Zero Punctuation: The Witcher

[SilentScope001]

ZP always was shallow. Always meant to be. You watch it for the lulz factor. Seeing people come in to try to feebly defend their game is just silly.

I am getting tired of Yazthee reviewing RPGs, but that's because he did so a lot. Why not attack RTSes instead?

Anyway, the goal of a game is to have fun. No fun=no good. I can't play through 3 whole hours to...reach the 'good part'. Why not just let me skip to the 'good part' and let it be over with?! And, uh, Yazthee...you know, had no real incentive to actually 'continue'. Why continue to go and 'grind' when you already got 3 hot females in your bed? To Yazthee, that's victory.

 

[m_jim]

Is anyone else wondering what the critical mass is going to be on Zero Punctuation before the whole thing collapses on itself and everyone finds the new flavor of the month? I thought this phenomenon had capped at about 180 comments, but with the review of Mario and Crysis, the boards have been getting even crazier, although half the comments are bitching and moaning about how unfunny/terribly misrepresentative the "review" was.

 

[Estelindis]

I'm not trying to "defend my game". I've seen Yahtzee make fun of games I like before. But this was the first time I didn't find it funny. His criticisms just didn't hit home. I mean, I like The Witcher, but it's not perfect. There were flaws in the game that he could have zeroed in on and made very funny remarks on - but everything he had trouble with wasn't a problem for me in the slightest. I'm genuinely mystified by this review.

 

[bfb8688]

The music selection is always appropriate for the video game under review. Just another enjoyable nugget of Zero Punctuation.

 

[DayDark]

hahaha, Nice! I want to here his thoughts on the fox news debate about mass effect xD

 

[LarsWestergren]

Hm, least funny ZP yet. How can you claim the controls are too complex, and then 30 seconds later slam the combat for being too simplistic? Did you play on easy mode? Journal, dictionary and bestiary screens hideously complex? Not any more complex than a web page or any GUI with multiple virtual screens or tabs. Besides, you don't HAVE to read them... Alchemy difficult, elitist, and confusing? You just click on a recipe, then "brew" and its done! Unless the recipe is greyed out, in which case you don't have the necessary ingredients.

I agree with Estalindis. I usually like ZP because despite the informal and joking style, he tends to be more insightful than 99% of "ordinary" reviewers, and really put his finger on the most important aspects of the game instead of spending 75% of the text on graphics like other reviewers. But here it seems he totally missed all the really strong and weak points of the game. It IS something a bit different in a world of me-toos, it focuses more on plot, atmosphere and characters than most; and it has (some) moral complexity in a medium of cartoonish black and white. As others have said, perhaps he should stay away from reviewing games from a genre he doesn't like.

Incidentally, this marks the second time the Escapist publishes a negative review of the Witcher written by someone who has only played a fraction of the game.

 

[hotcod]

While this did have me laughing my ass off i can't help but feel his some what missed the point.

First of all we have, as has been pointed out, his ranting about games given him no middle ground and when a game with truly 'real' options all with shady moral questions comes along it gets ignored. This can be sort of passed off beacuse his not really played far enough in to the game, the biggest failing of the game is the first chapter simply is not as good as the rest of the game by a long shot. Which is why almost all 'previews' of the game that don't get past the first chapter are negative and most full reviews praise the game so highly.

The game has a wonderful sense of a being part of a "real" world in which your actions have effects. You make a choice and the out come of that choice may not be made apparent until later on in a way that makes you feel like your actions have set off events in the world around you that you might not find out about until they come back to, say, bite you in the ass. There is no other game that dose this nearly as well and it leads to the feeling that your choices really are giving your a different game, unlike say KotR where you could tell if you took the 'good' choice what was going to happen if you took the 'bad' one since you know it will keep you on rails and the choices are very straight froward. While it IS the same with the witcher to a lesser extent you don't 'feel' limited and so you don't think about what the other choice would have meant which leads to a much more involving game.

Next is the whole sexism crap that seems to get spouted. There is a leaning towards it with the idea of the collectable cards but it is no where near as black and white as this, or the other "review" of the witcher on the escapist would have your believe. First of all lets just get something straight, Geralt is a completely sterile disease free man. Think about what that means in the setting you find your self in... it means his is likely to be the only person that a typical women will ever meet with whom she can have safe sex. Isn't it a bit one sided to say that its all about geralt going after the women when he offers the women he sleeps with danger free sex. Given the high level of deisease with the plague around "safe" sex would be a very very attractive quality. So it could easily be just as much the women taking advantage of him as he is of them. If you really want to question it you might as well question the idea of one night stands... but you can't really call one night stands sexist and nor can you if you look in to the context say the simple fact he sleeps with women makes the game sexist. In fact the game and the world is full of very strong and powerful female figures and not even in the typical fantasy way you would expect. Take sharni one of the strongest women in the game by far but one with no "power". She is an almost unique figure in gaming and one that could never be made if the game was truly sexist.

Again this may not be something that gets made clear in the game in the first chapter but even then you don't have to sleep with all the women if you don't want to. At that point there are only 2 plot line driven encounters... one with the women your told you used to love, and one with a women who is likely using it as a way to manipulate you in to helping her. Neither of these are 'falling over' to sleep with you in anything but an interesting plot driven way.

What its really sad to see if the number of people here who have said they where going to buy the game and now are not. The witcher is one of the best games of last year, easily in my top 5 even arguably in the top 3... if you like rpgs you owe it to your selfs to at lest try the demo and to read up on some real reviews, and by that i don't just mean the previews but just the fact that you should all by now know that yatze hates RPGs and his reviews are free to reflect that.

