The Witcher

Do not be afraid to change. Although The Witcher May scare some people with inventive combat comfortable replacing old rapid-fire click with swinging rhythmic sword, there is no need to avoid one of the deepest, most adults role-playing games to hit the PC in years. Polish developer CD Projekt has developed one of those games milestone that moves the game for everybody, a real big bear swords and sorcery fantasy that breaks almost every tradition in the book. Once you experience a medieval world dirty so realistic that you can almost smell it, reject simplistic searches of good and evil for ambiguous "decisions and consequences," and, yes, newfangled battle mechanics twists that add welcome to the left click on scrapping, you 'Ll find terribly hard to go back to regular D & D rip-off.

Built on a 2007 edition of the Aurora engine powers Neverwinter Nights, The Witcher is something of a cross between action and RPG Diablo and more complex plate electronic potboilers as Neverwinter Nights. Essentially, the work of developers both sides of the street. On the one hand, you have exactly one character choice in the form of fat hair Geralt of Rivia, the monster hunting mercenary "witcher" in the title, along with other ostensibly dumbed down as large clusters of combat and Gatling Gun--fast leveling. But on the other hand, you also get a postwar world of fantasy called Temeria that feels lived in (if postapocalyptic), as well as points that the participation of serious moral choices. History and adjustment have been taken from The Last Wish, a Polish fantasy novel, published way back in 1990 by Andrzej Sapkowski, and, for once, this adaptation has been achieved successfully.

Although there is a fair bit of saving the world RPG claptrap participation of a powerful evil wizard and a mysterious group called the Salamanders, you deal with a bunch of lowlifes. Woman-hating religious fanatics, traders involved abducted children; slatternly bar wenches who'll bed with you for a bottle of wine; witches who sell poison and play with voodoo dolls, which openly racist hatred nonhumans and threaten death and goblins Dwarves. Make no mistake: Although there are many traditional Gygaxian monsters on the prowl here -- barghests, wargs, ghouls, drowned undead, vampires, wraiths, wyverns, and loads of different demons -- the biggest enemy that Geralt faces is always Its fellow humans. You are not much of a hero, either. Requests for assistance may be rejected. Money is always a factor, even when you decide to be a good guy and a hand to help. And you have no problem in the use of almost all women encounter, before having marital relations with a handful of babies in every act of the game despite being seemingly in love with one of his fellow witchers.

It should not be much of a surprise that the line between right and wrong here is not very thick. Everything is a dark gray. The first act is simply amazing in the way it plays. To begin trying to locate the bad guys who raided her witcher strength and killed one of his friends, but soon get involved in a feud that pits the religious leader and a noble village against a witch. But nobody's hands are clean. A trader who is dealing in connivance with the cult of evil which is hunting. A guard will help with a ghoul problem turns out to be a rapist. The village priest who is helping to clean the region of a demonic dog called "the Beast" is actually a misogynistic madman. And the witch is not much better, since it sells poison used in a suicide and employed a voodoo doll to make one of the local big fish kill his brother. At the end of the act, in a clash with burning torches and pitchforks, one is forced to choose between the woman to hate, rape lover, cult affiliated with the crowd and killing a witch. It makes the most sense to side with the witch, because the villagers are an awfully sleazy much, but do the slaughter that forces almost all of them and leave their people to scorched earth.

What is not, The Witcher insurance is not all sun and pacifiers. But while you might need a few pills Prozac to handle the gloomy tone of the game, the story becomes incredibly convincing when it has as much riding on their actions. Characters seem like real people, not evil good neutral triad of stereotypes that populate most fantasy games. Only some aspects of the history and establishment remind you that you are playing a game.

Much of this is probably due to a poor translation of the original Polish. Dialogue seems truncated in many places, which leaves you in the dark in terms of character motivations. You know something important has just taken place, and the interface clearly states what they are supposed to do, but the overall picture is not entirely meet.
Oath and odd word choices are another matter. One moment you are cruising along listening to conversations pretty standard RPG, and then being hit with outside the modern jargon blue, and "F" bombs. It is quite distortion to listen to the leader of his witcher band calling a woman team member "girl", let alone to hear Geralt disgustingly grunt "Abso-f *** ing - lutely!" Voice acting often lacked authority, which shows these strange lines. Fellow adventurers seem grizzled warriors but sound more like high-schoolers. The actor voices Geralt comes too hard, like a child trying a deep, gravelly voice so that it can deceive the counter jockey in the corner of storage in selling him a package of six. Similarly, the youngest member of their group has the full weight of Potsie Weber (for a reason, it soon).

Interactions between the sexes are too risqué in a corny way that only rev Beavis and Butthead. It is quite ridiculous that the hand searches of every act that Geralt get almost horizontal, with every woman who is, but it is pathetic that each conquest is rewarded with a card representing a lovely lass come-hither pose. There is still no real payoff of these pictures, either, given that nudity that appeared on the European version of the game has been censored because of the mojigata Stateside sensitivities. (Thanks, Hot Coffee controversy.) In any case, sex is ridiculous and uncalled for, and seems to be not only to give the game Geeks hope that a fellow boy with lanky, unwashed hair and pale skin-corpse can score with hot Babies.

