There is this video game I just played, and wow, is it awesome. The game is called "The Witcher". You play Geralt, an albino antihero with a facial scar and leather pants. Gerald is a rarity in the fantasy world he inhabits. I'm guessing thiis is because he clearly has two swords, but refuses to wield one in each hand, like a really good albino antihero would. In a sense, it makes him tragic, because he doesen't kick nearly as much ass as he other morally ambiguous antiheroes would while stabbing his enemies twice as many times. In another way, it makes him tragically stupid, because all he would have to do is just put the other sword in his left hand. Or his right - having lost his memory, he may not even know which is dominant anymore. He often asks people who clearly know him if they've met before, which, let us face it, is some fucking harcore character development. It's like his memory is so fucked, he actually sometimes forgets that he can't remember anything.
A majority of the game is played by pressing the left mouse button while highlighting things that you want Geralt to kill with his sword. There is a subtle layer of additional difficulty to The Witcher that sets it apart from other games of this stripe - in order to continue killing enemies, you have to press the left mouse button several times. You can't press it too slowly; if you do, Geralt will perform the same redundant attack over again, and his enemies will be insulted that he can't come up with something remotely more creative. You can't press it too quickly, either, as the game will reward your premature button-humping by flashing the deeply unsatifsfying phrase "TOO FAST" across the screen. If you press the left mouse button slowly enough to show you aren't in a hurry to kill your enemies, but fast enough to prove you are paying attention, Geralt performs acrobatic displays of extremely deadly bladework.
You can also press the right mouse button to use powerful magic. After using enough magic, you win the game, which just continues to hammer home the tragic underpinnings of Geralt's character - that all this this time he was using a pair (sic) of blades like an ambulatory cuisinart, when his magic just becomes the dopest shit ever. His magic is so powerful that it has a bar below his health exclusively devoted to telling you whether or not you can continue to win the game, or if you have to take a breather for a few minutes and let it recharge. But in a story this deep the combat is literally only a foundation upon which two equally important meta-games - performing alchemy and collecting trading cards from women you've fucked.
Geralt can perform alchemy to one of three ends. He can create bombs, which he throws at enemies to give them a Fear and Loathing style bad trip. He can create potions, which he downs like a fucking fiend, let me tell you, and they get this dude seriously tweaked. He can also create oils, which you'd expect to be used in some sort of deadly tantric massage, but no such luck. He uses most of these oils to turn his superfluous swords various colors. These colors hate life and help Geralt's swords, whom they share a co-dependent relationship with, kill whatsoever they touch. He creates this shit out of flowers, alchemic minerals, and the butchered remains of monsters you have clicked on enough times to render them dead. Geralt's junkie alchemy is very complex; each ingredient contains fundamental elements such as Aether, Vitriol, and coenzyme Q-10. When combined, these ingredients create alchemic formulas with awesome prog-rock song names like "King and Queen", "White Honey", "Tawny Owl" and "Wolf". The number of incredients is fucking long as hell, forcing you to create encyclopedic grocery lists in order to determine which Rush song you'll synthesize next.
Initially, Geralt is concerned with the survival of his park district softball team, the Witchers, and with remembering that he lost his memory during the CGI introduction movie. Over the course of his adventures, however, Geralt's real goal becomes apparent. He must obtain pokemon cards which depict women in calculating post-coital poses, sometimes looking sweaty or affected. He can steal these magical, naughty pokemon only after fucking the women depicted on them.
You would think a dude with crazy drug-alchemy could get bitches horny in a hot minute with some kind of potion, but this isn't the case. Geralt's main weapon in the quest for slutcards is good, old fashioned guilt. In order to obtain a woman's sexual pokemon, he must engage in a sort of convoluted video game porno with them. As a man who looks like a cross between Leonard Nimoy, Alice Cooper and Sephiroth, Geralt gets laid only after saving someone's life or performing great deeds worthy of medieval fantasy nookie. These deeds have shady social consequences that get other, non-sexual characters killed or cause Geralt's friends to give him shit that does not befit their seemingly bro-like status.
For instance, the woman in question may be a heinous conniving bitch, but Geralt saves her life. She fucks him and renders unto him her slutcard, but people who wanted her dead forever hate Geralt, and you have to click on them multiple times or press the game-winning right mouse button to make them go away. One time, you beat up gang members on behalf of a brothel's madam, and must make the soul-wrenching choice whether to accept two hundred coins as your payment, or be allowed carte blanche to fuck her whores and take their precious whore cards. Such is life.