Over all i think yatze skips over some of the true problems of the game, of which there are many but all forgiveable in the long run to over inflate tiny problems that really aren't that much of a deal. Funny as it is its not very useful for any one thinking about buying the game. I really do think if yatze went back to the game and tried to get a little of the way in to chapter 2 even he'd have to admit the game is a lot better than his giving it credit for so far.

 

[miraitan]

Great job again yahtzee. Suprised you aren't lining up an E3 stand-up debut. I'm always in fits of laughter on these reviews.

Will check back next week. Looking forward to it!

 

[devilondemand]

I enjoyed thoroughly, as always

 

[Axulciex]

I knew he wouldn't like it
But the controls and interface aren't that hard to grasp, you don't need to look at the manual.
He should have played though the whole game, but he put first impressions and not review as the title, that makes it ok I guess.
Still enjoyed it, few more laughs than the last.

 

[Um...TE]

Several aren't real flaws though.

This isn't the place to debate minutiae of the game, but don't assume that I don't know what a Drowner repellent talisman is (really, that statement just told me you haven't seen the swamp in Act V...go ahead and wear that talisman and try to enter the Druid's Cave with a dozen of those peckers running around you, pulling you in and out of combat) or that I didn't play all the side quests. Just because you disagree with my opinions does not mean that you are more knowledgeable about the game.

Oh, about that other "review" of the game. I agree, it was abysmal.

 

[St1ckman]

Puffa fish. hahahaha

 

[uuaschbaer]

At the end he sounded like that woman from Absolutely Fabulous when she's fighting with her daughter.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

The game dose have story but the gameplay is....sad and the menus cumbersome its a bastard child of biowares CRPGS, I would rather pause and plan out my actions the hack and slash nature of it could have been great if they went with a control scheme more like Revenants...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenant_(game)

bad gameplay design makes bad games.....

 

[TheDarkArchon]

Hell,even fallout had the dull-as-dishwater "kill the Radscorpions" village before you got rolling.

You do realise you could complete that quest by causing a cave in, right?

 

[SilentScope001]

Btw...

I finally found a LEGIT Article that criticizes The Witcher. It also talks about the story too, so maybe you might find it interesting.

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/the-witcher/pc/game-reviews/review/3106/1830/

It's hard to care about the story or any of the characters. Even though the game graphics generate some pretty good looking characters, they all lack facial expressions, and most don't even use hand gestures. With that said, characters rattle off lines while staring blankly into space, like statues with moving mouths. This game even has the silly role-playing convention where players can walk into any house and poke through the cupboards, cabinets and chests to take anything they please without repercussions. Then toss in the side story about non-human races like Dwarves and Elves forming guerilla squads against humans, and the narrative becomes almost impossible to take seriously, especially since the humans nicknamed these groups "squirrels."

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Btw...

I finally found a LEGIT Article that criticizes The Witcher. It also talks about the story too, so maybe you might find it interesting.

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/the-witcher/pc/game-reviews/review/3106/1830/

It's hard to care about the story or any of the characters. Even though the game graphics generate some pretty good looking characters, they all lack facial expressions, and most don't even use hand gestures. With that said, characters rattle off lines while staring blankly into space, like statues with moving mouths. This game even has the silly role-playing convention where players can walk into any house and poke through the cupboards, cabinets and chests to take anything they please without repercussions. Then toss in the side story about non-human races like Dwarves and Elves forming guerilla squads against humans, and the narrative becomes almost impossible to take seriously, especially since the humans nicknamed these groups "squirrels."

And kotor and other Crpgs have them?
Bollocks....... the witcher has a interesting world a nice plot and ok charatcers the story/dialog got thrown through the dishwasher one to many times...the game play seems unfinished as dose the menu system.

All in all its the Crpg version of bioshock high theme/art low gameplay/ game design.

 

[ThePine]

This must be one of my fav ZP reviews. I myself have never played The Witcher, and now don't plan to. Also, "Painkiller" was funny.

 

[TheMasterChef]

Next wednesday should be Rock Band.

 

[Sylocat]

I haven't played The Witcher, and I might give it a try even despite Yahtzee's objections because I've heard that once you get past the confusing interface it actually grants you some REAL moral choices, rather than just presenting you with saint-or-Skeletor either-or options over and over again. But in spite of that, this review touched on a couple of things that I've been griping about for years:

1. Entertainment that pretends to me "mature" just because it has a lot of swearing and PG-13 sexual situations. Look at the late-night fratboy cartoons (criticizing Family Guy on the internet, even on a board that prides itself on having some semblance of intelligence, is a one-way ticket to flameville, but I hate it, so fuck you, I'll criticize it) that call themselves "for mature audiences" just because they have a lot of ugly characters with grating voices yammering about bodily functions. Why do things get rated "mature" by having some of the most immature material imaginable?

2. PC users' superiority complex. I've tried to stay out of the flame wars on here between the consoletards and the PC Master Race, but boy did I ever laugh when Yahtzee went on the tirade about "typically designed to be as complex and unintuitive as possible so that those dirty console-playing peasants don't ruin it for the glorious PC-gaming master race." (note that I am a PC gamer as well as a console gamer, so this isn't a "nyah nyah u PC snobs suck" so much as it's a "don't take our preferences so fucking seriously all the damn time")

3. And, indirectly, the lot of you who start yammering about how Yahtzee "isn't a real reviewer" and "isn't funny anymore" whenever he bashes a game you don't want him to bash.