects, etc.): 9.0<\/p>\n

Storyline<\/strong> (writing, pure and simple): \u00a0waiting<\/p>\n

Delivery<\/strong> (packaging, contents, what you get): 10<\/p>\n

Technical <\/strong>(Did it install?\u00a0 Did I have to answer a zillion questions?\u00a0 Did it break my machine?\u00a0 Time from opening box to play?):\u00a0 7.0<\/p>\n

Overall:\u00a0 So far, 8.75.<\/strong> That\u2019s going to change, maybe, once I get some serious play-time logged on it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just received my copy of \u201cThe Witcher 2 : Assassins of Kings\u201d (published by CDPROJEKT) \u2013 the \u201cPremium Edition.\u201d\u00a0 There is also a \u201cCollector\u2019s Edition\u201d that contains a few extra doodads for those who really dig the collectibles aspect of games, and a digital-only version is available from Impulse as well.<\/p>\n

For those of you unaware of the background, \u201cThe Witcher\u201d is a fantasy RPG themed on the book series whose title it borrows.\u00a0 The basic premise is that the Witchers are modified humans, who are mercenary monster-hunters, and the character you play is Geralt, the main character of the book series (heavily influenced by Michael Moorcock\u2019s Elric, Geralt has an albinistic appearance and even is referred to as the \u201cWhite Wolf\u201d on occasion).\u00a0 As of the end of the last game, you have become something of a trusted asset of the king (if perhaps not a friend), and your job in this installment is to both protect him as well as find out where these assassins are coming from.\u00a0 Because they seem<\/em> to be similar in many respects to Witchers!<\/p>\n

Okay \u2013 on first opening the box, I was pretty impressed with the contents.\u00a0 Separate cases for the game DVD and the bonus materials (an audio sountrack CD and a DVD containing trailers, dev diaries, and so on).\u00a0 A gloss-paper map of the world, some paper doll cutouts (wtf?), and a replica coin representing the currency of the kingdom of Temeria (the world in which all this takes place).\u00a0 All of it is packed in a good heavy-cardstock box.\u00a0 Pretty impressive.<\/p>\n

Until I plugged in the CD, and my machine hung while trying to rip the music to my library.\u00a0 Seems the first and last track don\u2019t get along well with this laptop (a MacBook Pro running Win7 natively).\u00a0 We\u2019ll see what happens tonight when I try that again with my regular beast Windows box.<\/p>\n

That said, the rest of the music is good \u2013 in fact, it wins my vote as \u201cMusic to play D&D to.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a great soundtrack.\u00a0 In past games I\u2019ve had CDs lined up for background music that would include soundtracks from films like Aliens, LotR, Star Trek 2 & 6, The Chieftains, etc., and this is the second set of tunes I\u2019ve ever heard from a game that I would welcome among that set.\u00a0 First one was Myth: The Fallen Lords, which had a bust-ass bit of music (and also published a soundtrack CD, which I still have in a box somewhere).<\/p>\n

Okay, now down to the nitty gritty:<\/p>\n

Visuals<\/em><\/strong>:\u00a0 Stunning.\u00a0 Really, really good.\u00a0 This is the first time I\u2019ve seen a game come this close to echoing a real walking world.\u00a0 I\u2019d have to say it\u2019s a bit like having taken the beauty of Bethesda Softworks\u2019 Oblivion game and combined it with a solid method of making the characters and scenery move naturally.\u00a0 I\u2019d say we\u2019re probably a few generations short of seeing something as good as a Pixar movie, and this is definitely one of the steps in that direction.<\/p>\n

One drawback:\u00a0 because the texturing and general motion are so good, it calls your attention to the little things that don\u2019t<\/em> work.\u00a0 Like fingers that don\u2019t move, lips that don\u2019t sync with the words coming out of them, etc.\u00a0 When characters were sitting down somewhere, their hands didn\u2019t do<\/em> anything.\u00a0 They just lay there like dead things.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a natural behavior, and it does become noticeable because the rest of the body seemed to move like you\u2019d expect.\u00a0 Same with lips, they suffer a bit of Howdy-Doodyness, opening and closing at appropriate times, but they don\u2019t shape around the words.\u00a0 That said, the rest of the world is really amazing\u2026I did have some texture flicker on a few surfaces (I\u2019ve got the quality set to high, but I expect it to work, since I\u2019m running a dual-Nvidia setup with SLI going), but overall just really lovely.<\/p>\n

