Cyberpunk 2077 Review

For the last week I've been deep in the gritty streets and neon sidewalks of a city. 

It's almost my own city, but not quite. Occasionally I'll recognize a monument or a panorama that is straight out of the view outside my window, right here. For the rest of the time, the glowing streets of Night City are a world only a few brief steps removed from the horrors of the real. 

In Cyberpunk 2077, we step into the shoes of the futuristic everyhero, V. Delving into the machinations of skyline dominating megacorporations and the brutal life of street level crime, all the while listening to the backseat driving of a time displaced rocker-turned-terrorist. It's time to burn Night City to the ground. 

V is what you choose to make of them. The character customization of Cyberpunk 2077 is both impressively trailblazing and strangely crippled at the same time. How we design our version of protagonist V allows an assortment of choices and options that would be fantastic for a standard GTA style game, but beyond allowing some sci-fi options to eyes and metallic teeth, there's little here that actually takes advantage of the Cyberpunk genre. 

Being able to alter V's genitals separate of their body type allows for the illusion of gender subversion, but then having to choose your V's voice to officially designate them as 'male or female' in the eyes of all in-game characters immediately circumvents it and returns it to basically picking your male or female Shepard.

While it absolutely can't be understated that it is insane for an AAA title released in the west to let you create a slender femininely bodied V with a huge cock, it then feels like any further effort was diverted from sticking the landing in character customization, and I can't help but feel this is one of the areas the game may have been handicapped by the famously rushed final days well documented elsewhere.

After an opening introduction unique to your chosen character origin, you're let loose in the dark streets of Night City, and the hand holding is blissfully light. An issue often found in the genre is a habit of slowly introducing game mechanics mission by mission, piling them upon one another until ten missions later nothing has really passed but a series of game mechanics you'll never use again. Cyberpunk throws you into the deep end pretty much from the get go, with access to almost everything you can do in the game from the start. Something wonderful carried over from The Witcher 3 is the fact that almost any character build is effective and a legitimate direction to take your V. 

The guns blazing approach is fast and accurate, with the game definitely being optimized for the first person shooter design. Guns are wildly varied, from the usual pistols, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles and all manner of machine guns, but then added to this is the tech side of guns, allowing you to interface with certain weapons to take more effective control, sending bullets automatically seeking for heads in your enemies. 

A bit more unusual in a first person game is the ability to run a robust melee combat build, which is also extremely fun. Far more quick and accurate than trying to use close range weapons in something like The Elder Scolls, using fists here is fast and carries a great sense of impact. The default boxing is fine, but soon you'll be able to augment your arms into Mantis blades to slice up enemies, or Gorilla fists to deliver huge blunt force blows. Your arms can even be altered into the whip-like Monowire, or fitted with a projectile launcher to change standard grenade tossing into direct RPG accuracy with your bare hand. 

Outside of weaponry, you can also take the far more Cyberpunk route of Quickhacking, a system of multiple different tweaks and abilities allowing you to take advantage during combat, quick as you'd use something like spells in a fantasy game, to do things like shutting down your opponents optical sensors or exploding the grenades in their pockets, right up to sending viral system failures into a group of enemies and watching it jump from one to another like a fatal meme. Other uses of the Quickhacking system allows for avoiding large amounts of combat situations entirely if you prefer. Using stealth tricks and turning the environment to your advantage to either circumvent enemies or destroy them without even being seen becomes a devious and playful alternative to using weaponry. While you'll occasionally encounter enemies who will Quickhack you in turn, I only ever encountered them using simple DOTs on me, and it would have been fun and more challenging to encounter enemies who use some more nefarious hacks.

All these character equipment options are supported by a complex advancement system, growing with your level, with a wide variety of buffs and boosts, making certain weapons stronger, allowing you to apply debuffs with fists or adding bleeding effects to blades, and making your Quickhacks faster or adding a multitude of effects to them. Building into these skill trees adds to your chosen abilities drastically, upgrading hacking into real battlefield controlling effects and turning melee combatants into regenerating juggernauts. 

Taking the V you have crafted, genitals and mantis blades and all, into the underbelly of Night City, the game flourishes most in the characters you meet. From your best friend Jackie, a hardened child of the street with a heart of gold, to aging rock musicians turned gangsters and taxi driving sentient AIs, Cyberpunk 2077 has a wealth of fun and unique personalities to indulge in interacting with. Some of the games best moments are hidden deep in a wealth of complex side missions, with one easily missable moment involving a convicted murderer-turned-Night city messiah sticking out to me in particular.