The mechanics of the game are a little more reserved, although CD Projekt has been a little jazz up everything that fans of fantasy games for granted. Combat mechanics are the biggest change. Instead of the traditional left-click attacks employed by most other real-time RPG this side of the Gothic cult hit series, combating brawl here is based on give and take combinations. You click on an enemy to initiate a sequence of attack, then click again, just when the sword swinging just began a second bloom, and then again and again with a string of combinations. Miss your time at any point and it is back to square one.

This sounds very simple, but it does not work so well at first. The game begins with some useless tips on how to fight the three difficulty settings, and hard and there is no obvious visual feedback to indicate when click again for a second link to their first attack. Let them take clicking signs of a twirling sound and visual indicators such as a sword in flames bar, but this information is buried more than 20 pages in the manual. In order to resolve things in a hands-on experience, you need to play in easy to medium difficulty, which removes any doubt about when to click on the icon of the struggle turning into a sword in flames. Then you pretty quickly select the audio and visual signals provided during Geralt actual fighting. When you do get used to things and you want to try harder to establish a difficulty, however, as a means easy and sometimes a little elementary (apart from some of the boss battles), you have to restart the game. Still, even with the introduction poor, it's hard not to love the struggle against the system. The battles are just a little more involved than the standard clickfest things, and yet the mechanics always make you think about what you are doing and give real satisfaction when you take out enemies hard. The attacks also simply look cool, especially when you are jumping around slinging his sword in all directions in the midst of a pack of monsters.

Three different fighting styles, as well as a rating system with more lists that the Manhattan Yellow Pages add to the brain training. You can change your position battle between fast, strong, and as a group, each of which makes it better able to handle fast muscle, and the bands of enemies, respectively (the latter of which allows you to make large swings that affected several bad guys at once.) The only problem is that these styles can be used only while exercising witcher steel or silver swords, which makes many of the other weapons in the course of the game pretty useless. Each style can also be adjusted with the talent points earned each time the peak (which happens often and early to expect beyond cruise level 30 before wrapping Geralt adventure). All other features can also be upgraded, their attributes to their capabilities to both witcher sword, as well as its ability to signs that make up the game of spellcasting component.

Each category has five levels, and each of the four different sports-related skills. For example, to start to take power at the basic level, a capacity of the attacks waterproof, and then move on to specific skills such as Cut in the Jugular, which increases the damage enemy bleeding after the attacks successfully or Bloody Rage, which improves injury A 40 percent provided their vitality baths below 15 percent. CD Projekt even shows a little sense of humor with some skills. For example, it means that your beeper are improving attacks when drunk. The only negative with the ability of the system is that it seems that the force in a cat-all kinds of settings in which you are talented as a warrior and a spellcaster. As a result, players who likes especially severe specialize in a class are out of luck here.

In any case, the magic is not really as big a deal here as it is in most of the fantasy RPG. The five signs are pretty generic is offered on the basic elements and the D & D of the school of magic that left him out of exploding fireballs, charm enemies, create balloon protection, and that sort of thing. Basically, the signals that you just give alternate attacks with the right mouse button. More mystical depth is provided by alchemy. Witchers is very good with magical concoctions, and, as such, Geralt can acquire various recipes which you brew up potions and oils that heal, improve weapons, and so on. Indeed, it seems as if something really cooking, too, because you have to think before opening fire (until the talent level and assigning the same). However, as with most of these breweries to its own systems in RPG, you do not have to be very involved with the creation of their own harmful chemicals, in addition to the search that makes strange doing a key part of the fulfillment of a goal .

As you might expect from the grim times listed above, The Witcher is pretty dour in terms of the look and sound. Engine Aurora has never looked better, and it is hard to believe that this thing goes back to Neverwinter Nights in 2002. They are usually beautiful landscape, and the characters are all distinctive (if a bit cartoonish), but the graphics on trying terribly bleak landscape. Many stone buildings in the game are either fallen or falling. Villages consist of ramshackle huts built of wattle and daub and topped with thatched roofs. Skies always seems to be a faint gray steel, and the rain pours down almost every two days. NPCs are dirty, and often come with different scars and disfigurement minors. There are two main camera angles, over the shoulder and isometric, although the former is the best option, because it offers the best prospect around. The controls are still good foreground.

Sound effects and music are perfect counterparts to the appearance of this world shattered. Little children jump around while talking about death and the performance of crude jokes like pissing in the dwarf's bellows. Women can be reserved in the establishment of their allocations lovers. And all this is surrounded with subtle, creepy-crawlies melodies filled with offbeat tones and low organ notes. The magnificent soundtrack is particularly effective at night, the Gothic body plinking under the moonlight makes you tremble like someone just walked over his grave.
Memorable history, immersive combat, fascinating -- what is not? Some fit and finish issues The Witcher means that it is not all-time classic RPG. Regardless, it is terribly, terribly close, warts and all, and provides a new benchmark for future developers who are looking to lift their games outside the done to death elf and orc ghetto.