Dateranoth

Journal Menu The Witcher 2 has plenty of RPG elements without a lot of the ‘fetch quests’ . This makes the game feel so much more involved and cinematic. Most of the quests have a tie in with the story, and I never felt forced to do a filler quest just to advance through the game. Everything had a purpose and often more than one. This is excellent since it keeps the story moving steadily towards a common goal without the feeling of wasting time. You may be stuck and have to do some quests for this person or the next, but it all ties together in such a way that it feels right. Granted, there are side quests and job boards where you can use your Witcher skills to hunt monsters to gather gold and items. These aren’t required, but most are enjoyable and often encountered on the paths the main quest takes. The only ‘quest’ I didn’t enjoy was the dice poker mini games that felt only like filler for items and money. The idea wasn’t horrible, I just always lost. In order to finish the quest line I would guess I lost 3 out of every 5 games. This repetition and failure made the mini game less than enjoyable to me, but I could just have really bad luck. Along with the great story and cinematic scenes the game boasts some excellent game play, albeit with a steep difficulty curve. The Prologue was especially tough, but during my initial play through a patch was released successfully addressing the balance issues. However, The Witcher 2 still can be frustratingly difficult at times. The trick is to remember your potions and weapon enhancements. These abilities help ease the difficulties early on. Don't let the early fighting discourage you because after a few ability levels the fighting curve quickly levels out. Eventually leaving you feeling much more powerful, but occasionally challenged by bosses. Boss Battle - Kayran The ability tree is where all your leveling is handled in The Witcher 2. I really like this system because you can tell early on the potential for multiple play styles. There are four main branches of the ability tree, Witcher Training, Swordsmanship, Magic, and Alchemy . With the 3 'class' branches locked until you put a certain amount of ability points into the Witcher Training branch. Once unlocked you have a hard decision to make. The ability points are limited and can't be changed once used. So, you have to decide early on which path you want to take. Taking multiple paths is certainly possible, but the better abilities are found at the end of the trees. I found by the end of the game I had only enough ability points to max out one of the ability paths. What I like so much about this system is how much more powerful you can feel from a simple skill upgrade. Take the swordsmanship tree for example. With one skill point you can start damaging all the enemies around you. This has a dramatic effect on dealing with multiple enemies. I never explored the Magic or Alchemy paths, but they look like they have the potential to greatly effect the way you play the game. Character Abilities - Swordsmanship Along with the usual sword, magic, and alchemy method of fighting, The Witcher 2 includes several quick time events scattered throughout the game. Although there is an option to turn on or off 'difficult QTE's' I never found any of them to be difficult with the option on. QTE use ranges from the fist fighting mini-game to parts of the epic boss battles. I enjoy the subtle use of quick time events in The Witcher 2. They add enough interaction to the cinematic events without being too frustrating or intrusive. Quick Time Event During Kayran Battle. Graphically the game is beautiful, as the screenshots below will show. The Witcher 2 features some very detailed environments and superbly crafted creatures. I spent a lot of time just gazing at the environment and getting too close to some of the creatures just for a better look. Everything seems to scale well enough that it should be playable on a large range of computers, and even at the lowest settings, The Witcher 2 offers graphics that are good enough to not distract from the joy of the game. Although The Witcher 2 is fantastic it is not without its flaws. I noticed a few bugs while playing worth noting. On a couple of occasions I found I had to reload because I either became stuck in an animation sequence or an npc or item that should be there wasn't. I also had a handful of Crash to Desktops that were completely unexplainable near the end of the game. One that forced me to reload to an earlier save to continue. The only other noticeable bug was occasionally my quest marker would outright lie to me. Instead of taking me to the quest location it would lead me to the wrong place then change when I got there. None of the bugs felt game stopping to me because I have so many saves, but they could be frustrating if I didn't save so often. So, I suggest saving often. Both for the bugs and the fact that sometimes death awaits around the corner. UPDATE: As of Patch 1.3 many of the above bugs have been fixed. With the upcoming release to XBOX 360 it is important to add that the game plays fantastically well with the XBOX 360 controller for Windows. I simply changed the control scheme to controller and the game picked right up with it. Menus, dialogue, and quick time events reflected controller buttons and the entire transition was smooth. Judging by my few hours with a controller I have every reason to believe the game will be just as great on the XBOX 360 as PC. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a superb game that I would recommend to anyone. It boasts an epic story with paths, love interests, and consequences on par with any rpg including those from Bioware. The game is fun and exciting throughout without the feeling of repetition, and every chapter leaves you wanting more. The Witcher 2 is beautifully crafted with details that leave you in awe and epic boss battles that make you feel like the Witcher you are suppose to be. Very few RPG games have pulled off the cinematic feel that The Witcher 2 has, and even fewer have a story with so many branches that replaying is almost a must. I was on the edge of my chair from the beginning, and I am left hoping there is more to come soon.

