Review The Witcher sucks

[Trash]

Easy, because DU agrees with it.

 

[Silellak]

Pot. Kettle. Black. By your argument, I can say I wasn't aware that people finding a game "playable" made it a general fact.

No, you can't, because you'd be hard pressed to find a huge number of people who consider the game "unplayable". A small minority? Sure. But a majority of people who have played the game? I doubt it.

He's also clearly listed several issues which hampered enjoyment for him (points 3, 4 and 5) beyond just Geralt. Geralt is "step one" in what I assume is a multi-step program going by his comments. What he seems to be suggesting is that the game has several faults which if you're a fanboi, you'll ignore but if you don't quite fall in love with the game, it'll annoy you enough that you can't stand it anymore (as it did him).

Guess what: you've just described almost every game ever made. Even the best games ever made (which Witcher is not among) have detractors. Why? Because every game has flaws, and it's just a matter of whether or not the game 'hooks' you in enough to enjoy it, regardless. The best games hook you so fast and so completely, you never notice those flaws.

See: Ultima 7's terrible, terrible combat.

 

[Elwro]

BTW, most technical problems with the game have already been fixed MONTHS ago with the 1.2 patch. For example the loading times have significantly decreased.

Also, anyone claiming you need a super rig to play TW is just a dumbfuck. The game runs a lot faster than Oblivion or Gothic 3, and looks (and plays) great even on a 6600 GT card.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

I think Planescape: Torment had the same fault. For all the things it did right (and it did them right in some pretty spectacular ways), I know a lot of people who just could not get past the fact that they were forced to play a giant, grey, hulking brute called The Nameless One. If you didn't like him, you would never get to the point of enjoying the actual story.

Going to have to partially agree and disagree with you. I agree Geralt's personality bled too heavily on the player and impacted the player's choices a lot, and that can definitely be frustrating for the player,and make the character connection a key part of enjoying the game. But Torment? The Nameless One was a blank slate for the player to define through their choices and actions. If you didn't like him, you didn't like your choices or you're one of those shallow types who must be able to have tons of cosmetic options, but then are totally happy to accept nearly nonexistent choices just because they can play Conan or a fairy elf princess. And that's just silly. Being forced into a cosmetic style is not equivalent to being drenched in a character's personality.

And for a little reductio ad absurdum (fear the pointless pseudo-intellectual use of latin bullshit that I am purposely mis-using) type stuff, wouldn't saying Torment's use of the Nameless One's cosmetics as a singular choice for player characters is a flaw basically be saying every Bioware game is at fault because I find it unappealing that I am forced to play a fit, able, good-looking, and verisimilitude-fitting body type (I mean they are running non-stop...they should be pretty riped) and can't make Angus McGoonenstein, the fat guy with a neckbeard in any of their games?

 

[Claw]

So long as a game has choices and consequences, the members of this community will happily ignore all shortcomings. Just look at Arcanum.

Nah, The Witcher was unplayable for me. I suspect the performance had something to do with that. I must say I didn't find the principle of the combat great, but with better performance it might have been tolerable.
That's one thing I like about Drakensang. No performance worries. Only a shitty camera.

 

[Crichton]

Un-dumbfuck Crichton.

Good God, you're kidding me right? If I do that now, I'll never hear the end of it from the Witcher fanbois. It'll be passed off as some kind of DU conspiracy because he allegedly got all butthurt from the Witcher argument and only did it because Crichton posted something which can be viewed as slightly anti-Witcher.

The scars of my battle with VD are a badge of honor. :codexdrama

On topic, this "playablity" stuff is a pretty hollow argument. I had no technical issues with the Witcher, nor was there any part of the gameplay that a child or small rodent couldn't complete (unlike say PoP: Two thrones, where I had to repeat that fight with the two big fuckers like 18,000 fucking times).

However the expanded edition stuff seems a little flat because it's got a very low replayability factor. The C&C stuff is pretty limited, but that's true for almost all RPGs, but other games give you options about what type of character you want from a gameplay perspective (i.e. a party of dwarven fighters and clerics and a party of gnomish wizards and thieves may get the same story in IWD, but they play differently).

Gerry is gerry, he's a swordsman, he knows magic, but he's got a pretty limited selection he can brew potions. On my first playthrough, I maxed out all the swordsmanship stuff, maxed out one spell (fireball), got up to medium (all silver slots) on the other spells and got like 85% of all the stat increases. Shifting the focus from swordsmanship to magic wouldn't really change anything, and that doesn't make sense.

There was no reason to give us this pre-generated asshole at all, we could have been allowed to make our own little witcher with his own little specialty (big swords, small swords, stealth, arcane magic, nature magic, alchemy, crossbows, etc). Instead the witcher plays a lot like one of those movie tie-in games. That doesn't make it unplayable, but it's sure not the 2nd-coming either.

 

[Warden]

The scars of my battle with VD are a badge of honor. :codexdrama

Oh yeah, Vaginal Disease tried to mark the territory with his stench before he was banished.

