Andyman Messiah
Mr. Ed-ucated
The Witcher: Extended Edition
SERIOUSLY THE MOST SERIOUSLY SERIOUS REVIEW EVER!!
An incredibly serious review written by seriously everyone's favorite Andyman “REALLY SERIOUS!!!” Messiah!
The Late Show
(Alcohol helped write this TRULY stupid shit, so beware.)
First of all, let me get something very important out of the motherfucking way before I say any-fucking-thing else; The Witcher was the second best RPG to come out in 2007. And that's “was” like “WAS”, because it truly “WAS” in all its capital, surprised glory. And that's second best because of everyone's favorite underskirts Obsidian Entertainment's MotB, of course, but that's a heck of an opponent. Curiously enough, in 2008 history would repeat itself because The Witcher: Extended Edition was pretty much all the gaming you needed, along with Obsidian's newest extension pack, sorry, EXPANSION pack Storm of Zehir. Now let me tell you something, a joke, a statement, a comment, whatever you wanna call it, that I made up about people who played Mass Effect and Fallout 3 and thought those games were better rpgs than any of the other aforementioned games. It doesn't really make sense in in the context but I'm too lazy to write clever transitions like “dolphins will rule the earth” so listen well and listen good, you deaf motherfucker; a brainless fucking idiot will cum at one stroke even IF they don't just jam a finger up the asshole and make you spray about a teaspoon's worth of semen over your shower curtain. And then you get deported to motherfucking Yemen or something, because Yemen rhymes with semen and I've always wanted to rhyme that publicly. I don't know if anything about that made sense. I hope it didn't. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of idiotic point I was trying to make.
I'm currently writing this piece <s>of shit</s> from the inside of the bar I recently discovered is THE ideal workplace for me if I need an excuse to actually not do things that I really need to do, like preparing for the divine plan, writing a shitty Final Fantasy 7 let's play or a shitty review where all I do is complain about shit. Because I need shitty pine enchiladas or whatever that fucking drink is called in retarded bartender language (more like a retarded BEARTENDER am I right?!) more than I need to realize that I actually agreed to write a review for a game that most likely will crush my soul, grind it down into white powder, force it down some twelve year old boy whore's ass and then snort it outta there along with the juicy excrement-filled rectum. I'm honestly writing a review for a game that, and hang the fuck on now, my furry little Grey's Anatomy fans, was first released in October 2007 and then re-fuck-released as “The Witcher: Extended Edition” in September 2008.
The EE was little more than a patch that fixed, and I'm paraphrasing whoever wrote the stupid fucking wikipedia entry; “a whole lotta bugs, added 200 new animations and made the english translation suck a little bit less.” And for everyone who had bought the faulty version, the content was made completely free (like the patch it truly was) to download from the developer's website. However you might feel about this “controversy” is a completely pointless, irrelevant and meandering sack of zombie shit I wouldn't give a bald eagle's asshole about even if it was mine to give. Mark my words, though; anyone caught whining about the extended edition will be found and disemboweled with a snickers bar. While you might have a point that justifies your whining, be aware that I am always one hundred percent serious at all time forever and ever until the end of time itself and until I run out of mind enhancers that come in green and blue. As I've said a couple of times now, this is going to be the most SERIOUS!! review ever so let's fucking go.
(All further text from this point on are WITHOUT help from alcohol, beware.)
Looking Into You
In The Witcher, the player have the somewhat somersaultingly substantial pleasure of slipping into the well-groomed persona of Geralt of Rivia, a (thankfully) sterile monster hunter suffering from a bad case of convenient and selective amnesia which has caused him to forget almost everything about his line of work and the women he fucked over the years. (I think most of us have had a couple of flings of ”amnesia” like that.) Now bear with me, because as I have come to understand things, Geralt is pretty much the Drizzt Do'Urden of Poland, right? A strange, misunderstood hero who fights the good fight in a world that generally despises him and all that crap. Am I right? Of course I'm right. Jesus Christ, that shit was old even when Jack and Stan came up with the X-Men.
For many people outside of Poland – me included, this game was the first we ever saw of Geralt of Rivia in any media, and I have a strong feeling that for some of us it was also the very last we ever saw of him – voluntary! Because one simply cannot get around the fact that the entire character of Geralt is seemingly built on one (1) part ridiculous fantasy alpha male stereotype, to instill respect, awe and boners the size of palm trees, and one (1) part brooding teenager misunderstood antihero with somewhat amnesia. On the contrary however, in cutscenes Geralt is defined less as an annoyance and more like a competent, although silent, warrior type that doesn't really give a shit about the convoluted Wolverine-esque mystery surrounding him and everything else, and while it's hardly original he's definitely likeable. In these cutscenes he is also gifted with a strong moral compass that, unfortunately, does not carry over into the playable content portion of the game. Heck, I'd practically suggest just watching the cutscenes and just skipping the rest because the rest is fucking horrible. Great cutscenes, bad game. Kinda like Diablo 2, except that the cutscenes weren't really great in Diablo 2. They were boring but passable and pleasing to look at.
