MRG
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- Mar 24, 2007
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Greetings all,
Is it really that hard for game developers to make & release a decent all around RPG?
Take the newest game from CDProjekt called ?The Witcher? for example. This game has great graphics, great audio, great in game cinematics, amazing intro video & a huge semi-open game world that while somewhat linear, still allows for a degree of exploration. Throw in blood & gibs from combat finishing moves & you have the making for a great game right? Well you would if the core game mechanics were not as somehow missing as they seem to be.
For instance my biggest grip about this game: The combat. As you progress you learn 3 different combat stances, which are;
1)Strong Attack (slower, but powerful)
2)Fast Attack (fast, but less damaging)
3)Group Attack (use when surrounded)
Each stance plays a huge role as you fight the many different enemy types that you'll come across while playing through the game. For example, you'll come across slower, dim(er) witted enemies that come at you with whatever weapon they happened to have, for these fools you'll want to use a strong attack to do as much damage, as fast as possible. Then other enemies you'll meet will be fleet footed & so it'll often require you to change combat stances mid-fight to be able to engage the faster opponents. You'll do less damage overall, but you'll attack faster & thus be able to engage the faster enemy. Now add into the mix a combination of several different enemy types all attacking you at once. What do you do? You'll need to once again change your combat tactics to that of one that enables you to engage more than one enemy at the same time & so for this you would activate the group attack stance. Sounds interesting & a creative way to engage in combat does it not?
Well it is, when the damn thing actually works. More times than not, I would engage one enemy, only for the time that it took for my char to actually swing at the enemy to be several seconds after I pressed the mouse button. Then add in the type of combat that the game employs, the same type found in games like Lucasarts ?Knight Of The Old Republic?. The type where there is a slight pause between each character attacking each other. Almost turn based, but not quite. So you'll first click on an enemy, wait a second for your char to start attacking & then wait for the animation to finish before clicking again. Now depending on the difficulty setting you chose, (Easy & Medium shows it, Hard does not) you will see the cursor change from a small sword to that of a flaming sword. This is the signal that tells you, that you have a split second to press the mouse button again to attack again, only this time linking your attacks together which enables your char to do more damage. Your char can link together several attacks, each one getting faster & faster, until it's all you can do to click the mouse button as fast as you can to keep the combo going. Again, while that sounds easy, it's in fact not, because if you don't click on the mouse button at EXACTLY the correct time, the combo is broken and you have a several second pause, while your char just stands there, not as though he is winded from the attack, but in a way that shows the game needs to catch up with your actions. Miss the timing & you'll wait a few seconds as your char just stands there, all the while your enemy is attacking you.
In the event that you manage to time all your attacks correctly, you'll get the chance to do a combo finishing move, a feature that almost makes the above tedious sequence worth while, because IMHO, the finishing moves are great. Several different factors lead up to enabling the finishing more, factors I have not yet figured out, but when you do them, you are treated to a pretty cool animation. That was animation, NOT cinematic, so don't get the 2 mixed up with one another. Just to give you an idea of a couple I have seen, one is where after timing my attacks just right, my character jumped up (there is no ?Jump? key to bind in the game) onto the enemies chest, drew back his claymore in both hands and while standing on the enemies chest, swung down with both hands on the sword, cutting off the guys head. He then jumped off as the body falls over & the head bounces on the ground. Of course blood splatters onto the ground in what I would think is a somewhat realistic manner, since it's more like a spray/dropplets than the typical ?globs & splatters? you see in most games. Another fatality my char performed, was when I knocked down an opponent, my char walked up to the guy, threw his sword into the air, grabbed it by the blade, then swinging it down cross guard first into the enemies face. I'll not get into fighting barehanded, but thats a hell of a lot of fun. So as you can see from reading the above, the games combat should be great, but once you get a chance to play it, you'll see that it's not THAT good. More frustrating than rewarding.