 

[Jeff Graw]

This IS the Codex. You don't HAVE to like everything.

Pffft. I've criticized The Witcher plenty myself, but I'm not stupid about it. Read the other thread, half of DU's arguments are fallacies (B is an improvement on A therefore A must be horrible!) and when that's pointed out to him he just keeps repeating himself. I couldn't care less if someone wants to criticize The Witcher, Fallout, Planecape, or even my beloved Starflight, but if they do so in a stupid manner I'm going to call them on it.

 

[Silellak]

Pffft. I've criticized The Witcher plenty myself, but I'm not stupid about it. Read the other thread, half of DU's arguments are fallacies (B is an improvement on A therefore A must be horrible!) and when that's pointed out to him he just keeps repeating himself. I couldn't care less if someone wants to criticize The Witcher, Fallout, Planecape, or even my beloved Starflight, but if they do so in a stupid manner I'm going to call them on it.

This.

And don't forget "A few people had problems with it, therefore it is unplayable and must be fixed" along with the apparently shocking revolution that if you don't like certain aspects of a game, the other flaws start to become more apparent.

 

[barker_s]

3) I'm hired to find some guy's lost sister. I find her working for a vampire. I kill off the vampire, but the girl doesn't want to go back to her brother. Do I have an option to give her a little traveling money and go tell her brother I lost her? How about just tell her brother she doesn't want to come back and walk away? No, Gerry just drags her back by her hair without consulting me.

Wut? I remember doing that quest and I'm sure told her brother to fuck off and I let her go (or maybe I accidentally killed her brother? the bottom line is - you have a choice in there). My advice is - read first, click later. You might enjoy any game more a little more this way.

Ok, stop. Just stop.

One of these guys doesn't unconstitutionally love your game. That's all right. Some people don't like Gothic because the combat is a bit twitchy and you're always forced to play that nameless dude. Some people don't like The Witcher for similar or for different reasons.

This IS the Codex. You don't HAVE to like blah blah blah...

You're missing the point here Jasede. We're not arguing here whether TW is a good game or not. I don't give a fuck about other people's opinions (especially yours, since you haven't even played it). It all started with DU bitching about the hype that EE gets. Then some retards started bashing EE itself and argument started. After being criticized, DU thought it was a good idea to also bash TW so he doesn't look like a total moron.

Now we're not even arguing. We're just laughing at the fact that he felt so insecure in his claims that he had to cite Another Guy From The Internet (c) .

 

[Silellak]

Now we're not even arguing. We're just laughing at the fact that he felt so insecure in his claims that he had to cite Another Guy From The Internet (c) .

But he's not just Another Guy...he's Another Guy...WITH A BLOG!

Gasp.

 

[Crichton]

Wut? I remember doing that quest and I'm sure told her brother to fuck off and I let her go (or maybe I accidentally killed her brother? the bottom line is - you have a choice in there). My advice is - read first, click later. You might enjoy any game more a little more this way.

You can refuse to kill the vampire, which lets her go. But once you kill the vamp, the game railroads you into helping the brother, there is absolutely no choice involved.

http://www.gamebanshee.com/thewitcher/walkthrough/blueeyes.php

Attacking the vampires basically means that you’re siding with Patrick.

Edited for burning tards with the harsh light of proofs.

 

[barker_s]

Choice and consequence biatch !

I guess I must've killed both the questgiver and vampires so it didn't seem so 'railroaded' for me. I must give it a second playthrough some day.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Pot. Kettle. Black. By your argument, I can say I wasn't aware that people finding a game "playable" made it a general fact.

No, you can't, because you'd be hard pressed to find a huge number of people who consider the game "unplayable". A small minority? Sure. But a majority of people who have played the game? I doubt it.

So do you accept or not that a number of people found the game unplayable for a number of reasons? Either it's perfectly legitimate for the people who found it unplayable to call it as such or it's not. What exactly is your point here? People who find a game unplayable for a number of different reasons aren't allowed to say so?

He's also clearly listed several issues which hampered enjoyment for him (points 3, 4 and 5) beyond just Geralt. Geralt is "step one" in what I assume is a multi-step program going by his comments. What he seems to be suggesting is that the game has several faults which if you're a fanboi, you'll ignore but if you don't quite fall in love with the game, it'll annoy you enough that you can't stand it anymore (as it did him).

Guess what: you've just described almost every game ever made. Even the best games ever made (which Witcher is not among) have detractors.

Awesome. So you start a thread about those games and we'll talk about their detractors. This thread is about The Witcher. Stop getting so butthurt that not everybody felates it and that several people think the Enhanced Edition is pretty much required to fix a bunch of problems in order to maybe, with just a bit of luck, make the game bareable for them.

Now we're not even arguing. We're just laughing at the fact that he felt so insecure in his claims that he had to cite Another Guy From The Internet (c) .

But he's not just Another Guy...he's Another Guy...WITH A BLOG!