So anyway, the character. Well, as yet another premade character (sure is JRPG around here...) Geralt is no better than our buddy Commander Shepard or any of these other mindless action heroes who believe in their own bullshit a little too much for their own good. Their facial expressions tells me they didn't wipe their asses good enough this morning and that the poop gravy stuck between their cheeks has started to harden and is giving them all kinds of problems. The supporting cast is a lot better and I realize that's not really saying much, but they're the ones that ultimately make the game playable.
Coming up next: The Witcher is actually a p. good game!
Something Fine
Of course I'm lying.
Yes, even though the main character happens to suck some serious amount of ass, TW is a good game with plenty of choices and consequences that doesn't really matter, plenty of cool combat that doesn't really matter and plenty of characters that doesn't really suck anything less than the meatiest, assiest ass! It's basically nothing more than a grimmer, darker, maturer, europerer Neverwinter Nights 2, and with a million more fetch quests! Oh yes, being a mercenary more than anything, I suppose it makes sense that Geralt is always on the lookout for people who need five monster heads delivered or six flowers picked or anything along those lines, but it's still boring shit. Now thankfully most of them are optional, as they should be, and so my advice in dealing with them is the same as with Mass Effect's stupid assignments: ignore them. Who gives a shit about a paltry fifty gold for every fish you deliver or every wolf you kill? Fuck that shit. It's not the sidequests, but the main quest where TW shines. Shines like a freshly laid shit, I mean. I don't know. I mean, the story received a lot of praise for being “dark and mature” and so on and so forth but, well, with competition being what it is... We have to understand that “dark and mature” are the very same buzzwords used to describe Mass Effect and Fallout 3 and all these games that are trying to convince us that maturity is something that is synonymous with boobs or violence, but never both at the same time. Bethesda doesn't like nudity at all but like violence, and particularly the blood that comes with the violence. BioWare doesn't really like violence but they're not against giving us a second long glimpse of a breast in profile or a butt in poor lightning. To make a long story short, this all means pretty much that it doesn't mean a fucking thing if some guy calls The Witcher “a dark and mature experience” because he just got back from ranting and raving about how “dark and mature” fucking Mass Effect and Fallout 3 is! “Dark and mature” are words for stupid children so fuck buzzwords, fuck the people that use them and fuck bees too because bees are fucking evil. A bee attacked me once. Long story short, the bee had more friends than I had running speed.
So anyway, if we now throw “dark and mature” aside, what the fuck do we have left? “Well-written”. Yes, the story is well-written. If you know how to read fucking POLISH that is! Because holy hell, the official english translation is nothing more than a declaration of war! I know I'm not really one to talk, I'm probably up to my dick in typos and grammar shit right now but even before I found out the truth about this castrated english translation I sensed that there was something incredibly wrong with it. It's obvious that it had been cut down to pieces for some reason, most likely because – drum whirl, please – the translators did a really shitty job and you don't need to look further than DarkUnderlord's Year in Review article to see examples. This is not good work! If this was the best they could do they should not even have thought about releasing the game in english-speaking countries. Unless you know polish it's entirely out of the question to have any kind of a really intelligent experience with The Witcher, and I'm only basing this on things polish people in my vicinity have told me. If I knew how to read polish I might have found out that the polish text sucks equal amounts of ass but I doubt it and I do trust the polish men and women I keep hidden in my basement.
Fountain of Sorrow
Hey, Andy! What about the story? Glad you asked! Well, it's the usual bullshit! Some mysterious item gets stolen and Geralt has to get it back. It does get more interesting than that *eventually* but for a very long time that's really the main gist of it all.
In the introduction movie, an injured Geralt is taken to an old castle to rest up and hang with his friends when all of a sudden evil bandits suddenly attack and the player is suddenly forced to accept that he has just been thrown into a really shitty tutorial with a million pop-up boxes of helpful hints like “now switch to fast combat style and attack the enemy”. I'm going to assume every single one of you know how I feel about tutorials so I'll just leave it at “oh fuck you you fucking piece of shit I'm going to kill you!!!” So you run on a straight and narrow path, killing enemies via constantly switching your combat style and this is where I see the first kerosene warning lamp being lit and thrown on the carpet and burn me alive. Is this going to be how combat works for fifty fucking hours? Constant switching via strong, fast and group combat styles? Sure, it's not a big deal and I went along with it for the entire first playthrough but I'll be honest with you folks; in my world swinging a fucking sword around should not be any more complicated than “click mouse button on enemy” and that shit should be printed on the fucking box. “THE NEW IMPROVED WITCHER! CLICK MOUSE BUTTON ON ENEMY!” We're talking Peter Molyneux gangsta style here. Anything else is annoying and completely concretely bullshit. So as soon as I got the group style attack on my second playthrough I just left that shit on for the rest of the game because, while weaker, group style damages strong, fast and multiple targets and, shit, if you don't mind brewing or buying a couple of fucking potions you can easily do almost as much damage while you click your mouse button on enemies. To me it was clearly the optimal solution and it made the combat kinda fun and the herb picking a lot more worthwhile. This is on normal difficulty. If you play on easy you can basically lock your maid to the computer, go on a business trip, call her, struggle with the language barrier and Geralt will still kick ass.