Audio<\/em><\/strong>: \u00a0I gave you the gist on the soundtrack earlier, so that\u2019s a big thumbs-up on me there.\u00a0 Voices are clear and audible (though I was a little annoyed at the choice of Geralt\u2019s voice actor \u2013 it doesn\u2019t sound like he did in TW1, so perhaps my expectation was a little off; overall his voice just seemed too high-pitched for his body).\u00a0 Background sound effects are well aligned and help create that sense of immersion you want out of a game like this.\u00a0 I don\u2019t run a 5.1 setup, but on a 2.1 it\u2019s still great.<\/p>\n

Delivery<\/em><\/strong>:\u00a0 I mentioned above the contents of the box \u2013 great.\u00a0 Really solid.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to see this in a metal box similar to some DVD sets these days, but I recognize the needs imposed by production costs.\u00a0 One note \u2013 in the Premium Edition (and I think in the Collector\u2019s box too), there\u2019s a \u201cGame Guide.\u201d\u00a0 That little book is FULL of spoilers.\u00a0 Don\u2019t pick it up unless you\u2019re stuck.\u00a0 It looks as though it would be a supplemental manual, so it\u2019s easy to take it off to the can and read it, but you\u2019re going to soon find it basically is a walkthrough.\u00a0 You\u2019ve been warned.<\/p>\n

Technical:<\/em><\/strong> Have a few bones to pick here.\u00a0 First off, the soundtrack ripped fine on my native Windows machine, no problem.\u00a0 The issue above is restricted to the Mac hardware.\u00a0 With regard to the rest of the software, there were a couple problems.\u00a0 The installation (two DVDs worth of it) went just fine as well, with the exceptions mentioned below.<\/p>\n

One \u2013 the license key.\u00a0 There is nothing I hate more than a big sixteen-character license key that\u2019s case-sensitive and all caps.\u00a0 Used to have those on Delphi and they were a pain in the ass then, too.\u00a0 However, at least there we had the sense to insert hyphens for the user or move them to the next box once they entered a set, and advance them through the UI as they continued to enter new values.\u00a0 The installation of TW2 required me to enter that key no less than five times before it finally realized I was trying to enter it and decided to let me proceed.\u00a0 WOW is that annoying.<\/p>\n

Two \u2013 Downloadable content.\u00a0 I\u2019m appreciative that a side quest module is offered in exchange for registering, thanks.\u00a0 That makes the effort worthwhile.\u00a0 Also, thanks for keeping a memory of that godawful long code and entering it for me when registering.\u00a0 However, once I got it registered, and chose the DLC I wanted, then activated it, it didn\u2019t show me what was going on.\u00a0 All I got was \u201cdownloading\u201d with a little shaky box.\u00a0 No progress bar, no indication that it was succeeding, not even an idea of how much total volume I was pulling down.\u00a0 That\u2019s a problem<\/em>.\u00a0 I waited over an hour while that little box shivered like an epileptic Jack-Russel terrier.\u00a0 Same thing happened when I entered my pre-order code from Amazon.\u00a0 Grrrr.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be trying again tonight, and hopefully it\u2019ll work this time.<\/p>\n

Three \u2013 keymappings.\u00a0 I\u2019m left-handed, and my mouse sits on the left of my keyboard.\u00a0 First thing I generally do in any game environment is to re-map the really important keys (the WASZ set, a few weapon keys, jump and run, etc.) to my number-pad where my right hand can deal with them while my left mouses away.\u00a0 In what might be the worst oversight I have ever seen (with the exception of the shipping of that turdburger jet flight sim that never worked, by the folks who did Wing Commander) TW2 has no keymapping override interface<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 At least, none I can find.\u00a0 HUGE problem.\u00a0 Aside from wandering around and looking at the scenery, I\u2019m not even going to bother trying to explore the game further until I can get a re-mapping interface.\u00a0 Combat?\u00a0 Forget it.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t have the patience to dick around with ini files as some of the users on the forums have advised.<\/p>\n

Conclusion:\u00a0 Don\u2019t really have one yet.\u00a0 As soon as there\u2019s a keymapping interface, I\u2019ll dig in and log some playtime to complete this review.\u00a0 Until then, it looks like a solid 8.75, but if you\u2019re a lefty you\u2019re going to be frustrated.\u00a0 I\u2019ll amend this review when that oversight is corrected.\u00a0 Would I recommend it?\u00a0 Yeah, probably still would \u2013 TW1 was really good, and this has all the appearances that it\u2019ll be just as, if not better than.\u00a0 So I\u2019m looking forward to it, but I\u2019ll just have to wait.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review: \u201cThe Witcher 2 : Assassins of Kings\u201d Gameplay (entirely subjective \u2013 how much fun did I have?\u00a0 Would I play this again?): waiting Visuals (graphics quality, atmosphere, realism):\u00a0 9.0 Audio (includes sountrack, effects, etc.): 9.0 Storyline (writing, pure and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,23,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games-2","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}