1. We've posted TwentySided before (both on The Witcher and his blogs on Eschalon and the Fallout character system). Nobody whinged about it being a lowly blog then.
2. The same news item appeared on GameBanshee and RPGWatch where it was accepted as a news item without the whinging from an army of butthurt fanbois.
3. Everyone who's whining about this not being a worthy news blog is looking for excuses and doesn't haven't any actual responses to the complaints that he raised. Particularly when it's started a perfectly reasonable discussion about character design which DGaider has taken part in (What? A developer at the Codex? OMG OMG :masturbate furiously.

If you'd like to complain about the points he raises, feel free to do so and call him a butthurt Witcher anti-fanboi who should buy a new computer and stop complaining about problems he finds in computer games because The Witcher is worthy of nothing but praise and how dare he criticise a game in a review? If all you can do is whinge about it being a news item, then as far as I'm concerned, you've got nothing in defense of the points he raises.

Fanbois attack!

• I’m still getting chided by Witcher fans for dumping on the game. What’s frustrating isn’t that they like the game when I don’t, it’s that their position seems to be: You’re not a real reviewer. Your opinion doesn’t matter, you’re all wrong, etc. etc. Here you’ve got a chance to sell this game to fellow gamers, and instead you just dismiss my opinion without offering anything of your own.
  
  Here is what I suggest: Rather than creating yet another defensive comment as to why my opinion is invalid or wrong, why don’t you spend those words telling us what you liked about The Witcher? What worked? What was fun? What sets this game apart from other RPGs? How was the plot? The ending? The characters? The combat? The dialog? Who was your favorite character? Did any plot twists catch you by surprise? How does this game compare to the RPG classics? (I’ll leave picking the “classics” as an exercise to the reader.) How many times did you go through the game? What took you by surprise? What about those moral choices in the game - how did those affect your perception of the world? What was fun or amusing about the mini-games? What features or conventions from The Witcher do you hope other games adopt?
  
  I’m serious here. I can understand you want other people to enjoy the game the way you did. This is something with which I fully sympathize. But you gotta give them more motivation than “Shamus is wrong, don’t listen to him.”
  
  So let’s hear it. Give your Witcher Love below.

It all started with DU bitching about the hype that EE gets. Then some retards started bashing EE itself and argument started.

I know. How dare anyone bash The Witcher for any reason other than what I think is wrong with it. People have other opinions to mine? Fuck that bullshit. They're all retards and morons. They're also part of the evil conspiracy with their evil sub-plots.

 

[Lurkar]

So now the front news page is used for stupid petty arguments?

Decline of the Codex indeed.

Oh, and the bitching of DU wasn't because OMG HE DISLIKES WITCHER. It was because he can't seem to show WHY he hates it coherently. If he weren't a mod, he'd have been dumbfucked.

 

[barker_s]

I know. How dare anyone bash The Witcher for any reason other than what I think is wrong with it. People have other opinions to mine? Fuck that bullshit. They're all retards and morons. They're also part of the evil conspiracy with their evil sub-plots.

Come on DU, stop being a prick now please. As I said before, I don't care if you like TW or not. The point is I like the game and don't need your approval to feel better. What irks me is that you started bashing it to back up your anti-EE campaign. I really have nothing against constructive criticism.

 

[sportforredneck]

Come on DU, stop being a prick now please.

 

[St. Toxic]

Decline of Internets. :gang up on du:

 

[Gnidrologist]

Decline of Codex rocks. I love it. And Witcher does kinda suck, although not for the reasons mentioned.
Character leveling is pointless. There are no specific paths of developement, just a general badass combatant. Levels are tedious and linear - too mutch NWN2 engine in it. Combat is meh. Too much ''badass one liners'' and other childish stuff.
Haven't finished it to this day.

 

[Dementia Praecox]

Moar prick DU. MOAR!

 

[LarsTheSurly]

I couldn't care less if someone wants to criticize The Witcher, Fallout, Planecape, or even my beloved Starflight, but if they do so in a stupid manner I'm going to call them on it.

Holy fucking crap, someone else has played Starflight!? :shock:

:D

 

[Blind Eye]

I thought the idea of a news post was to remain neutral and impartial. You post a link to the info. and let the reader decide for himself.

But no, DU felt compelled to put his own bias and useless remarks in the NEWS post.

Isn't this the same thing you guys like to bitch about the gamming press not doing. You know, not being neutal and impartial. How many threads have there been about what a bunch of biased fuck ups and bastards the media are.

Then DU, in his infinite wisdom, decides to do the same thing. This smacks of hypocrisy.

If you want to discuss the merits of the news article, then make your comment in a post below the news article, or (better) make a thread about it in RPG discussion, where it belongs.

 

[DefJam101]

You guys need to calm down.

 

[Serious_Business]

No one bitched about the gaming press being not neutral, they bitched about the gaming press being stupid. The Codex always had comments in their news.

 

[Fez]

I thought the idea of a news post was to remain neutral and impartial. You post a link to the info. and let the reader decide for himself.

Wrong.