Zero Punctuation: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

[Kahunaburger]

snip

Except everyone shat on FFIIVCXMVII (whatever number the MMORPG one was) because it was a bad game. Pretty much everyone praised the Witcher 2 to high heaven, and pointed out the couple of flaws it has that kept it from being a completely polished experience. A large number of reviewers didn't care about the tutorial/UI/control issues, and gave it 100's. Yahtzee doesn't like it, but anyone who thinks "Yahtzee doesn't like it = bad game" need to work on their pattern recognition skills.

Go on, find me one 100, go on, i dare you.

I'll do you 5 better - I'll find you six. These are the ones of metacritic - reviewers not included in the metascore (x-play, for instance) also gave the game 5/5, 10/10, and so on.

http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings/review/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-review/a-201105171466879070/g-20100323131251436086

http://www.gameblog.fr/test_971_the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-pc

http://www.gamepro.com/article/reviews/219544/review-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings/

http://www.gameover.gr/pc/reviews/The-Witcher-2-Assassins-of-Kings.16020.html

http://www.1up.com/reviews/witcher-2-review

http://www.eurogamer.se/articles/2011-06-03-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-recension

 

[Kahunaburger]

snip

Except everyone shat on FFIIVCXMVII (whatever number the MMORPG one was) because it was a bad game. Pretty much everyone praised the Witcher 2 to high heaven, and pointed out the couple of flaws it has that kept it from being a completely polished experience. A large number of reviewers didn't care about the tutorial/UI/control issues, and gave it 100's. Yahtzee doesn't like it, but anyone who thinks "Yahtzee doesn't like it = bad game" need to work on their pattern recognition skills.

Go on, find me one 100, go on, i dare you.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings/critic-reviews

Here are seven.

Ninja'd

 

[Mariusmssj]

if you can't even be asked to play the game don't review it, even more don't post of a video "review" of a game which you stopped playing in Act I.

and @BunnyKillBot lololol got pwned xD

 

[TheUnbeholden]

So this british knob couldn't even figure how to skip a perfectly skippable cut-scene and still wonders why he finds the game so hard. Reading the manual, you say? Sacré bleu!

The fucking hypocrite is first in lane to lament the current state of the gaming industry with all its moron-shooters, yet the minute a game dares being something more, he whines that it's not streamlined enough, too clustered, overwhelming, hard, etc.

Cynicism for its own sake is not comedy, sir.

That would be funny if it where true.

So he couldn't figure out how to skip it.. so what.

Yeah he does bring up the lack of good tutorial. Small point but so what?


He didn't argue that it wasn't streamlined enough. He argues that its poorly designed. Spell selection, inventory, mouse look is about as poorly implemented as the rest of the freakin game.

The game itself isn't that hard, its just almost everything is implemented so badly it ends up artificially inflating the difficulty because your fighting the bad controls... add to that the bad dodge with a unusually long delay that sends you flying into enemies, the unusually long block that gets you sliced even though you had good enough reaction to press the button before a sword slices you.

If the story is good, well that point is lost because the game just isn't fun enough to make you want to wade through the constant crap to find out.

 

[mrhateful]

I will say this, I agree with Yahtzee not playing the first one through since it wasn't that good and kinda boring especially act 3 or 4 where you come to that farm village and has to help a couple get married or some idiocy like that. However not playing witcher 2 to the end when it is such a great game that treats you with respect makes no sense to me. It might be because the game only really picks up 2 or 3 hours after the point Yahtzee had reached.

 

[BunnyKillBot]

snip

Except everyone shat on FFIIVCXMVII (whatever number the MMORPG one was) because it was a bad game. Pretty much everyone praised the Witcher 2 to high heaven, and pointed out the couple of flaws it has that kept it from being a completely polished experience. A large number of reviewers didn't care about the tutorial/UI/control issues, and gave it 100's. Yahtzee doesn't like it, but anyone who thinks "Yahtzee doesn't like it = bad game" need to work on their pattern recognition skills.

Go on, find me one 100, go on, i dare you.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings/critic-reviews

Here are seven.

Now find me EIGHT. MWahahhahahaha.