And then of course, we come to Johnny Silverhand. It's impossible to even really talk about Cyberpunk 2077 without talking about Johnny Silverhand.

Johnny Silverhand is a complete piece of shit. He's an egomaniacal, narcissistic rocker well past his day in the limelight who once detonated a nuke in a major metropolis just to prove a point about capitalism. Johnny is forever at your side, judging your shitty choices, talking down your self worth, and forever reminding you that in the grand scope of the Megacorporations who run Night City, you are absolutely nothing. Johnny is both angel and devil on your shoulder at the same time, dropping by to share a story of fucking groupies at some long forgotten show, or to let you know he thinks the guy you're talking to is a wannabe poser or a corporate stooge. Johnny's presence is a unique facet of Cyberpunk 2077, and one of its most enjoyable elements. It was no forced star-power misstep to cast Keanu Reeves as Silverhand, because it's clear he loves the role, and somehow through all the crude, antagonistic snark he throws at you as you journey together through Night City, Silverhand is still lovable as all hell.

Night City itself is a wonderful world to take your journey through. It's energetic and absolutely filled with stuff. The constant barrage of noise and advertisements and buildings and stores is delightfully varied, fun to observe, and interesting to explore. The street art is incredible and unique and feels real. Even late in the game I came across very distinct looking unimportant NPCs who were wearing something I hadn't yet seen in the game before. The incidental characters on the street or filling out one of the cities many nightclubs or bars always wear something wild and they do seem designed, not randomized.

Seeing everyone else wearing such fantastic clothes continually hammers home how little we can customize our own protagonist though. You'll casually run into characters wearing spiked cocktail dresses, huge fur coats, translucent plastic mini skirts and all manner of outrageous sci-fi styles, but we as V don't have access to any such garments. The clothing you can buy in stores is all a little samey, mainly consisting of street wear that wouldn't look particularly out of place in a GTA game, and doesn't jump out as wildly cyberpunk in most cases. Another oversight is the inability to really alter your character. We see people on the street who have chrome flesh from head to toe, cops with glowing cybernetic eye implants, and one of the gangs is based around heavy augmentation and routinely has entire facial organs replaced with all manner of glowing red orbs or mechanical jaws. Why on Earth can't we do this too! The lack of getting to have even something as simple as a robot arm in character creation seems to miss out on half the fun of living in a Cyberpunk world.  

Night City of course isn't complete with out its nightlife. The gangs of Night City, both the style and overall concept of each one, formed a large part of the games design push pre-release and are present in just about every bit of supplemental content about the game. The sexy all-female Moxes, the monstrous heavily augmented Maelstrom, Soviet Scavengers, Japanese Yakuza themed Tyger Claws, the dubiously voodoo themed... Voodoo Boys, all of them have a distinct stylistic flair, an atmosphere that colours the city as we interact with and combat each gang.

The thing is though, we really don't. The gangs are completely secondary to the main story, and really only form a small aspect of the city as a whole, which is a mystifying design choice. 

Even a quick glance at the in game map of Night City sees it separated by area, with the symbol of the gang that primarily operates there, but they never really come up as you navigate the area. Start a fight in any area of the game, it's the same police who come after you, when it would have been much more fun for it to have been that particular areas designated gang instead. Fighting a string of identical police robots is dull compared to, for example, facing a group of Tyger Claws with katanas riding up on motorbikes or the attack of a crew of barely-dressed Moxes wielding baseball bats.

While we have some minor interactions with Maelstrom and the Voodoo Boys in the main story, it's brief. Many of the gangs, especially fringe ones like the Scavengers and 6th Street, are completely ancillary to the game as a whole, and feel like they're barely fleshed out whatsoever. 

The presence of the gangs should be a major way to make coming to each of Night City's seven boroughs feel distinct, and their absence in the story and even just casual play of the game itself is a disappointment considering the atmosphere they could have helped add to the city. 

The only real interaction we have with each different borough is the presence of the 'fixers'. These characters communicate with V through text message and video calls and generally act as your quest givers for each hub, sending you details on things to steal, people to kill or cars to buy. Each is different and has their own personality, some more than others, but generally the fixers aren't as important in the grand scheme of things as it seems they should be. 

We don't really know why V is compelled to interact with most of these fixers at all. A couple are connected to us through the story, but some simply call us up out of the blue and expect us to dutifully run off to complete a side quest for them. 