As you progress, you'll come across items in the game world that you can search, such as chests, & barrels among other items. The stuff you find, is then stored into your tiny inventory, that very hard to see once you open it. Each icon is about 2x2 pixels in size. So yeah, small. On top of the hard-to-see items in your inventory, there is no auto sort of any kind and since alchemy plays a massive role in the game, it's hard to know what you have at any given time without actually looking at each. Time consuming to say the least. Off to the right of the screen near the top you'll see SMALL icons that list your char, your inventory, your quests & other info. To make use of alchemy for example, you need to meditate & so you need to find a fire or a master to meditate with/at to be able to make potions. The same goes for leveling up your character.
Now I will admit that I am not the smartest man on earth, but it should not have taken as long as it did to figure out how the hell you level up, once you do manage to find a fire to meditate at. While at the correct screen, I pressed every single button & looked at all the skills on the skill tree & STILL was unable to level up, even though the game told me I needed to level up. After several minutes of looking, I at long last figured it out. Perhaps thats just because I leveled up around 5:00am after having played for several hours & was a little tired. Perhaps not. As you progress through the game, you'll come across magical stones that grant you a special ?spell?. For the most part, they look great and do play a huge role in the game. One such spell blows items out of your way & is great for knocking down enemies, because a knocked down enemy is killed in one hit with a fatality animation.
As you progress, you'll get different weapons, some Steel & some silver. Keep in mind that many monsters are not harmed by steel, only silver. You also get to use smaller weapons like daggers & heavy weapons like axes & maces, but for a few token uses, they were IMHO, useless. The game mostly revolves around The Witcher weapon style. Like most other RPG's, you'll get armor & rings of different sorts to equip which in turn makes your char look different.
I found the game to be a system hog with possible bad memory leaks. At times the game would run flawless & then at other time at the exact same place in game, it would crawl along at around 10fps. I read this game crashed a lot, but I did not have that problem once while playing it. There is a 1.1a patch that has been released that fixes a few bugs, but I feel it is a BIG patch away from being the game it COULD be.
There is a lot more to this game, than I am going to get into now. I do strongly advise you to read a few reviews on this game first & not to just look at the scores it got. I made the mistake of doing that & wish I now had not gotten it, good reviews it got or not. I also strongly advise you to read through the manual before playing this game, as a lot of my questions were answered there.
Final Score: 2.5/5
Official Website:
http://www.thewitcher.com/
-MRG
Is it really that hard for game developers to make & release a decent all around RPG?
Take the newest game from CDProjekt called ?The Witcher? for example. This game has great graphics, great audio, great in game cinematics, amazing intro video & a huge semi-open game world that while somewhat linear, still allows for a degree of exploration. Throw in blood & gibs from combat finishing moves & you have the making for a great game right? Well you would if the core game mechanics were not as somehow missing as they seem to be.
For instance my biggest grip about this game: The combat. As you progress you learn 3 different combat stances, which are;
1)Strong Attack (slower, but powerful)
2)Fast Attack (fast, but less damaging)
3)Group Attack (use when surrounded)
Each stance plays a huge role as you fight the many different enemy types that you'll come across while playing through the game. For example, you'll come across slower, dim(er) witted enemies that come at you with whatever weapon they happened to have, for these fools you'll want to use a strong attack to do as much damage, as fast as possible. Then other enemies you'll meet will be fleet footed & so it'll often require you to change combat stances mid-fight to be able to engage the faster opponents. You'll do less damage overall, but you'll attack faster & thus be able to engage the faster enemy. Now add into the mix a combination of several different enemy types all attacking you at once. What do you do? You'll need to once again change your combat tactics to that of one that enables you to engage more than one enemy at the same time & so for this you would activate the group attack stance. Sounds interesting & a creative way to engage in combat does it not?
Well it is, when the damn thing actually works. More times than not, I would engage one enemy, only for the time that it took for my char to actually swing at the enemy to be several seconds after I pressed the mouse button. Then add in the type of combat that the game employs, the same type found in games like Lucasarts ?Knight Of The Old Republic?. The type where there is a slight pause between each character attacking each other. Almost turn based, but not quite. So you'll first click on an enemy, wait a second for your char to start attacking & then wait for the animation to finish before clicking again. Now depending on the difficulty setting you chose, (Easy & Medium shows it, Hard does not) you will see the cursor change from a small sword to that of a flaming sword. This is the signal that tells you, that you have a split second to press the mouse button again to attack again, only this time linking your attacks together which enables your char to do more damage. Your char can link together several attacks, each one getting faster & faster, until it's all you can do to click the mouse button as fast as you can to keep the combo going. Again, while that sounds easy, it's in fact not, because if you don't click on the mouse button at EXACTLY the correct time, the combo is broken and you have a several second pause, while your char just stands there, not as though he is winded from the attack, but in a way that shows the game needs to catch up with your actions. Miss the timing & you'll wait a few seconds as your char just stands there, all the while your enemy is attacking you.
