The Witcher is a very nice story-driven RPG. It is fairly on-rails as far as progression goes, there are side quests you can take but you are quite restricted in how you progress the story. Actions you take do have an affect on subsequent chapters in the game however which is a very nice touch. There could have been some more variety in the human models, there was alot of re-use for different (often quite important) characters. The voice over work was good, Geralt in particular was very good.

The combat is not very tactical, it essentially boils down to clicking the mouse at the appropriate time to get combo’s, however there is some need to pay attention to which of your weapons you are using (steel or silver) and the style (fast, strong, group). Certain enemies require different combinations in order to efficiently kill them. In addition you have the potion making subsystem which is used to assist with combat primarily. I found that I probably only used half to two-thirds of the potion recipes that I acquired however.

The ending was a little bit anti-climactic to be honest, however it won’t stop me playing The Witcher 2, although I believe that is more of a separate adventure rather than having much in the way of continuity from this game.

Oct 012011
 

Another game that I finished during the 90′s but still enjoyed playing through again (although I wimped out and played it on the second easiest level). It is surprising how similar modern day FPS still are to this classic. Obviously there are some notable improvements, Doom did not let you look up and down for instance, but nearly everything else is still there, powerups, multiple weapons, health kits, ammo drops etc.

Doom originally caused controversy because of it’s content, in particular the blood and demonic references, looking at the cardboard cutouts and extremely blocky graphics makes that pretty laughable now. I especially loved the sprite trees that “rotate” with you as you run around them. If you’ve never played Doom (how could that be??) then I heartily recommend you play it now, you won’t regret it.

 

For a game that came out in 1998 this holds up extremely well now. I finished all the campaigns at when it originally came out, and had no problems with motivation to finish it a second time, the game is just that good.

The learning curve is excellent, teaching you how the units work in a manner that is not overwhelming and the strategies you need to apply in the later campaigns in order to win are masterful. It does have a few minor flaws in my opinion, there are a couple units that seem particularly useless (such as the non-ram siege units), and the AI can be a little strange at times (the enemy will march units right past you without attacking for instance).

Overall though, this game is one of the best RTS’s I’ve ever played and I would dearly love to see a sequel that kept to the same formula (as opposed to the less critically acclaimed Age of Empires 3)

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