As a tale about a magical albino gigolo, The Witcher is not bad. It has fantastic landscapes, lots of faux english accents, fancy clicking and a shit ton of great alchemic ingredients, many of which are alcoholic beverages you'd expect to find at a Crowley-esque frat party. I would give it three out of five stars, one star exclusively being for being about a man with a name that manages to be completely uncontrived and yet unbearable to hear voice actors repeat over and over.
A majority of the game is played by pressing the left mouse button while highlighting things that you want Geralt to kill with his sword. There is a subtle layer of additional difficulty to The Witcher that sets it apart from other games of this stripe - in order to continue killing enemies, you have to press the left mouse button several times. You can't press it too slowly; if you do, Geralt will perform the same redundant attack over again, and his enemies will be insulted that he can't come up with something remotely more creative. You can't press it too quickly, either, as the game will reward your premature button-humping by flashing the deeply unsatifsfying phrase "TOO FAST" across the screen. If you press the left mouse button slowly enough to show you aren't in a hurry to kill your enemies, but fast enough to prove you are paying attention, Geralt performs acrobatic displays of extremely deadly bladework.
You can also press the right mouse button to use powerful magic. After using enough magic, you win the game, which just continues to hammer home the tragic underpinnings of Geralt's character - that all this this time he was using a pair (sic) of blades like an ambulatory cuisinart, when his magic just becomes the dopest shit ever. His magic is so powerful that it has a bar below his health exclusively devoted to telling you whether or not you can continue to win the game, or if you have to take a breather for a few minutes and let it recharge. But in a story this deep the combat is literally only a foundation upon which two equally important meta-games - performing alchemy and collecting trading cards from women you've fucked.
Geralt can perform alchemy to one of three ends. He can create bombs, which he throws at enemies to give them a Fear and Loathing style bad trip. He can create potions, which he downs like a fucking fiend, let me tell you, and they get this dude seriously tweaked. He can also create oils, which you'd expect to be used in some sort of deadly tantric massage, but no such luck. He uses most of these oils to turn his superfluous swords various colors. These colors hate life and help Geralt's swords, whom they share a co-dependent relationship with, kill whatsoever they touch. He creates this shit out of flowers, alchemic minerals, and the butchered remains of monsters you have clicked on enough times to render them dead. Geralt's junkie alchemy is very complex; each ingredient contains fundamental elements such as Aether, Vitriol, and coenzyme Q-10. When combined, these ingredients create alchemic formulas with awesome prog-rock song names like "King and Queen", "White Honey", "Tawny Owl" and "Wolf". The number of incredients is fucking long as hell, forcing you to create encyclopedic grocery lists in order to determine which Rush song you'll synthesize next.
Initially, Geralt is concerned with the survival of his park district softball team, the Witchers, and with remembering that he lost his memory during the CGI introduction movie. Over the course of his adventures, however, Geralt's real goal becomes apparent. He must obtain pokemon cards which depict women in calculating post-coital poses, sometimes looking sweaty or affected. He can steal these magical, naughty pokemon only after fucking the women depicted on them.
You would think a dude with crazy drug-alchemy could get bitches horny in a hot minute with some kind of potion, but this isn't the case. Geralt's main weapon in the quest for slutcards is good, old fashioned guilt. In order to obtain a woman's sexual pokemon, he must engage in a sort of convoluted video game porno with them. As a man who looks like a cross between Leonard Nimoy, Alice Cooper and Sephiroth, Geralt gets laid only after saving someone's life or performing great deeds worthy of medieval fantasy nookie. These deeds have shady social consequences that get other, non-sexual characters killed or cause Geralt's friends to give him shit that does not befit their seemingly bro-like status.
For instance, the woman in question may be a heinous conniving bitch, but Geralt saves her life. She fucks him and renders unto him her slutcard, but people who wanted her dead forever hate Geralt, and you have to click on them multiple times or press the game-winning right mouse button to make them go away. One time, you beat up gang members on behalf of a brothel's madam, and must make the soul-wrenching choice whether to accept two hundred coins as your payment, or be allowed carte blanche to fuck her whores and take their precious whore cards. Such is life.
As a tale about a magical albino gigolo, The Witcher is not bad. It has fantastic landscapes, lots of faux english accents, fancy clicking and a shit ton of great alchemic ingredients, many of which are alcoholic beverages you'd expect to find at a Crowley-esque frat party. I would give it three out of five stars, one star exclusively being for being about a man with a name that manages to be completely uncontrived and yet unbearable to hear voice actors repeat over and over.