Anyway, back to the game it's revealed that the bandit leader is some sort of magician who has come to steal the secrets hidden inside the castle or something. You and an expendable rookie witcher guy created especially for the game decides to take the bad guys on but expendable rookie witcher guy created especially for the game dies because he's an expendable rookie witcher guy created especially for the game and the prologue tutorial ends with all the witchers burning his body and crying a lot and reaching up to the heavens and there's lightning bolts and rain coming down like crazy and everyone are like screaming “WE WILL AVENGE YOU, EXPENDABLE ROOKIE GUY CREATED ESPECIALLY FOR THIS GAME!!” They all eventually decide to split up and search for the bandits. Geralt obviously heads in the wrong direction. Game over.
No, I'm kidding. But that would've been fun, huh?
Rock me on the water
Now let's go in-depth and penetrate the juicy cave of... eh fuck it, let's just talk about the sexism, or the supposed sexism. I dunno. As I see it, TW successfully explores one of the many, many myths about manliness and manages to take it to such a level that I wish I could be seven fucking years old again so I could fantasize about being a brave knight killing stuff and kissing pretty girls, because that's what this game truly is; nothing more than a great example of one of the ultimate male fantasies. A strong, tough guy with cool scars, cool swords and a cool, deep and gravely voice moves from place to place, slays demons and landlords and saves beautiful big-titted damsels in distress and receives their eternal gratitude; a quickie behind the old haunted tool shed. Is this sexist? For some people, I guess. Myself, I find my mind wandering on to the happy sex comedies from the swinging sixties rather than the rock cold 'legs up in the air like you just don't care and let me wipe my dick off on your face bitch'-action. I'd go as far as to say that sex is treated in this game better than any other recent game I can think of. Sex is some cute and funny stuff, to be enjoyed by everyone regardless if it's for pleasure or politics. Definitely the biggest pro!
My female friends, who I have in fact not made up for the sake of credibility, that have played the game did not have a problem with this. In fact, when I asked them about their opinion the words they used ranged from “kitschy and cute” to “ridiculous and humorous” and I completely agree with both. Mind you, these are the same ladies who actually explained to me, in an extremely motherly manner I might add, that I could regenerate health in GTA3 by acquiring a prostitute AND ALSO that I should run them over (the whores) (no no no, the other whores) as soon as I was done with them to get the money back, so maybe they're not real women. Maybe they're like transformers except they're men who can transform into women instead of cars! Transformers! Men in disguise!
Nah.
Hey guess what, guys, it's time to talk GAMEPLAY!!
Walking Slow
“Hey, Andy?”
“Yeah, Andy?”
“Do you very much like running on linear paths, killing monsters and picking up their remains, and you like the sound of that so fucking much that you would like an entire game devoted to it?”
“That sounds like the most boring game ever, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it for a while.”
“Excellent, then you'll absolutely loathe The Witcher, where exactly 99,9% of the entire game is all about the linear path running, monster killing and remains picking!”
“What's the rest?”
“Some boobies!”
“Oh, do you collect those too?”
“You certainly catch on quick, Andy!”
“Thanks, Andy! I went to school, you know.”
“I know you did, Andy! I know you did...”
“That's kinda creepy, Andy.”
“What are you wearing?”
Okay, okay, it's not exactly so bad. I mean, there are other things to do; like picking herbs... and flowers... for potion brewing... for killing monsters... and picking up their remains... Okay, so it really IS bad. I mean, here's a game that certainly appeals to lovers of micro management and luckily for CD Projekt, I, the e-steamed e-stallion Andyman Messiah, happen to fall into this category! Judge me all you want, I love this shit. The very idea that I have a game here, from the year of our motherfucking horse in the sky 2007, that forces me to actually prepare for fights... I'll be honest: I was so fucking wet the first time I played The Witcher. Yeah, the first time for a couple of hours. I mean, the precum facility shuts down after a while, y'know, but that's excellent. Immunity! I can fucking pick herbs in my sleep!