In one extremely memorable sequence, V meets a local gang leader, and takes a walk with them through the slums of their city. We watch how they interact with locals, how they talk about their corner of Night City, and listen to how they expect V to help them with their own goals. This brilliant moment gave us everything we needed to know not just about this character and the part he plays in everything, but unveiled the uniqueness of that specific part of night city. It would have been great if every fixer got such a neat introduction to the narrative as well. 

The times in the game that we take a step away from Night City and journey into the nearby Badlands are surprisingly poignant. You'll find yourself driving through endless rolling dunes of trash, discarded electronics and kitchen appliances while the city sits, gigantic on the horizon, belching smog and advertisements into the skies. The roads of the old world are there, partially buried under dirt and burned out cars, but what's there looks uncomfortably like it does in reality today. You'll pass motels and bars, old truck stops and bus stops that are relics of times gone past, but something you'd see any time you were to head even a few miles outside of the real Los Angeles. 

You'll spend a fair amount of time speeding around Night City and the surrounding area, and of course you'll do it in one of the games many vehicles. While early on you're supplied with a starter vehicle fitting the starting concept you picked for your V, you'll soon find yourself without one and in need of wheels if you'd prefer to avoid hoofing it around Night City. While the fast travel system is helpful, by the end of the game you can zip immediately pretty much anywhere you need to go, it's a big place in the meantime. 

The variety of cars and bikes you can steal on the street GTA style is what you'd expect from the genre, and the rest you can purchase from your fixers or be rewarded with if you play your cards right in certain side missions or story chapters. Another example of the game choosing quality of life over realism, any vehicle you own disappears into a nebulous off-screen garage to be summoned to your location instantly at any time, and you can leave them wherever you like without worry that they will ever be damaged or lost. However by the time you're earning enough money and respect to purchase one of the many high end futuristic sports cars or anime style superbikes, you may find the convenience of the fast travel has replaced any need to actually use them. 

The more time I spent in Night City, the more I enjoyed myself. Cyberpunk 2077 started off a little quiet for me, and it took a moment for me to get the feel for it, but when the story decides suddenly to take the plunge and grip you, you best believe it fucking does. There's moments of cinematic tension that are immensely entertaining, and some quiet scenes of unexpected tenderness that stuck with me. Johnny Silverhand knows a little about losing yourself, feeling like you don't know who you are at times, feeling lost in the world. The story is, at it's heart, a personal one, and searching for a way just to continue to be yourself is a powerful drive beyond any villainous scheme or a typical saving the world yarn.

The way V's story can end is varied depending on your choices, from quietly satisfying to deeply sad, but all endings are a spectacle to be a part of and worth seeing.  

While it has been covered at great length elsewhere, it's impossible to fully look back at Cyberpunk 2077 as a whole without addressing the issue of bugs. As with bugs and glitches in all games, YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. I personally was very lucky, and in my 70+ hours exploring every inch of Night City on a PS4 Pro system, I encountered only a handful of minor bugs, all solved by a quick restart to a recent autosave, and a few instances of crashing. The game would sometimes take its time fully loading in a new area, with textures and character details popping in over a few seconds, and occasionally I'd run into strange graphical quirks like an individual clearly smoking their gun instead of a cigarette. Patches in the first week since release seem to have begun to iron out issues, and already the game does seem overall more stable. Nothing still found in game is truly game breaking, and if you don't mind a few odd or sometimes hilarious graphical quirks here and there, you'll likely find nothing that bad among the bugs to still be found in Cyberpunk 2077. 

I enjoyed my time in Night City. The story itself rounds out to a solid 25 hours, and the side missions and world around it flesh out another 30. I'd love to see the world grow and expand, and some of those missing aspects filled out in the future. I've got the feeling I've not quite burned enough of the city to the ground just yet. 

-

I played Cyberpunk 2077 on a PS4 Pro. 

Review: Final Fantasy XV.

It's said that Final Fantasy XV was a decade in the making.
Fans of the series can certainly believe it, with the lackluster response we've all had to the last few titles in the series.
The world's most popular fantasy RPG series, a virtual paragon of the gaming world, has been on a pretty steep decline ever since the days of 2001's Final Fantasy X. From the endless dungeons of FFXII, to the heavily criticized walkway straight paths of FFXIII, fans have been disappointed for some time.
FFXV makes an effort to correct these flaws of the past, offer players something a little new, as well as try to bring back some of what makes the series so great.

We start our story with a road trip as the young Prince Noctis and his three friends make waves across the countryside, heading to the neighboring country for the Prince's arranged wedding. Right from the moment you start, you get the feeling that character will be a big part of the game. Unlike previous games in the series, we are tied to these four characters for the duration, and only directly control Noctis himself. His three friends, gruff and handsome Gladiolus, sharp and dashing Ignis, and playful, cute Prompto, are at your side every step of the way.