There are 7 pocketed/incompetent media outlets right there. Anybody giving 100s to what essentially amounts to subjective art is retarded.

 

[kordo]

Oh fark off Yahtzee, Witcher 2 is one of the best RPGs ever made. Go back to your failbox 360 ya wanker

lol @ BunnyKillBot getting pwned beautifully. That is art right there.

 

[Ishiro32]

Now find me EIGHT. MWahahhahahaha.

There are 7 pocketed/incompetent media outlets right there. Anybody giving 100s to what essentially amounts to subjective art is retarded.

So you asked about one 100% review... And they gave it to you. But now you think that those reviews were poor and pocketed... You know what? Get the hell out here because i don't even know what your point is. You dared them and they delivered, lose like a man.

BTW almost any 100% review is bs because there is no perfect game, so i really don't know what you try to prove.

 

[Monstrion]

He didn't argue that it wasn't streamlined enough. He argues that its poorly designed. Spell selection, inventory, mouse look is about as poorly implemented as the rest of the freakin game.

The game itself isn't that hard, its just almost everything is implemented so badly it ends up artificially inflating the difficulty because your fighting the bad controls... add to that the bad dodge with a unusually long delay that sends you flying into enemies, the unusually long block that gets you sliced even though you had good enough reaction to press the button before a sword slices you.

If the story is good, well that point is lost because the game just isn't fun enough to make you want to wade through the constant crap to find out.

Its funny how I never fought the bad controls, because there are none. What pissed me was that I had to use the ctrl menu so often, but aside from that, its your shitty fingers and motor skills, not the controls.

The dodge works just fine. Never had an issue with it(on 1,1 patch I admit). The problem people mostly have is that they are staggered after enemy parries their blow. Yeah you cant do shit during that. Protip, dont attack enemy who can block you directly. The dodge sends you in a direction you press. If you are being sent into enemies, you suck.

Maybe you should try to understand the mechanic of blocking in this game before you bash it. Because now its not your shitty fingers, but your lack of understanding of the game.

Way to make almost completely wrong argument! You should get a badge for that.

 

[frobisher]

After playing Dungeon Siege III for a while I realised Witcher has actually decent controls, camera and inventory. It is a painful experience, but allows to use Holy Words like "unintuitiveness" or "streamlining" with better justification.


Small idea though - how about people complaining about inventory post screenshot of their ideal? Preferably the ideal from a game with a piles of loot to be colllected and carried; oh, and the ideal that can be actually translated to consoles and remain "streamlined" (uh, what, cell structure?).

Notable examples, rather... similar (almost the same structure, but somehow... hard to recall people crying about "unintuitiveness") or worse than Witcher 2 version (mostly because the amount of W2 items would render them useless):

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2009/300/950918_20091028_screen003.jpg
http://everydaygamers.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/1-year-inventory.jpg
http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/63/risen2009101620520725.jpg
http://images.mmosite.com/my/upload/6f/33/ab09dcddf73df48c0cc983f2f3daee51/theme/b32caac1a3d9df849b391d6ae2cec4c1411.jpg
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/4866/1023631-stalker_20070526_055517_super.png


(credits to original poster - you know who you are )



Junk tab & being able to organise items according to their number and weight - that's all that is actually needed. How on earth can someone have problems with using upgrades when both drag & drop AND double-click work? Do they need to add ctrl+alt+del option as well? Or kinect support?

One more thing - there is a "tutorial level" in this game regardless of difficulty setting. After leaving your tent explore the camp - you will find a place where you can learn dice poker or arm wrestling. And voila... two training dummies as well. You can safely use signs and combat skills in the area, you can get the "feel" how far is your range, how long animations last, you can easily read tooltips and description of every sign, blah blah blah... What? Do you find hitting a dummy boring? Oh, so do I. But you have that option - choice and consequences

 

[Kahunaburger]

Now find me EIGHT. MWahahhahahaha.

There are 7 pocketed/incompetent media outlets right there. Anybody giving 100s to what essentially amounts to subjective art is retarded.