So is this bad or good? You know, I'm going to pussy out and demand that you pillage your very own soul, dear reader. Do you like micro management? Do you dislike micro management? It's a matter of taste. I don't consider micro management something everyone should enjoy, it's just sad that CD Projekt didn't find a better way to balance this out. About the only thing you can do to avoid the most tedious herb picking is to play on easy, which makes all enemies into cannon fodder. And I do mean ALL monsters. Even bosses turn into fucking pussies at this difficulty level!
So with that said, let's look at our player character, the fabulous Geralt. How does he work? Well, being a master monster hunter with amnesia is quite possibly the most funny thing ever as it practically means you have to build him up to his normal self again. He's got amnesia so he's forgotten about pretty much everything about his line of work. Amnesia is another thing developers seem to love, and I can't argue with the general idea of it. It's the perfect excuse to teach players how to do shit. But after a million games, I dunno, I got a little boring and The Witcher, the 1000001 game, seals the deal for me. If there was ever a death penalty for using amnesia as a plot device... yeah, I'm not going to finish that sentence but it's just bad, and tedious, and it turns most of the early game into a whole bunch of quests where you do nothing but lead Geralt around so he can learn how to do shit and refamiliarize himself with people he used to know before he hit his stupid fucking head. “WHO ARE YOU?” “I'M THIS GUY YOU KNOW.” “REALLY?” YES.” “WHAT'S THAT?” “THAT'S YOUR ASS.” “REALLY?” “YES. POOP COMES OUT OF IT.” “OKAY. UPDATED MY ENCYCLOPEDIA!” I mean, the tutorial is bad enough that it teaches you how to fucking attack enemies – “click the fucking mouse fuck button on the fucking enemy” but I have to deal with shit like this too? The tutorial is over! I'm on chapter one! I dunno if I'm sensitive or something, but... Ahem! Attention all developers! Cram the fucking tutorials and backstories and pancake recipies into the fucking manuals, please! If I give a shit and the characters catch my interest, I'll fucking go read up on them. Keep this shit out of the game!
Re-learning all the skills he lost is done in a much more sober manner, meaning it's annoying as hell but at least there are no popups. How do I skin monsters? How do I learn how to drink like a man? How do I learn about monsters and herbs and flowers and bees and birds up in the sky? WITH SKILL POINTS AND BOOKS OF COURSE! At the start of the game there are many herbs that simply won't show up because you haven't read a certain book or picked a perk. All fine and dandy, you think to yourself. I can handle that! Yeah, but all these books cost fucking money so if you want to collect them all you gotta run back and forth, peddling monster tongues and flowers or engaging in friendly minigames such as “beat 'em up” or “coin dice” to get money to buy the books. All fine and dandy, you think to yourself. I don't need all these herbs! And I suppose you're right, as long as you play on easy mode and won't need any potions. If you play on normal, like I said, micro management is going to fuck you in the ass. There are some books you actually find, but there's no way you're going to know that the book you just wasted valuable time and money on to open and then resell (because Geralt automatically stores the info in the encyclopedia) is waiting for you FOR MOTHERFUCKING FREE!! in the innkeepers toilet. But that's love for you. Or rape. I can never separate the two.
Fighting monsters can be a mess. I wouldn't call it complicated but it's definitely too much bullshit involved. To begin with, you got three sword styles to choose from: strong, fast and group. Like I said earlier, group is my favorite since it damages all types of enemies in an area but it doesn't do as much damage as strong and fast unless you buff yourself with potions.
For a dancer
Seven pages so far. You know something? I think I'll just stop right here and just do the usual shitty summarization of everything I've taught you with this stupid shit. Here we go.
1: The Witcher suffers from a bad case of “shitty translation”.
2: The Witcher is almost entirely made up of fetch quests and tutorials.
3: Geralt is a shitty character.
4: Andy loves micro management... his penis included.
5: Yeah?! Well, Andy loves sex with men!
6: I collected all the sex cards! I'm more heterosexual than you are!
7: Oh yeah?! Well, I've had sex with a woman!
8: Yeah, I saw “her”!
9: What's that supposed to mean?
10: What?
11: The stupid fucking bunny ears.
12: What, “this”?
13: Yeah!
14: Nothing.
15: You got a problem with my girlfriend?
16: “No.”
17: Alright, man, this is bullshit.
18: No, no, I bet “SHE” is really pretty! Hehehe...
19: Alright, you fucker! I've had it with you!
20: Yeah, well, I've had you!
21: You what?
22: Yeah! When you were sleeping!
23: OH MY GOD!!
24: YEAH! WHO'S YOUR SPLIT PERSONALITY? WHO'S YO-OOWWWW!!!
25: I'LL KILL YOU I'LL KILL YOU I'LL KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
26: BRING IT ON!!
Whoa! Serious business indeed! What will become of Andy and Andy? Will something even become of them? Find out in Duke Nukem Forever and eat lots of sausages! Sausages are delicious! Yum yum!