There is a lot of charm to be found in FFXV. That really is the best word for it. Our four heroes are a group of friends who are genuinely lovable, and their exploits together, in friendship, brotherhood, and the conflicts and troubles that arise, are by far the best aspect of the game. They have strong personalities from the get go, each a well confirmed anime bishi boy stereotype. Prompto will whine if you spend too much time walking, or will beg to be taken to ride chocobos, Ignis will sternly advise the others against too much fast food, and so on. The casual conversation between the four friends is pretty much constant throughout the entire game, and amazingly, I never found myself tire of any of the characters. The personalities are perhaps more realistic than the standard fare you'll find in a Final Fantasy game, the moody Noctis is still more pleasant and likable than loner misery-guts like Cloud or Squall, and Prompto is still grounded and tame enough not to be an irritatingly ridiculous.

Each of the characters has distinct and unique skills, and where you'd normally expect to find these to be something appropriately RPG-esque like magic or hacking, you instead level up a characters talent for photography, or slowly nurture their ability to cook and prepare dishes. It's a little odd a first, but quickly becomes a hugely enjoyable addition. You'll pick up items dropped by enemies or purchased from supply stores, so that Ignis, the bespectacled intellectual member of your party, can cook up something good for dinner each night. You'll see your heroes seated around their campfire, eating the meal you directed Ignis to prepare. These moments of downtime are where the personalities shine, and also cleverly manages to disguise the repetitive saving/healing part of the game, notoriously a boring aspect of any RPG, and instead make it something constantly fun and ever changing. The characters react to the in-game events with an enthusiasm which is extremely entertaining, like Prompto trying to talk you out of taking on a particularly huge monster, or Gladiolus dryly quipping "Well that's bold of her." as a nude female enemy attacks.

Prompto, the wise cracking little brother of the team, snaps pictures of his own accord throughout the game, and gives you the chance to look through them and save any you like whenever you take a breather. Every picture in this article was taken by Prompto, completely without my say so, in the course of my play through. To hear Ignis shyly retort when he sees a picture of himself, or for the characters to argue over whether a particular shot was artistic or not, is a genuinely fun element to the game. The simple moment when I came back to camp after a big boss fight and seeing that Prompto had snapped a great picture of it adds something in a game I don't think I've ever seen before. The interactions and surprises between these guys will give you something to come back to every time you pick up the game.

The first act of the game is really just getting to know our heroes, and their place in the world. Soon enough, the old standby of great warring empires comes into play, and Noctis finds himself and his friends trapped away from his homeland, with the political future of his city unclear. It is here where the plot begins to suffer, however. Although the mood of the story changes from playful entourage of rich boys to outcast wanted political dissidents, they still act the same, and you can still continue on exactly as before. The game never really pushed me to a sense of urgency, and the story begins to become a little unclear round about act 2.

Is it a story of reconciliation between warring states? Reclaiming Noctis' long promised love with his childhood sweetheart? Or battling a daemonic invasion that rises with the strangely lengthening nights? It is all of these, and none really take center stage. A quite sizable chunk of the middle of the game had me running about finding objects of magical significance, and I don't even understand why we needed to get any of them in the first place. Just as suddenly, this plot is forgotten and replaced with seeking the approval of powerful spirits, the Final Fantasy summons, but I still didn't know why I was doing it or how it would help the story resolve.

The story has two or three characters that are seemingly set up as the villainous focus, and none seem to truly pay off. The third act abruptly changes the entire story, and the simple warring states plot had somehow become transformed into another story entirely. I wasn't quite sure when this change in events happened. To say this final act is rushed is a drastic understatement, and although it builds to a satisfying and thrilling finale, certainly could have been improved with more time and sense paid to what the hell was actually going on and why. Another tiny criticism, from my perspective, as lovable as the guys are, the game could have really done with some girls, as female characters were a little fleeting.

