The Witcher : Enhanced Edition - Platinum (PC DVD)

I couldnt quite wait for Skyrim so i thought I'd give something else a go in the meantime. The Witcher reviews pretty well and I got it cheap enough. The problem is after only a few hours of gameplay I just can't bring myself to play anymore. The graphics are perfectly fine, even at two years old and visually the game seems well put together but the control system is terrible. Not only can the "white wolf" (thank you Michael Moorcock!) not jump (seriously?) but he is also terrified of any drop exceeding six inches. Gain all the experience you like, but rest assured you will forever be frustrated by the two foot fence, or worse still, the slight step down off a wooden jetty. The uninspired combat system is basically about selecting from one of three limited styles and timing sucessive mouse clicks so that your character swings his sword in slightly different circles. Nothing feels particularly intuitive, from the rather clunky skill system to the alchemy skill, and whenever you get into trouble a mystery wolf vibrates disconcertingly in the upper right hand side of the screen. Weapon choice is limited from the get go and most of the dialogue is atrocious. The blurb says this game has an adult themed backstory but from what I can tell, it was written by a 12 year old. There are limited options for talking to people. Most of the conversations you have will revolve around which order you ask your three or four rather banal questions in. Occasionally your character gets the chance to accidentally have sex (fade out, curtains in the wind, waves crashing on shore, trains going into tunnels etc), or even better, annoy an NPC into never talking to you again (sigh, reload, pick other option). The Witcher has none of Oblivion's open-endedness (is that a word?) or its immersive qualities and i can't help feeling I wasted twelve quid. Damn my impatience!

This is definatly a fantastic game and not your average fairy tale or medieval game you would think. This is probably the closest thing you can get to real if monsters and dwarves existed. Its an 18 for a reason dont buy it for your kids or yourself if you cant take a shock or two...infact only buy it if your prepared to have a laugh at some of the stuff this game produces. Brilliant Dialogue, ace combat system, easy to understand, never nothing to do due to a tight-knit community making mods for the game and adding side adventures for hours more fun, get drunk, play dice poker, get laid and get cards with smokin hot medieval chicks on them after you tap them. I really like the protagonist Geralt, he has a serious attitude and adeep voice without seeming emotionless, dull or boring. Hes kind of to the point but still shows alot of passion. Hes a fearless Witcher who suffers from memory loss but has the brains to retrace his life...a true warrior. 5/5 stars i found nothing wrong with this game...although be aware that a serial code doesnt come with this version, a slipup on Atari's end. you have to email there helpline with pictures as proof of purchase to recieve a registration key. You can still play the game fully dont worry...but you wont get any future updates or anything like that i think until you register i think. CLASSIC MASTERPEICE, a must buy.

The game has been described very well elsewhere - a very great pleasure to play. Voicings are now excellent (a surprising cross section of accents and types) which are most enjoyable. The added "bonus" adventures are a bit of a mixed bag - "The Swamp" one is a load of rubbish, whereas some of the others are quite lengthy and tricky. When I first played the game (Win 7 32 bit), despite patching the game to ver. 1.5, there were continual lock-ups/crashes. I tried running the game by re-setting to Win XP - but no luck - still continually crashed. On investigating this on the internet, I tried a number of "solutions" but with little success. However, on one site I found the following and can confirm it works - playing the whole game through. (I subsequently ran the game without this - and it started crashing again!) The fix is to "Enable 3GB switch on Win 7" (I have no idea what this does technically - but it seems to work) Thuis will also work with Vista. To do this :- 1. Right click on command prompt in the Accessories Program Group (accessed via the Start Button). Click "Run AS Administrator". 2. At the command prompt (on the Dos Screen) enter "bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072" Note syntax and spacing. 3. Restart the computer. To undo this :- 1. Do 1 as above 2. At the command prompt enter "bcdedit /deletevalue IncreaseUserVa" 3. Restart computer. It is also worth keeping the number of saved games to around 10 or so - this may also contribute towards fewer crashes. I subtracted one star from my rating as this problem should be patched by now.