The Witcher final score: try it out if you have the time.
Review ends.
SERIOUSLY THE MOST SERIOUSLY SERIOUS REVIEW EVER!!
An incredibly serious review written by seriously everyone's favorite Andyman “REALLY SERIOUS!!!” Messiah!
The Late Show
(Alcohol helped write this TRULY stupid shit, so beware.)
First of all, let me get something very important out of the motherfucking way before I say any-fucking-thing else; The Witcher was the second best RPG to come out in 2007. And that's “was” like “WAS”, because it truly “WAS” in all its capital, surprised glory. And that's second best because of everyone's favorite underskirts Obsidian Entertainment's MotB, of course, but that's a heck of an opponent. Curiously enough, in 2008 history would repeat itself because The Witcher: Extended Edition was pretty much all the gaming you needed, along with Obsidian's newest extension pack, sorry, EXPANSION pack Storm of Zehir. Now let me tell you something, a joke, a statement, a comment, whatever you wanna call it, that I made up about people who played Mass Effect and Fallout 3 and thought those games were better rpgs than any of the other aforementioned games. It doesn't really make sense in in the context but I'm too lazy to write clever transitions like “dolphins will rule the earth” so listen well and listen good, you deaf motherfucker; a brainless fucking idiot will cum at one stroke even IF they don't just jam a finger up the asshole and make you spray about a teaspoon's worth of semen over your shower curtain. And then you get deported to motherfucking Yemen or something, because Yemen rhymes with semen and I've always wanted to rhyme that publicly. I don't know if anything about that made sense. I hope it didn't. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of idiotic point I was trying to make.
I'm currently writing this piece <s>of shit</s> from the inside of the bar I recently discovered is THE ideal workplace for me if I need an excuse to actually not do things that I really need to do, like preparing for the divine plan, writing a shitty Final Fantasy 7 let's play or a shitty review where all I do is complain about shit. Because I need shitty pine enchiladas or whatever that fucking drink is called in retarded bartender language (more like a retarded BEARTENDER am I right?!) more than I need to realize that I actually agreed to write a review for a game that most likely will crush my soul, grind it down into white powder, force it down some twelve year old boy whore's ass and then snort it outta there along with the juicy excrement-filled rectum. I'm honestly writing a review for a game that, and hang the fuck on now, my furry little Grey's Anatomy fans, was first released in October 2007 and then re-fuck-released as “The Witcher: Extended Edition” in September 2008.
The EE was little more than a patch that fixed, and I'm paraphrasing whoever wrote the stupid fucking wikipedia entry; “a whole lotta bugs, added 200 new animations and made the english translation suck a little bit less.” And for everyone who had bought the faulty version, the content was made completely free (like the patch it truly was) to download from the developer's website. However you might feel about this “controversy” is a completely pointless, irrelevant and meandering sack of zombie shit I wouldn't give a bald eagle's asshole about even if it was mine to give. Mark my words, though; anyone caught whining about the extended edition will be found and disemboweled with a snickers bar. While you might have a point that justifies your whining, be aware that I am always one hundred percent serious at all time forever and ever until the end of time itself and until I run out of mind enhancers that come in green and blue. As I've said a couple of times now, this is going to be the most SERIOUS!! review ever so let's fucking go.
(All further text from this point on are WITHOUT help from alcohol, beware.)
Looking Into You
In The Witcher, the player have the somewhat somersaultingly substantial pleasure of slipping into the well-groomed persona of Geralt of Rivia, a (thankfully) sterile monster hunter suffering from a bad case of convenient and selective amnesia which has caused him to forget almost everything about his line of work and the women he fucked over the years. (I think most of us have had a couple of flings of ”amnesia” like that.) Now bear with me, because as I have come to understand things, Geralt is pretty much the Drizzt Do'Urden of Poland, right? A strange, misunderstood hero who fights the good fight in a world that generally despises him and all that crap. Am I right? Of course I'm right. Jesus Christ, that shit was old even when Jack and Stan came up with the X-Men.
For many people outside of Poland – me included, this game was the first we ever saw of Geralt of Rivia in any media, and I have a strong feeling that for some of us it was also the very last we ever saw of him – voluntary! Because one simply cannot get around the fact that the entire character of Geralt is seemingly built on one (1) part ridiculous fantasy alpha male stereotype, to instill respect, awe and boners the size of palm trees, and one (1) part brooding teenager misunderstood antihero with somewhat amnesia. On the contrary however, in cutscenes Geralt is defined less as an annoyance and more like a competent, although silent, warrior type that doesn't really give a shit about the convoluted Wolverine-esque mystery surrounding him and everything else, and while it's hardly original he's definitely likeable. In these cutscenes he is also gifted with a strong moral compass that, unfortunately, does not carry over into the playable content portion of the game. Heck, I'd practically suggest just watching the cutscenes and just skipping the rest because the rest is fucking horrible. Great cutscenes, bad game. Kinda like Diablo 2, except that the cutscenes weren't really great in Diablo 2. They were boring but passable and pleasing to look at.