A place where it's clear fans of the series were paid close heed to, is the open world nature of the game. From the first moment, the world is open and fully explorable. You can completely ignore the story and go monster hunting for hours. I absolutely did. The game is packed out with bounty hunting missions for all manner of beasts, and dozens of side quests to keep you busy throughout. An element I feel may be argued over by fans is the lack of the traditional RPG grind. Trekking out to level up your characters a little more, finding more items and slowly building up your skills is a major part of almost any RPG, especially the JRPG subgenre, and it's almost entirely absent here. Not once in the entire course of the game did I find myself outmatched by a story quest, or have too much trouble with a hunt. Inexplicably, you can find Noctis' ultimate weapon early on in the game, and never have to use or worry about using anything else ever again, making all the big quests and dungeons to claim all the magical lore weapons feel pointless. Even the nefarious super-bosses, nigh-impossible bad guys that are a staple of the series often taking days of grinding and skill kajiggering to take down, were affairs that could be bested in the natural progression of your characters here. There is no massive challenge in the likes of Ruby Weapon or Penance to brag about beating here. The game seems to place most of the 'big bad' effect on the Adamantoise enemy, and big as a mountain and cool looking as hell though he may be, the fight is actually exceedingly dull, and his sheer size seemed to lead mainly to the game not being able to register his hit boxes correctly. I had hours of fun hunting down the many and varied monsters for the hunters guild, and could have happily done without the gimmicky giant turtle fight.

A decade it may have taken, but it's tough to tell if Final Fantasy XV will be the game fans are looking for. I myself had great fun with the characters, the hunting, and the speedy progression with which it flies by. There are a lot of quirks and new things to be found, and it's certainly the Final Fantasy most accessible to new gamers that there has ever been. In the same vein though, hardcore RPG nuts will find it all a little too easy to be sure. The personalities of our heroes are what will really make or break it for you, I feel. If you can get into the friendship between Noctis, Ignis, Prompto, and Gladiolus, you will enjoy taking the ride with them.

Review: The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

I have spent so much time so deep in a gritty fantasy world these last few weeks that I never knew if I’d find my way out again. The world of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is so huge, and so complex, that it’s almost daunting at first. There’s so much to explore and such a huge world to get lost in you don’t know where to start. You just have to ride off on your trusty horse, Roach, and immerse yourself.

I spent more time in this world than I have in a game for a long time, a truly scary amount of time in fact, but now that it’s over, and the Wild Hunt has been defeated, I find myself thinking I wish it hadn’t ended already.

The more you play The Wild Hunt, the more exciting it becomes. The story starts with our hero Geralt of Rivia tracking his lost love Yennefer of Vengerburg across a broken no man’s land between two clashing empires. You ride through green plains, chasing giant soaring Griffins and hunting down bandits, and get to know the plight of the common man on the street whose life is shattered by the war, in ways both simple and huge. From mothers weeping over sons lost in the endless battles just over the horizon, to merchants getting rich from selling the belongings of the dead, everyone has an agenda here. It’ll be hard to go back to playing other RPGs after this, when the simplest quest has so much thought behind it. A quick example from the games very start: a Dwarven blacksmith in a rural hamlet has been forced to make weapons for the enemy Nilfgaardian invaders camped nearby. He had no choice in the matter, but one of the local human population used it as an excuse to commit a race hate act against the Dwarf, and burn his smithy down for being a traitor to his country. You find the arsonist, he’s just a hateful drunk who lost his family in the war. Does he deserve to hang for the crime if you turn him in? Will he commit more acts of aggression against undeserving people if you let him go? Regardless, if the Dwarf is assisted by Nilfgaard in repairing the damage done, the locals will hate him anyway. 

The sort of depth found in this little side quest is all through the game, with complex stories and lives touched upon in every little facet. Those who’re familiar with the previous Witcher games know to expect to confront issues with your own choices, issues like war, politics, sex and racism alongside the expected quota of slavering monsters to dispatch with your swords.

This is the final story in the world of the Witcher, and it has a lot to live up to. Seven books and three award winning games worth of characters and storylines have come to a head here, with a lot to do, and no time is wasted. From adventuring among the hills of Kaer Morhen with Vesemir and the other Witchers of the School of the Wolf, political intrigue with old enemy Sigismund Dijkstra, and guerrilla warfare alongside Vernon Roche, you’ll meet almost every character you remember, or forgot entirely, from previous incarnations of the source material. This can, of course, be overwhelming for some gamers, with a bit of a cutthroat attitude to lore present, and not much explanation given to times when the audience, especially English speakers who still haven’t had three of the books in the series translated yet, may have no idea who some of these characters are. This is noticeably present with the game's dominant story thread, the pursuit of Geralt’s ward Ciri. The complex relationship between Geralt and Ciri, and indeed Ciri and the majority of characters in the game, can be difficult to follow for those no well versed in the source material.

Not that the story is difficult to enjoy without this knowledge, of course. When characters are greeted as old friends or hated enemies by Geralt, it’s easy to take in stride and go along with it, as the subtext of dialogue is sharp and well written, without the need for distracting exposition or details. Indeed, it’s probably a lot better to simply wonder what a characters past might be than have a novels worth of prior plot-line shoved at you in awkward expositional dialogue. 