In the event that you manage to time all your attacks correctly, you'll get the chance to do a combo finishing move, a feature that almost makes the above tedious sequence worth while, because IMHO, the finishing moves are great. Several different factors lead up to enabling the finishing more, factors I have not yet figured out, but when you do them, you are treated to a pretty cool animation. That was animation, NOT cinematic, so don't get the 2 mixed up with one another. Just to give you an idea of a couple I have seen, one is where after timing my attacks just right, my character jumped up (there is no ?Jump? key to bind in the game) onto the enemies chest, drew back his claymore in both hands and while standing on the enemies chest, swung down with both hands on the sword, cutting off the guys head. He then jumped off as the body falls over & the head bounces on the ground. Of course blood splatters onto the ground in what I would think is a somewhat realistic manner, since it's more like a spray/dropplets than the typical ?globs & splatters? you see in most games. Another fatality my char performed, was when I knocked down an opponent, my char walked up to the guy, threw his sword into the air, grabbed it by the blade, then swinging it down cross guard first into the enemies face. I'll not get into fighting barehanded, but thats a hell of a lot of fun. So as you can see from reading the above, the games combat should be great, but once you get a chance to play it, you'll see that it's not THAT good. More frustrating than rewarding.
As you progress, you'll come across items in the game world that you can search, such as chests, & barrels among other items. The stuff you find, is then stored into your tiny inventory, that very hard to see once you open it. Each icon is about 2x2 pixels in size. So yeah, small. On top of the hard-to-see items in your inventory, there is no auto sort of any kind and since alchemy plays a massive role in the game, it's hard to know what you have at any given time without actually looking at each. Time consuming to say the least. Off to the right of the screen near the top you'll see SMALL icons that list your char, your inventory, your quests & other info. To make use of alchemy for example, you need to meditate & so you need to find a fire or a master to meditate with/at to be able to make potions. The same goes for leveling up your character.
Now I will admit that I am not the smartest man on earth, but it should not have taken as long as it did to figure out how the hell you level up, once you do manage to find a fire to meditate at. While at the correct screen, I pressed every single button & looked at all the skills on the skill tree & STILL was unable to level up, even though the game told me I needed to level up. After several minutes of looking, I at long last figured it out. Perhaps thats just because I leveled up around 5:00am after having played for several hours & was a little tired. Perhaps not. As you progress through the game, you'll come across magical stones that grant you a special ?spell?. For the most part, they look great and do play a huge role in the game. One such spell blows items out of your way & is great for knocking down enemies, because a knocked down enemy is killed in one hit with a fatality animation.
As you progress, you'll get different weapons, some Steel & some silver. Keep in mind that many monsters are not harmed by steel, only silver. You also get to use smaller weapons like daggers & heavy weapons like axes & maces, but for a few token uses, they were IMHO, useless. The game mostly revolves around The Witcher weapon style. Like most other RPG's, you'll get armor & rings of different sorts to equip which in turn makes your char look different.
I found the game to be a system hog with possible bad memory leaks. At times the game would run flawless & then at other time at the exact same place in game, it would crawl along at around 10fps. I read this game crashed a lot, but I did not have that problem once while playing it. There is a 1.1a patch that has been released that fixes a few bugs, but I feel it is a BIG patch away from being the game it COULD be.
There is a lot more to this game, than I am going to get into now. I do strongly advise you to read a few reviews on this game first & not to just look at the scores it got. I made the mistake of doing that & wish I now had not gotten it, good reviews it got or not. I also strongly advise you to read through the manual before playing this game, as a lot of my questions were answered there.
Final Score: 2.5/5
Official Website:
http://www.thewitcher.com/
-MRG