So anyway, the character. Well, as yet another premade character (sure is JRPG around here...) Geralt is no better than our buddy Commander Shepard or any of these other mindless action heroes who believe in their own bullshit a little too much for their own good. Their facial expressions tells me they didn't wipe their asses good enough this morning and that the poop gravy stuck between their cheeks has started to harden and is giving them all kinds of problems. The supporting cast is a lot better and I realize that's not really saying much, but they're the ones that ultimately make the game playable.
Coming up next: The Witcher is actually a p. good game!
Something Fine
Of course I'm lying.
Yes, even though the main character happens to suck some serious amount of ass, TW is a good game with plenty of choices and consequences that doesn't really matter, plenty of cool combat that doesn't really matter and plenty of characters that doesn't really suck anything less than the meatiest, assiest ass! It's basically nothing more than a grimmer, darker, maturer, europerer Neverwinter Nights 2, and with a million more fetch quests! Oh yes, being a mercenary more than anything, I suppose it makes sense that Geralt is always on the lookout for people who need five monster heads delivered or six flowers picked or anything along those lines, but it's still boring shit. Now thankfully most of them are optional, as they should be, and so my advice in dealing with them is the same as with Mass Effect's stupid assignments: ignore them. Who gives a shit about a paltry fifty gold for every fish you deliver or every wolf you kill? Fuck that shit. It's not the sidequests, but the main quest where TW shines. Shines like a freshly laid shit, I mean. I don't know. I mean, the story received a lot of praise for being “dark and mature” and so on and so forth but, well, with competition being what it is... We have to understand that “dark and mature” are the very same buzzwords used to describe Mass Effect and Fallout 3 and all these games that are trying to convince us that maturity is something that is synonymous with boobs or violence, but never both at the same time. Bethesda doesn't like nudity at all but like violence, and particularly the blood that comes with the violence. BioWare doesn't really like violence but they're not against giving us a second long glimpse of a breast in profile or a butt in poor lightning. To make a long story short, this all means pretty much that it doesn't mean a fucking thing if some guy calls The Witcher “a dark and mature experience” because he just got back from ranting and raving about how “dark and mature” fucking Mass Effect and Fallout 3 is! “Dark and mature” are words for stupid children so fuck buzzwords, fuck the people that use them and fuck bees too because bees are fucking evil. A bee attacked me once. Long story short, the bee had more friends than I had running speed.
So anyway, if we now throw “dark and mature” aside, what the fuck do we have left? “Well-written”. Yes, the story is well-written. If you know how to read fucking POLISH that is! Because holy hell, the official english translation is nothing more than a declaration of war! I know I'm not really one to talk, I'm probably up to my dick in typos and grammar shit right now but even before I found out the truth about this castrated english translation I sensed that there was something incredibly wrong with it. It's obvious that it had been cut down to pieces for some reason, most likely because – drum whirl, please – the translators did a really shitty job and you don't need to look further than DarkUnderlord's Year in Review article to see examples. This is not good work! If this was the best they could do they should not even have thought about releasing the game in english-speaking countries. Unless you know polish it's entirely out of the question to have any kind of a really intelligent experience with The Witcher, and I'm only basing this on things polish people in my vicinity have told me. If I knew how to read polish I might have found out that the polish text sucks equal amounts of ass but I doubt it and I do trust the polish men and women I keep hidden in my basement.
Fountain of Sorrow
Hey, Andy! What about the story? Glad you asked! Well, it's the usual bullshit! Some mysterious item gets stolen and Geralt has to get it back. It does get more interesting than that *eventually* but for a very long time that's really the main gist of it all.
In the introduction movie, an injured Geralt is taken to an old castle to rest up and hang with his friends when all of a sudden evil bandits suddenly attack and the player is suddenly forced to accept that he has just been thrown into a really shitty tutorial with a million pop-up boxes of helpful hints like “now switch to fast combat style and attack the enemy”. I'm going to assume every single one of you know how I feel about tutorials so I'll just leave it at “oh fuck you you fucking piece of shit I'm going to kill you!!!” So you run on a straight and narrow path, killing enemies via constantly switching your combat style and this is where I see the first kerosene warning lamp being lit and thrown on the carpet and burn me alive. Is this going to be how combat works for fifty fucking hours? Constant switching via strong, fast and group combat styles? Sure, it's not a big deal and I went along with it for the entire first playthrough but I'll be honest with you folks; in my world swinging a fucking sword around should not be any more complicated than “click mouse button on enemy” and that shit should be printed on the fucking box. “THE NEW IMPROVED WITCHER! CLICK MOUSE BUTTON ON ENEMY!” We're talking Peter Molyneux gangsta style here. Anything else is annoying and completely concretely bullshit. So as soon as I got the group style attack on my second playthrough I just left that shit on for the rest of the game because, while weaker, group style damages strong, fast and multiple targets and, shit, if you don't mind brewing or buying a couple of fucking potions you can easily do almost as much damage while you click your mouse button on enemies. To me it was clearly the optimal solution and it made the combat kinda fun and the herb picking a lot more worthwhile. This is on normal difficulty. If you play on easy you can basically lock your maid to the computer, go on a business trip, call her, struggle with the language barrier and Geralt will still kick ass.