All the favorite characters have returned, with Geralt himself remaining exactly as Dandelion continues to describe him: Gruff, violent, yet possessed of a heart and humor like none other. Favorites proudly return, like the king of take-no-shit Dwarven one liners, Zoltan Chivay, and the endlessly patriotic Vernon Roche. Another enjoyable facet is that even amongst all the returning characters we know and love, the minor new characters are standout too. Like the inexplicably likable Nilfgaardian General Morvran Voorhis who’s just friendly as hell in a story that seems to be going on without him.  

The character I felt that, regardless of prior knowledge, we all needed to know more about, and indeed, should have seen more of in the game, was the emperor of Nilfgaard himself. To give him his full title, Emhyr var Emreis, the White Flame Dancing on the Graves of His Enemies, is the enigmatic despot behind the events of the second game. Where the average fantasy story would cast Emhyr as the clear villain, Geralt’s complex history with Emhyr places him in a unique position within the grey area of morality.

Masterfully voiced by Charles Dance, Emhyr is a brilliant character, equally supremely confidant and tortured, demanding of subservience yet righteously just. Each time Geralt met with Emhyr at his grand palace (after being washed and shaven and taught to bow properly in His Eminence’s presence), I enjoyed the scene, and wanted to see more of him and Geralt’s interesting interactions.

The same attention to character really can’t be said for the stories main antagonists however. The titular Wild Hunt, a foreboding army of semi-mythical Elven warriors, aren’t present enough to really seem significant. A huge part of the games run time is lived in fear of them, either running from them, chasing them, or searching high and low for information about them, but when we actually get to meet them, they aren’t all that impressive. There are some moments, like seeing what a Wild Hunt General does when he has a lot of drinks and an entourage of eager Succubi, but the majority of the Hunt, indeed even the arch villain Eredin himself, are absent in screen time as well as real personality.

The standout villains of the piece are without a doubt the secondary ones, the trio of sisters known as the Ladies. Three brilliantly creepy figures straight out of an old European fairytail. Either stunning naked young women one moment, or shockingly disgusting malformed crones the next, these three are by far the game’s most striking and memorable antagonists. They are introduced in an incredibly eerie scene talking to Geralt through a sinister weaving depicting their playful fairer selves, and yet the voices do not match the lovely faces we’re seeing by any stretch of the imagination. Each one has such brilliant, grotesque personality, I would have been happy to see the crones as the dominant villains all their own. 

The more I played the Witcher 3, the more I wanted to. It gets bigger as you go, with the world expanding from one rural hamlet to moving freely between an open countryside, with villages, cities, and swamplands to explore on foot or horseback, to mountainous Nordic islands that you can transverse by sailboat. As you explore in your search for Ciri, you’ll find yourself picking up Witcher contracts along the way, hunting down monsters for pay. Be it following the steps that led to a gruesome murder of a young woman, and summoning her angry spirit to lay her to rest, or following the bloody remains of a ruined miners camp to a Troll’s cookpot, many of these contracts are wildly different in style and scope. Some have great red herring twists, and some can be solved by simple dialogue alone (or by careful application of a bit of coin here and there).

There’s a string of new mini games to test yourself at, like fist-fighting or horse-racing, and an extensive card game, along with a seriously infectious card collecting aspect to it that swiftly becomes a serious habit. I can’t tell you how many times I ran into a new character, be told they were a powerful druid or a storied warrior, and immediately asked myself ‘But will they play gwent with me?!’

The whole game style has evolved significantly on from the Witcher 2, to be a little more RPG than action, almost a blending of the styles of the first and second games. Character development is more in depth, with many paths to take along the way, and far too many to reach out into in a single run. By the time you reach the endgame, you’ll only have enough attribute points to explore one of the five possible branches, and probably only half of it at most, so your Geralt may be wildly different from your friends. Geralt’s signs have been retooled significantly, making each one of major use in their own way, and some so good that an entire character can be built around use of one sign and its various abilities. Each sign now has multiple uses and upgrades to branch into, leading for a bit more variety in your spell-casting than in previous games.

Combat itself is also a whole new beat from the last game, with AI being a bit sharper, and a lot less vulnerable to hacking and slashing like a madman. Enemies dodge and weave, and counterattack, and you’ve got to be quick on your feet to dodge swipes and claws from monsters, and similarly quick to block and parry melee attacks from human opponents. The game is merciless on the harder difficulty settings, and it’s good to see a lot of rewarding ways to explore approaching combat than just pounding ability points into sword mastery.