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Visuals aside, the game is incredibly fun to play, though a bit steep on the learning curve. I found myself dying regularly during the early stages of the game. Though, there is a patch out now that is suppose to address balance issues in the Prologue. Once you start to get the hang of battles the fighting becomes more enjoyable. You have to know when to run, and be prepared with the right potions and equipment. Still, save often, and be prepared to die from time to time. You can save just about anywhere when not in battle, so dying isn't as frustrating as it could be if we were relying solely on checkpoints. The other advice I can give is to read the manual. It comes in PDF form with the digital copies and is much more extensive than most games release with nowadays. So, do yourself a favor and at least look it over. The in game tutorials are there, but they aren't as in depth as the manual is. From a story standpoint I'm loving it. Things continue at a steady enough pace to keep me interested, and though I never saw the end of The Witcher I'm not lost with the story thus far. So, if you've never played the first one you could easily pick this one up and have fun with it. Though I highly suggest playing The Witcher, especially for the low price it's offered at today. The side quests have had enough depth to make them worth looking into, but some are the regular 'kill this or that and get paid' type. Though I have a lot more to go, I'm fully expecting enjoyment out of the rest of the game. It's a beautiful, challenging, and well crafted game that has me glued to my computer chair. If you are thinking of buying it, but are still on the fence, drop by our live page sometime and check out the gameplay live. I should be playing it all live as I continue my journey. You can watch it at http://gmcd.me/gcl . If you don't catch the live stream then check out some of the videos at http://en.thewitcher.com/the-witcher/2/videos/gameplay/ . That's all for now, but be sure to check out the full review once I've completed the game!

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Gathering Fun by taking buddies for a ride. Those are the basic principles of how the game is played. As you collect more fun and build better vehicles you can gather fun much faster and also reach places that were unreachable before. Once you have obtained enough fun you can use it to add gravity to the objects orbiting earth and bring them down. Some items just add more buddies to the world, but many of them are plot points that must be removed from orbit in order to progress the game. A Skyscraper brought out of orbit with the power of Fun! I was amused from the first moment I was thrown into this world and in fits of laughter the first time I kicked a buddy and it made a strange comment. The construction of vehicles is a fun but often times a difficult affair. You can create almost anything, but they rarely work out as well as you think they will. Luckily, the game has a steady supply of blueprints you can find to build the basics for you. More often than not I found myself using the blueprints as a basis then upgrading and tweaking them into a crazy contraption of my own making. However, I did manage to build the oddball flying rig or two from scratch. Once you build a decent vehicle the game progresses fairly quickly from that point. You find yourself moving from one odd objective to the next with some very minor puzzle elements. Mostly involving gathering buddies and orientating an object correctly. The game's objectives can be a little bit vague, and there was one part underwater that particularly had me lost. Though, if you just focus on finding buddies and bringing objects out of the sky it's fairly straightforward. The entire game is rinse and repeat of the above with a few objectives for each of the four seasons of the game. Just enough time to get comfortable with one vehicle type and have to move on to another. I do need to point out a problem that they don't make apparent until it happens. The game will progress to the next season when certain conditions are met, and often it takes you to a different location. If you haven't dismantled your vehicle before that you will lose it and the parts associated with it. This was frustrating at first, but I learned to dismantle my rides when I thought something major was going to happen. Not a big deal at all since you can save your own blueprints. A Heli-Blimp built to haul massive amounts of buddies. Before I wrap this up I would like to touch on a feature that I didn't use much but found interesting. You can collect fun and bring spare parts down from orbit by gathering buddies and having them dance around a musical symbol. The default tune is included in game, but there is also an editor that allows you to piece together your own music and dance routine for the buddies. So, you can have them jam out and dance to about a minute's worth of whatever tune you like. It's a small but amusing feature that many may find interesting. Cargo! entertained me for a good 8 hours and though repetitive in places had enough material to keep me playing and wondering what's next. The story is a quirky adventure with a bit of a twist ending that is sure to amuse, and if not, leave you scratching your head thinking "What is going on in this crazy world?" . On top of a crazy story mode it has four Sandbox modes ( one for each season ) that start you with a large number of each of the parts. This gives you a quick way to jump in, build any vehicle you can think of, kick a few buddies around, save, and come back another day. I already found myself going back to add to and experiment with one of my vehicles and see just how many buddies I could fit on it. The game did what I believe it was intended to do and dealt me a healthy dose of FUN. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys building physics based vehicles and roaming an insane and colorful world. The game just looks great.