We did find you 8 - the 7 total from metacritic + the x-play one

People gave Witcher 2 full marks because it is a very good game. Honestly, I'm not quite sure why you're whining about it.

 

[AngryBritishAce]

I was watching the Yogcast "Lewis Plays the Witcher 2" vids and I was immediatly turned off by footage of a guard Singing a song about kicking dwarfs and F***ing their mums. Now It was funny to watch, and I know they were trying to show how horrible these people were, but it just seems childish. It's like how I (and Yahtzee) think of gore in Dead Space. It has way too much gore and decapatation, then tries to make it a "serious horror game," despite the fact that it isn't scary at all. The gore takes away the horror and makes it look almost childish in the fact that it just fills a room with red.

It is the same as the Witcher. It tries to be "serious" but goes way over the top with the swearing and sex, it's like 10 year olds finding out about women and swearing. They don't know why men like women, and don't know what swears mean, but they shout them anyway and always talk about sex with little knowledge on the subject, they just know only adults do it so they copy to sound like adults. But I digress (I know, a bit of a long explanation).

Angry Joe compliments it on how adult it is, but it really just immature the way they just keep bringing on the sex and swearing. Now I havn't played Witcher, to be fair, but I have seen enough walkthroughs and let's plays to see what it is like, and I don't like it.

 

[frobisher]

I disagree, something that seem childish for you is bread and butter for literally millions if not billions of people. It gets more popular the lower in social ladder you get. And medieval society had plenty of space on lower part of that ladder. Witcher deals almost exclusively with lower classes, other characters, even rich and powerful, often come from similar background.

And frankly, I am sure you can imagine reaction of such people to your description.

 

[Monstrion]

snipe

I like how just about anything with sex and swearing lights a red "immature" light in some peoples heads.

I dont know man, sex is a part of life, quite enjoyable one. I dont see it why a game portraying it quite well is getting "immature" points from you. Geralt is like that, he likes to explore with his little explorer. Its not uncommon even in our world. And AFAIK, nobody is forcing you to have it.

The same goes with swearing. Unless you move in religious circles, or high society, you are bound to encounter "simple" people. And soldiers(think about who was in the army in the middle ages... aside from knights of course) especially like to curse and sing dirty songs. After all they can die in 50 ways every day.

So, have to disagree with you. Is Geralt throwing fucks like daggers? No. Are you doing different sorceress every five minutes? No. Seems ok to me .

 

[debrox]

may I say master race ?! [http://www.gametrailers.com/users/Koofoo/gamepad/?action=viewblog&id=532843]

Of course you can say master race since the PC is objectively better than any console. In that link under the section "Better Controls," the author should have mentioned that even if you prefer a horrible controller, you can buy one and hook it up to the PC. PC > console once again.

 

[JonnWood]

**** them. There will always be nutters who defend a turd because they are brainwashed by marketing and ideals and it is not the job of sane reasonable people to 'force unwilling people to listen'. If they want to waste their money on inferior entertainment experiences, so be it.

You do realize that you're being just as patronizing as they are, right?

Also, people are more then capable of talking themselves into liking games, regardless of quality or the efforts of marketing.

 

[JonnWood]

may I say master race ?! [http://www.gametrailers.com/users/Koofoo/gamepad/?action=viewblog&id=532843]

Of course you can say master race since the PC is objectively better than any console. In that link under the section "Better Controls," the author should have mentioned that even if you prefer a horrible controller, you can buy one and hook it up to the PC. PC > console once again.

objectively better

Subjectively.

I can buy a console and it lasts for five years or so with decent care. A decent gaming PC is going to run one over a grand, and you're still going to have to upgrade it every few years if you want to keep up. Plus having to deal with bugs and glitches and games not recognizing your graphics card because it's a leap year or a Friday or something. Some people feel it's worth it. Some people don't. It's not "objective".

 

[Deathninja19]

All of this is hilarious it's like people haven't seen a ZP before.

Of course Yahtzee is negative about the game, he's negative about all games that's his style I never take his reviews seriously because he exaggerates for comedic effect and even though I agree with most of his points about certain games it does in no way stop me from enjoying them.

Yahtzee: funny until he picks on you.