Throughout your journey to find Ciri, you also get the chance to live through fragments of her own adventure trough her eyes, letting you play as Ciri in these scenes. These are a fantastic change from the gameplay as Geralt, as each character plays quite differently. Geralt is strong, efficient and methodical, whereas Ciri is impulsive wild, and incredibly powerful, and the game-play works as such, with Ciri moving at great speeds, teleporting around the battlefield in flashes of green light. It takes a moment getting used to at first, but soon you’ll love the chances you get to play as Ciri. CDProjekt Red have promised a wide assortment of downloadable support to the Witcher, and any such content featuring more time to play as Ciri would be incredibly welcome.

Any game this huge is not without its flaws, and the Witchers are all fairly merciful in the long run. I’d have loved more interaction with Eredin. For the final villain of a story this huge, he just wasn’t complex, and curiously enough, in a series that prides itself so much on breaking fantasy clichés, Eredin was very much the stock ‘dark lord’ archetype and not much more. 
Some curious issues seem to pop up in what I can only assume comes from the censorship of the game for the North American market. It doesn’t change the game at all, but certainly impacts scenes in an awkward way. Don’t have a character be told to strip naked, comment on the act of stripping naked, and then act as if they’re naked in the scene, when they are actually wearing underwear through the whole scene. It’s just weird, and makes you feel as if you’re playing an edited version.  

Some graphical bugs seem present too, but these end up simply being hilarious more than anything else. Occasionally the AI will bug out during a cut scene, and a character or object will turn up where it clearly isn't supposed to. In one choice example I encountered, during a heartfelt exchange between Geralt and Ciri, Morvran Voorhis wandered into the background where he stood there photobombing the drama for a while, before wandering off again to god knows where. It was great, but nevertheless ruined the moment somewhat. 

Upon finishing the Witcher 3, I realized I'd spent a long time lost in that world. I'd hunted down dozens of monsters, helped Elves and Dwarves and Halflings and a man named Dudu, I'd foiled political plots and battled dimension traveling Elves on a frozen pirate ship, and slept with as many sorceresses as I could. I would have tried to sleep with Dandelion too if they'd let me. I've played all three games, two of them several times over, I have lovingly read Sapkowski's original novels, and I even met a very beloved friend on the Witcher forum years ago. After I'd done all that, I still want more, and that's the best thing I can say about the world of the Witcher. I just don't want it to be over already.

Game Review: The Witcher 2, Assassins of Kings.

The fantasy genre is taken for granted in almost every medium these days, far too often we know the story long before it's even begun being told. It takes spice and a touch of something wild and different to really make a world stand out anymore. The World of The Witchers is not your average fantasy setting. It is a world of intrigue, sex, brutality, and a good dose of gritty humour. Later; The peasants would whisper that the Witcher arrived on the Xbox 360, and raised the bar of the fantasy action RPG by the length of his silver sword. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a journey you will be glad you embarked on. If you have the mettle for it, of course.