Anyway, back to the game it's revealed that the bandit leader is some sort of magician who has come to steal the secrets hidden inside the castle or something. You and an expendable rookie witcher guy created especially for the game decides to take the bad guys on but expendable rookie witcher guy created especially for the game dies because he's an expendable rookie witcher guy created especially for the game and the prologue tutorial ends with all the witchers burning his body and crying a lot and reaching up to the heavens and there's lightning bolts and rain coming down like crazy and everyone are like screaming “WE WILL AVENGE YOU, EXPENDABLE ROOKIE GUY CREATED ESPECIALLY FOR THIS GAME!!” They all eventually decide to split up and search for the bandits. Geralt obviously heads in the wrong direction. Game over.
No, I'm kidding. But that would've been fun, huh?
Rock me on the water
Now let's go in-depth and penetrate the juicy cave of... eh fuck it, let's just talk about the sexism, or the supposed sexism. I dunno. As I see it, TW successfully explores one of the many, many myths about manliness and manages to take it to such a level that I wish I could be seven fucking years old again so I could fantasize about being a brave knight killing stuff and kissing pretty girls, because that's what this game truly is; nothing more than a great example of one of the ultimate male fantasies. A strong, tough guy with cool scars, cool swords and a cool, deep and gravely voice moves from place to place, slays demons and landlords and saves beautiful big-titted damsels in distress and receives their eternal gratitude; a quickie behind the old haunted tool shed. Is this sexist? For some people, I guess. Myself, I find my mind wandering on to the happy sex comedies from the swinging sixties rather than the rock cold 'legs up in the air like you just don't care and let me wipe my dick off on your face bitch'-action. I'd go as far as to say that sex is treated in this game better than any other recent game I can think of. Sex is some cute and funny stuff, to be enjoyed by everyone regardless if it's for pleasure or politics. Definitely the biggest pro!
My female friends, who I have in fact not made up for the sake of credibility, that have played the game did not have a problem with this. In fact, when I asked them about their opinion the words they used ranged from “kitschy and cute” to “ridiculous and humorous” and I completely agree with both. Mind you, these are the same ladies who actually explained to me, in an extremely motherly manner I might add, that I could regenerate health in GTA3 by acquiring a prostitute AND ALSO that I should run them over (the whores) (no no no, the other whores) as soon as I was done with them to get the money back, so maybe they're not real women. Maybe they're like transformers except they're men who can transform into women instead of cars! Transformers! Men in disguise!
Nah.
Hey guess what, guys, it's time to talk GAMEPLAY!!
Walking Slow
“Hey, Andy?”
“Yeah, Andy?”
“Do you very much like running on linear paths, killing monsters and picking up their remains, and you like the sound of that so fucking much that you would like an entire game devoted to it?”
“That sounds like the most boring game ever, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it for a while.”
“Excellent, then you'll absolutely loathe The Witcher, where exactly 99,9% of the entire game is all about the linear path running, monster killing and remains picking!”
“What's the rest?”
“Some boobies!”
“Oh, do you collect those too?”
“You certainly catch on quick, Andy!”
“Thanks, Andy! I went to school, you know.”
“I know you did, Andy! I know you did...”
“That's kinda creepy, Andy.”
“What are you wearing?”
Okay, okay, it's not exactly so bad. I mean, there are other things to do; like picking herbs... and flowers... for potion brewing... for killing monsters... and picking up their remains... Okay, so it really IS bad. I mean, here's a game that certainly appeals to lovers of micro management and luckily for CD Projekt, I, the e-steamed e-stallion Andyman Messiah, happen to fall into this category! Judge me all you want, I love this shit. The very idea that I have a game here, from the year of our motherfucking horse in the sky 2007, that forces me to actually prepare for fights... I'll be honest: I was so fucking wet the first time I played The Witcher. Yeah, the first time for a couple of hours. I mean, the precum facility shuts down after a while, y'know, but that's excellent. Immunity! I can fucking pick herbs in my sleep!
