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Review Of Monsters, Men and BROche

VentilatorOfDoom

Administrator
Staff Member
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Apr 4, 2009
Messages
8,600
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Deutschland
Tags: CD Projekt; The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

CDProjekt's recently released The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings garnered critical acclaim all over the mainstream gaming media, so we thought it was time we jumped the bandwagon. This review is a collaborative effort between Vault Dweller and myself. As most Dh'oine know, the game is excellent, so it doesn't come as a surprise that Vault Dweller insisted on heaping a lot of praise on it. Here's an excerpt:

When it comes to interacting with the environment and its inhabitants, the Witcher 2 is truly without equal. Take boss battles, for example.

In most RPGs all you can do is approach a monster and attack its health bar, while pretending that you’re slashing, dodging, jumping, and yelling “Die! Die! Die!” In the Witcher 2 battling bosses is a cinematic, adrenaline-filled battle guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat. Your options seem truly limitless. You can chop off a monster’s tentacles – at conveniently marked spots, then jump on one you didn’t cut, hacking at it with righteous fury for some odd but incredibly cinematic reasons, jump off at the last minute, run up a bridge above the monster, and toss a grenade at him. Take that, Kratos! Needless to say, if your environment interaction skills aren’t up to par and you fail to interact with the environment in a timely manner, you’ll have to repeat this exciting, cinematic, adrenaline-filled, edge of the seat keeping sequence all over again. And again, and again, and again.

We are not complaining though, as this sequence only gets better every time you go through it and discover new nuances. If you know your RPGs, then you’ll probably agree with me that only Resident Evil 4 and God of War 2 handled the interaction with the gameworld better, so the Witcher 2 is definitely in a good company.​

Read the whole review here.
 
Last edited:

Oriebam

Formerly M4AE1BR0-something
Joined
Jul 6, 2011
Messages
6,193
What the fuck





Uh people, since this topic is about Twitcher 2 and all, can someone make a quick comparison of Twitcher 1 ,K+M vs gamepad?
 

made

Arcane
Joined
Dec 18, 2006
Messages
5,130
Location
Germany
Excellent review. I literally laughed my ass off. You two should tag-team more reviews in future; that way each of you only has to try half as hard for the same result.
:thumbsup:
 

BelisariuS.F

Augur
Joined
Mar 23, 2010
Messages
388
Lol. Funny review. The entire review mocks the game, only to end with this:
Most importantly, it is a game worth playing.
I burst out laughing reading that.

Scrolling through a listbox has never been so much fun.

Not true. Here it was more fun:
fallout2.jpg
 

oldmanpaco

Master of Siestas
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
13,609
Location
Winter
I'm not sure if there was enough snark in the review. May need to try for a little more next time.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,406
Location
Djibouti
Hahahahaha, excellent stuff! Now I won't need to write it :thumbsup:


However, one thing:

You describe the quest with Malena that no matter what you do, you end up in an ambush. This is not quite true.

Maybe I found some supersuper secret way of doing this, but when I took the quest, I was led to a cave full of nekkers, in front of which was Malena surrounded by a bunch of guards. Inside the cave I could find dead guardsmen, killed by Scoia'tel arrows. Leaving the cave, I could tell the guards what I had found, and they'd take the woman to Loredo for a 'trial'. No ambush.
 

racofer

Thread Incliner
Joined
Apr 5, 2008
Messages
25,577
Location
Your ignore list.
  • ...in the end it doesn’t really matter what kind of game is it, how linear or non-linear it is, and whether or not the choices matter...

We shall remember that.
 

Needles

Scholar
Joined
Mar 19, 2007
Messages
118
BelisariuS.F said:
Not really relevant to the review....anyway:
Ever noticed how Fallout's items, even without descriptions, are actually memorable? While I can't remember the look or sound of ANY piece of equipment in a post-200(let's say 4) game, I will recognize a Fallout Stimpack until the end of days...

Same goes for Diablo (you should have compared Witcher's skill system to Diablo II's, btw - for lulz) sounds, Torment music etc....
 

Mrowak

Arcane
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
3,947
Project: Eternity
VentilatorOfDoom, are you really this cynical in real life? I mean, goddamit, here I was hoping for a quality, unbiased review, like we got on numerous occassions. Man, I am disappoint.

Normally, I would have followed Roxor's example and laugh the matter off I hate his kind of trolling on mah Kodex, especially in the featured article. But ok, I'll bite.

Was it necessary to have so much snark in it? I find it really infuriating that you perpetuate the image of us, Codexers as spoiled malcontant grandpas with onsets of Alzheimer. For example: a sizeable part of your review concerns things that aren't in the game but could have been. Man, with this approach I could have reviewed every classic as shit. "Wouldn't be cool if" rarely works for game designers, and works even less often for game reviewers.

Also the part with monstrous damage in boss fights as advertised by this video is most likely a hoax. I finished the game three times with various builds. I DID come close to dealing this much damage in a single strike, but only after I edited the dragon to have like 500 hp (instead of the default 2000) with no armour reduction. You could also edit weapons, talent tree to do the same damage. It's trivial, really, more than in any other game I know.

I once commented on your cynical know-it-all tone in your interview with Gop. Goddamit, man you really wasn't trying to be professional now, right? Yeah, sorry, I forgot I was being trolled.

One more thing - your conclusion. This was actually the most well-written part of the whole review. But, why on earth was it so inconsistent with the rest of the content? If all the threads you pulled simply led to the conclusion that, as you written, TW 2 is a good game, but not an RPG you would have saved the validity of your article. Hell, if you said that TW 2 was shit that would have been more honest. As it is you spent something like 70% of review sniding at some features (which I recognise as quite legitimate) and 30% on praising some aspects. The hell a reader can infer that TW 2 is any good, I have no clue.

VentilatorOfDoom. Till now I really could not fathom how anyone in the right mind could invest so much effort on a trolling attempt. Yet I see it with my own eyes here. I refuse to believe that it is anything other than the equivalent of kiting the general Codexian populace. Because if it is not trolling than we have fallen farther than I ever imagined. Anyhow, congrats Ventilator - you really got me raging for a moment. :salute:

Edit: To everyone - yeah, my sense-fo-humour-metter got broken just today. I am trying to fix it (with a crate of Heineken) as I am writing this.
 

Mangoose

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 5, 2009
Messages
24,725
Location
I'm a Banana
Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity
The shitty trees full of passives is one of the big reasons I stopped playing the game in Chapter 1. Nothing kills the motivation to advance and level your character better than boring talents/skills.
 

Orgasm

Barely Literate
Joined
May 4, 2010
Messages
1,360
But is it the best RPG since Arcanum? Or at least good for what it is? :roll:

Combat is irredeemable shit -> game is shit.
Whats with the TLDR?
 

Elwro

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
11,746
Location
Krakow, Poland
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
Another UI decision I don't understand is why I have to waste 15+ seconds to quaff a potion. I didn't invest any points in Alchemy precisely for this reason. And Alchemy was one of my favourite parts of the first game...
 

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