    From the moment we take on the role of Geralt of Rivia: a hardened warrior galvanized by mutations and training into an elite rank of monster hunter, the gritty realism of the world we have found ourselves in is thrust upon us. There is no time for introductions, locked in a cell for a political assassination he didn't commit, Geralt must break free and clear his name. Along the way encountering the darker side of his wild, monstrous world. Dwarves, Elves and Sorceresses all have their place in this world; but they are not the dainty silk draped Elves of the woods or gruff mining Dwarves we've come to expect. These Elves are a brutal separatist army bent on regaining their place in the world by guerrilla warfare. These Dwarves, a broken people troubled by war and oppression, longing for freedom in any place they can find it. Political and personal wars help make The Witcher the first truly mature experience you will likely encounter in a game. The dialogue is coarse and colourful, the problems are real, the villains are truly wicked, and when one of the Witcher's many lovely ladies undresses for sex, they aren't shy about showing their charms. At no point does the graphic nature of violence or sex feel explicit or unnecessary however, but fits in stride as part of the brutal world we find ourselves in. This is not a game for the faint of heart, and it's both refreshing and important to video games as a whole for the player to be treated like an adult for once.
   The first thing I noticed about the Witcher is the level of detail placed on characterization. Immediately anyone will notice the visuals of the game, some of the best seen on the system so far, from the gloriously detailed environments to the clawed, savage monsters, but the people within the world are where it shines brightest. These characters have personality, and it shows. Every different character is so distinct in both speech and physical quirks, it makes it easy to find a favourite amongst the varied cast. Within a minute of meeting the dashing Vernon Roche, we get the measure of a military commando who'll do whatever it takes to solve the mystery of regicide, with his commanding voice and his impatient hand gestures. We can guess the cocky personality of his lieutenant Ves from her swagger and cocked hips before we've even heard her utter a single word. Even minor characters found by the roadside have distinct physical aspects or voices that stand out, making so many little parts of this world memorable and full of life, coupled with a heavy dose of irreverent humour throughout. The voice acting is charming and for the most part excellent, you can't help but love Zoltan's gruff brogue. With this many characters to love and hate, Talking about your favorites begins to feel like discussing a dark, violent soap opera. If we like a character, we also might be able to steer to story towards interaction with them. The story is wonderfully mutable, a friend might request the assistance of Commander Roche in his journey, like an off the rails federal agent, while you might instead decide to ally with the cunning, ruthless Elf Iorveth and watch the goings on from the side of a dangerous underdog. Fans of complex RPGs will not be disappointed with our protagonist either. Geralt himself has choices to make along his path. There are no simple black or white choices in the Witcher. Morality is not an issue, no good/evil slider to guide your hand. Simply tough choices that fall into your hands, with long standing results that change the shape of the story to come. Not just the main story is open to a personal touch, of course, as along the way Geralt will encounter a multitude of side quests to indulge in. The game shines again in this aspect, going for a smaller variety of very charming, memorable side quests full of personality rather than a large number of repetitive fetch quests. Enter the town fight club for fun and profit, Ghost hunt along the rocky shore, Track down the gorgeous Succubus picking off men in the frontier town. (Or seduce her yourself?) Every quest adds to the atmosphere and makes Geralt a little more of a character that is very easy to love. He is very human in his faults, his desires, and makes for thrilling playing.

   Where the RPG blends with the action is often cause for concern, but the Witcher again pulls off a system that is complex but very easy to use. Geralt is a swordsman, using an interchangeable duo of swords to deal with different enemy types. The sturdy steel blade for the human enemies in his path, the shining silver sword for the many supernatural beasts you may encounter in the shadows. Geralt has a wealth of other abilities at his fingertips however, and soon you'll find yourself using them fast and effectively. Placing flaming traps in your opponents path, tossing poison bombs and knives into the fray, and making clever use of Geralt's five different magical abilities will all lead you to victory over your opponents. A different approach is possible to each battle, and it's immense fun to experiment to see what works best for your play style. For example, wading into combat is possible when you coat your blade in fiery oils to enhance its effectiveness, coupled with a spell to shield yourself from enemy strikes. Yet for the same battle you could also lure your enemies to you, hitting the first in line with a snare spell trapping him in place, then take psychic control of the next in line and turn him back on his fellows....The options are many and varied, and easy to do seemingly complex arrangements of abilities thanks to the simple switching up of spells and weapons with an intuitive selector wheel. A slightly more unique aspect of combat in the Witcher is Geralt's use of potions and alchemical compounds to enhance his abilities before even entering combat. A variety of mixtures and potions exist to be purchased, looted and stolen throughout the game, each with a unique effect on our hero. Have a bad feeling about what's up ahead? Drink a potion to enhance your magical abilities or give yourself a regenerative edge for that long pitched battle. Be too liberal with your potions of course, and the toxic effects will start to kick in, forcing clever selection and planning.

   When you begin to find your stride in combat, you will also find that the character customization extends to each realm of Geralt's expertise. A melee expert can venture down the swordsmanship path, become proficient in attacking multiple opponents and brutal instant kills. The mage in you can select the Magic tree, and enhance the abilities of Geralt's spells, taking control of more than one opponent at once or creating a shield that reflects damage upon nearby opponents. The third option is the most unique to the Witcher world, the alchemy tree. Advancing into it makes Geralt's creations far more effective, be they bombs, oils for his blade, or potions for the battle ahead, All the way up to a chemically induced berserker rage to tear through your opponents. Of course any combination of the three trees is possible, and all compliment each other consistently and seamlessly.
   The game will last a solid 20 hours to the average gamer, with a lot more exploring to do as one wishes, and on the harder difficulty levels will be a challenge to even the most skilled player. Best of all, I had that feeling the moment I finished my first playthrough, of 'Well, what if I'd chosen this...' and wanted to start anew almost immediately. The Witcher 2 will draw you back in for another run, you just have to know what will happen on the other side of the stories many flipped coins. The world of the Witcher is one vibrant with life and fun and conflict and love, and one that I fully hope I can revisit again soon.