So is this bad or good? You know, I'm going to pussy out and demand that you pillage your very own soul, dear reader. Do you like micro management? Do you dislike micro management? It's a matter of taste. I don't consider micro management something everyone should enjoy, it's just sad that CD Projekt didn't find a better way to balance this out. About the only thing you can do to avoid the most tedious herb picking is to play on easy, which makes all enemies into cannon fodder. And I do mean ALL monsters. Even bosses turn into fucking pussies at this difficulty level!
So with that said, let's look at our player character, the fabulous Geralt. How does he work? Well, being a master monster hunter with amnesia is quite possibly the most funny thing ever as it practically means you have to build him up to his normal self again. He's got amnesia so he's forgotten about pretty much everything about his line of work. Amnesia is another thing developers seem to love, and I can't argue with the general idea of it. It's the perfect excuse to teach players how to do shit. But after a million games, I dunno, I got a little boring and The Witcher, the 1000001 game, seals the deal for me. If there was ever a death penalty for using amnesia as a plot device... yeah, I'm not going to finish that sentence but it's just bad, and tedious, and it turns most of the early game into a whole bunch of quests where you do nothing but lead Geralt around so he can learn how to do shit and refamiliarize himself with people he used to know before he hit his stupid fucking head. “WHO ARE YOU?” “I'M THIS GUY YOU KNOW.” “REALLY?” YES.” “WHAT'S THAT?” “THAT'S YOUR ASS.” “REALLY?” “YES. POOP COMES OUT OF IT.” “OKAY. UPDATED MY ENCYCLOPEDIA!” I mean, the tutorial is bad enough that it teaches you how to fucking attack enemies – “click the fucking mouse fuck button on the fucking enemy” but I have to deal with shit like this too? The tutorial is over! I'm on chapter one! I dunno if I'm sensitive or something, but... Ahem! Attention all developers! Cram the fucking tutorials and backstories and pancake recipies into the fucking manuals, please! If I give a shit and the characters catch my interest, I'll fucking go read up on them. Keep this shit out of the game!
Re-learning all the skills he lost is done in a much more sober manner, meaning it's annoying as hell but at least there are no popups. How do I skin monsters? How do I learn how to drink like a man? How do I learn about monsters and herbs and flowers and bees and birds up in the sky? WITH SKILL POINTS AND BOOKS OF COURSE! At the start of the game there are many herbs that simply won't show up because you haven't read a certain book or picked a perk. All fine and dandy, you think to yourself. I can handle that! Yeah, but all these books cost fucking money so if you want to collect them all you gotta run back and forth, peddling monster tongues and flowers or engaging in friendly minigames such as “beat 'em up” or “coin dice” to get money to buy the books. All fine and dandy, you think to yourself. I don't need all these herbs! And I suppose you're right, as long as you play on easy mode and won't need any potions. If you play on normal, like I said, micro management is going to fuck you in the ass. There are some books you actually find, but there's no way you're going to know that the book you just wasted valuable time and money on to open and then resell (because Geralt automatically stores the info in the encyclopedia) is waiting for you FOR MOTHERFUCKING FREE!! in the innkeepers toilet. But that's love for you. Or rape. I can never separate the two.
Fighting monsters can be a mess. I wouldn't call it complicated but it's definitely too much bullshit involved. To begin with, you got three sword styles to choose from: strong, fast and group. Like I said earlier, group is my favorite since it damages all types of enemies in an area but it doesn't do as much damage as strong and fast unless you buff yourself with potions.
For a dancer
Seven pages so far. You know something? I think I'll just stop right here and just do the usual shitty summarization of everything I've taught you with this stupid shit. Here we go.
1: The Witcher suffers from a bad case of “shitty translation”.
2: The Witcher is almost entirely made up of fetch quests and tutorials.
3: Geralt is a shitty character.
4: Andy loves micro management... his penis included.
5: Yeah?! Well, Andy loves sex with men!
6: I collected all the sex cards! I'm more heterosexual than you are!
7: Oh yeah?! Well, I've had sex with a woman!
8: Yeah, I saw “her”!
9: What's that supposed to mean?
10: What?
11: The stupid fucking bunny ears.
12: What, “this”?
13: Yeah!
14: Nothing.
15: You got a problem with my girlfriend?
16: “No.”
17: Alright, man, this is bullshit.
18: No, no, I bet “SHE” is really pretty! Hehehe...
19: Alright, you fucker! I've had it with you!
20: Yeah, well, I've had you!
21: You what?
22: Yeah! When you were sleeping!
23: OH MY GOD!!
24: YEAH! WHO'S YOUR SPLIT PERSONALITY? WHO'S YO-OOWWWW!!!
25: I'LL KILL YOU I'LL KILL YOU I'LL KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
26: BRING IT ON!!
Whoa! Serious business indeed! What will become of Andy and Andy? Will something even become of them? Find out in Duke Nukem Forever and eat lots of sausages! Sausages are delicious! Yum yum!
The Witcher final score: try it out if you have the time.
Review ends.