What makes tyhis game a "miss" rather than a "hit" is the fact that there is only one character to play - you can't make your own. And if you don't really like Iron Maiden Groupies who have discovered hair straighteners, there's really no incentive to play. But I plugged on with this one, just to see how it panned out, and it turned out to be a reasonable RPG along the classic lines, with all the familiar quests and side quests, and running around to report back to various NPCs on your progress (rather too much of that in fact). This pre-dates Dragon Age and has a far superior game engine in my view - all those Xbox cross-over games seem to be identicle anyway - but sadly Dragon Age is far more engaging and takes the RPG crown, simply because of its diversity, though it does copy a lot of ideas from The Witcher. Nothing to write home about here but it will keep me amused until the next big thing in RPGs hits the scene.

A very clunky game to play. I've outlined the pros and cons below: Pros: *Graphically a great game! Cons: *The movement is awkward - it took me a good hour to get to grips with running around properly, and after that as soon as fighting is involved it gets awkward again! *Fighting is indeed more like "whack-a-mole" (as another reviewer commented) than anything else I've played. *There is nowhere near enough room in the inventory *I have no idea why my character needs to constantly seduce women as there is no relevant whatsoever to the plot. *The abilities and level up screens are confusing and detract from the flow of the game. *The interactions with other characters are much too long and the voiceovers are dull and lifeless. *All the characters seem to come from a stock few, so the game quickly becomes dull (and a little confusing!). *There is no character customisation. * I have never before needed to refer to the user manual to play an RPG, but have needed to refer to the Witcher's manual at least 10 times during the first hour of play. It is not as intuitive as other RPGs and is not one for the casual gamer. Having said this, I have played my fair share of RPGs and would say that this is not for the serious gamer either! I've played 5 hours and will not be continuing. Perhaps another Dragon Age runthrough is in order ...

The pros: epic game - the characters are exciting, the dialogue entertaining and the graphics snappy. However it is a very demanding game, my system meets the recommended requirements but i have to turn all the graphics down to min and I still get stutter, so think twice before running it on any pre 2010 system - it seems particularly CPU intensive. There's a decent modding community behind it which adds hours of entertainment and graphics updates. The combat system can be a bit frustrating after a while and the difficulty veers from too easy to insanely hard at random times Playing without the guide is also rather frustrating, fortunately it's included in the extended edition. If you can get the extended edition, don't get the standard one - the extended one improves on it to the point of being a fully fledged sequel. If you're a fan of fantasy/ RPG I recommend this series - assuming you've got the money for a decent rig

An excellent game. Can't add much to the other reivews, so will just say that the music is brilliantly atmospheric, the use of alchemy/potions/herbs etc. is subtle and pretty clever by most games' standards, the magic is simple and appropriately limited for a single-player game (think of all those times when you had to stop and rest in Neverwinter Nights if you were playing a solo mage) and the combat system is far better than, for example, Oblivion. Oh, and the plot is dark and enjoyable, though there is the odd quirk where if you ask questions of an NPC in the wrong order you can't complete other quests hanging off that NPC. Nothing game-breaking, since most RPG-players are accustomed to saving before speaking to an NPC to make sure you get maximum experience. Full marks.

The Enhanced Edition fixes most of the bugs in the first version. There are also seven extra "Adventures", but five of those have no voice acting, and one of the two that does is apparently a race against the clock, which is something I really, really dislike. So there is not a lot more to it than the bugfixes for me. So, if you've not played The Witcher, this is the version to get. If you have played The Witcher, unless you are prepared to play in an almost silent world (the SFX are there, there's just no talking), the value is a lot more questionable. The Witcher definitely goes out of it's way to be an 18 rated game, if strong language offends you, give it a miss. In terms of my ratings, having already played The Witcher through, this is probably about a 70%, it's a bit more than a 60%, but it's certainly not an 80% for me.