The Witcher III: Wild Hunt

The third in the series and the only one anybody seems to talk about.  But is that because it addresses the flaws of its predecessors and becomes something amazing, or is it just a lame game getting by on empty hype and pretty graphics?

I really wasn't impressed with the first Witcher game; a general sixth-grader-trying-to-sound-tough maturity level and lackluster design overall took me out of it pretty quickly.  The third game in the series at least makes some significant improvements, adding considerable polish to the combat and attempting to give the player more to do with numerous side-quests (that don't all lead to cheap smut, surprisingly), an in-depth crafting system, banter as well as a less grating, though still very sex-heavy and profanity-laced, tone to the dialog on the whole.  It still hits all the same sour notes that turned me off to other modern RPGs like Mass Effect, though - overly simplistic and hand-holdy design despite describing itself as "open-world" and near-constant scenes of dull/inane exposition between characters you get zero context or buildup for beforehand and therefore have no reason to actually care about; not to mention Geralt's constant smug speechifying just to give the illusion this game is taking some kind of moral stance when it really isn't.

The boredom is only compounded by the stock gameplay that consists largely of endless tedious material farming, monotonous combat, buggy collision detection (getting my horse snagged on things was an all-too-common occurrence.  And since the game auto-saves with no opportunity to make manual ones, I was out of luck if that cost me a mission), and overall design that requires no mental engagement whatsoever.  Quests consist almost entirely of autopiloting from one map marker to the next, and there's never any decent puzzles and rarely any problem-solving more involved than "kill scripted monster" or "push button when prompted".  Not to mention it flatly spells out for you what choices will change the narrative later, which immediately ruins any feeling of gravitas; or at least, it would if it ever allowed you to form an organic bond with any of the disposable cardboard-cutouts who milk every drop of pathos they can out of their one throwaway scene each.  Gee, another character I've never met before and will never hear about again (save maybe in one line of dialog long after I've forgotten about this dumb side-story) is subject to trite fantasy racism/sexism/classism/homophobia and I can side with them or their oppressor because CDPR is too cowardly to commit to a message for fear of harming sales; rinse and repeat ad infinitum.  And this is supposed to quality as intelligent storytelling; yeah, right.

Witcher 3 as a whole just feels manipulative and cynical, like the devs are trying to cover for their tedious, sterile game design by manufacturing whatever moments of trite emotional weight they can so they and their trained attack-dog fanboys can easily write off all criticism, related or not, as the words of a homophobic sociopath nazi (or a godless filthy hippie commie socialist lib; it's generic and cowardly enough to let bigots of all stripes project their personal bugaboos into it) and give pen-for-hire gaming rags easy fuel for their glowing reviews and meaningless award shows.  It's all done not because CDPR's devs have any genuine attachment to the content they're creating, but because they want to make back all that money they spent on ad space (the true determinant of any game's Metacritic score) and rack up enough millions of sales to earn their conditional Christmas bonuses.  To say nothing of their games being shamelessly derivative of countless older, better titles they've been selling on GOG for years, and are probably mostly financed from sales of those games too. Witcher 3 is a graphically gorgeous title, but with such shallow, monotonous gameplay, a stock dark fantasy setting, a cast and narrative that put no new spins on any of their already-ancient tropes, nearly all of the characterization and lore relegated to flat exposition in dry articles in an in-game wiki you have to bring the whole game to a dead stop to read, and an active contempt for the intelligence of its audience, it's painfully clear that this is all just a shallow confidence trick to win awards and earn sales, not a fresh gaming experience that needs to be played or anyone's poignant story that needed to be told. 

If you want gameplay that consists of more than watching a boring character run from dot to dot for 150 hours and a narrative where the characterizations and storytelling come from a place of genuine passion and don't just feel like some committee of shysters trying to Pavlov cheap reactions out of you, there's dozens of better games to play.  But to name just one: NieR.  Yoko Taro is also at ease enough with his style and bizarreness that he allows his settings, concepts and characters to speak for themselves and he doesn't have to bring the gameplay to a screeching halt every two minutes to beat you over the head yet again with how DARK and ADULT and MEANINGFUL and IMPORTANT his work is until you start saying so too just to make the abuse stop.

Developer: CD Projekt Red
Publisher: CD Projekt
Released: 2015
Platforms: PC, Playstation 4, XBox One, Switch

The Witcher

Based on a series of books I've never read (and after playing the game and interacting with the gross-ass fandom, I can now confidently say I never want to), the Witcher is purportedly an "adult RPG".  Like so many that apply that label to themselves, it mistakes gratuitous gore, T&A and foul language for "adult content" and as a result becomes far more juvenile than E or T-rated games of similar design.  There are too many examples of this to recount in a short review, but the most prominent one is that a major sidequest involves bedding every named female character in the game so you can get nudie pictures of them as trophies in the main menu.  Yep.  It isn't very fun to play either, being a mostly-railroaded experience with endless sessions of boring follow-the-dot quests and mediocre combat that, while ostensibly based around timed button presses and dodges, is rendered trivial by the fact that you can simply mash the left mouse button and win every battle with ease, doing damage with every press while your character's swing animation resets over and over again.  Yeah, somehow nobody caught that in testing.  I also had to link a video of it because its fanboys fervently insist that said problem doesn't exist and that I'm a retarded faggot (their words) for implying it does; they continue to do so despite being presented with evidence to the contrary, but it makes me feel better at least.

  Witcher also sells itself on having choices that actually matter (and which you don't see the consequences of until several hours after making them to prevent save-scumming), but when my intelligence is being constantly insulted by being served a version of Krondor that's ten times crasser, less than one-eleventh as engaging, plays worse and stars a really lame Gary Stu protagonist, I don't particularly care about what happens in its present, let alone hours later owing to a choice I likely won't even remember making.  Too gruesome and smutty for kids but too shallow and sophomoric for adults, the Witcher might briefly entertain those who think buying anything with blood and boobies and the word "fuck" 11 times per sentence makes them more grown-up and manly than everyone else in the room; however I suspect they'll lose interest immediately once the next sexist meathead power fantasy franchise comes into vogue. Or that part of them dies from a fatal dose of graduating high school, whichever comes first.

Developer: CD Projekt Red
Publisher: Atari, CD Projekt
Released: 2007
Platforms: PC, OS X