The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt - First Reviews are out

In an age where game reviews come out either on launch day or post launch CD Project Red show just how confident they are that their latest masterpiece is indeed a masterpiece , 7 days ahead of the launch it seems the embargo on The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt is up , and so are the reviews.
Is their confidence justified ? ...



My computer is ready , I'm ready .... just have to wait another 7 days.

I dont trust game journalists anymore in their reviews. too much money and favors being passed between developers and journalists to get any fair judgement.
Look at Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, etc. drop power and corruption on the big wigs and voila, you got amazing reviews..but when actual consumers try it out, it is like..sub par at best.

I will however listen to youtubers who actually played the game. Their paycheck comes from being open and honest with the consumers directly.



I also watched the totalbiscuit podcast where Dodger was talking about her experiences also...and long story short, Jessie and Dodger both loved the hell out of the game.
So, gonna go with this being a winner overall if you enjoyed Witcher 2 game mechanics with a wide open feel similar to...dare I say it...skyr...sk...no, I can't say it. too many things are compared to that, but unless it has full mod support early on, it simply wont be.
So, a better comparison then would be a vast and more open Dragon Age Inquisition..but seemingly with more compelling activities.

I am looking forward to it unlocking. I am currently working my way though the series now and should be finishing up 2 right as it is about to unlock.

Can't run it.
I'm waiting to see what kind of rig I'll need for Fallout 4 before I upgrade anything.

Saturn is right about EA being the forceful pimp to the video game reviewer whores. Both ME and Dragon Age suffered due to their "they'll buy crap...if not, FIFA and Madden suckers will make up the loss" attitude.

CD Projeckt has been taking their time with Witcher 3 and held it back to tweek it. One day I'll play it...one day.
Does anyone know if the Polish books it's based on have been translated into English? The storyline is great for the games.

a reply to: the owlbear

Does anyone know if the Polish books it's based on have been translated into English? The storyline is great for the games.

They have and are currently available on Amazon , just search The Witcher.

I don't even care what reviews The Witcher 3 gets. I'm going to play the absolute CRAP out of it.

I won a competition a couple of weeks ago, and got a whole new rig out of it -
i7-5960x (that's an octo-core Intel Extreme Processor), 32gb of DDR4 @ 2400mhz and an MSI Gaming 9 ACK x99 motherboard.

This thing is killer.

...now i just need a new video card (I'm hoping to buy a 390x at tax time (that's July here in Australia), if they live up to the hype) and I'm set.

BRING IT ON!!!!

a reply to: gortex

Thanks!

My girlfriend has never heard of it before and she doesn't play video games. Thought she might really dig it.

I was just watching those vids online about the reviews of this game. Even some of the people and more hardcore sites which got the game early have given the game almost perfect scores. I am so stoked for this game, its going to eat many hours away from my life.

So far only the biggest sites have put out reviews, but Kotaku and metacritic have little to no bad things to say about this game, as the review in Kotaku says, "come for the epic showdown between good and evil, stay for the unicorn sex" So it seems the rumors were true they have finally implemented sex scenes and getting jiggy with yennefer while riding a unicorn. That's so awesome.

But really ever since playing the witcher 2 some years ago, I always wanted something like this in part 3. The whole sex scenes aside. The only real let down in the witcher 2 was its linear storyline, and linear world and its briefness the game was pretty short. And now that's its open world, even if half the quests are fetch quests, that still leaves the other half of the game at least 100 hours of fun times and interesting content with plenty of things to find and do.

I read somewhere that the whole world map ie the main areas in Witcher 3 is 72 square kilometers, in comparison GTA V is 82 square kilometers and its a pretty huge game biggest to date I think, even though the GTA series has not been my thing. But Skyrim world was 39 square kilometers and even in skyrim, that for me was more then enough by the end of the game I was just to tired to go back and forth through the world looking for things and there was always something to find and something to do in Skyrim or something you missed in the world months after the game came out.

So ya! A few more days, and I for one am really looking forward to this game.

Another video I just seen. 7 things to do in the witcher 3, it gives a bit of info into the witcher gameplay mechanics and world. I always liked exploring games especially in RPG's, and in this game definitely the underwater exploring and sea sailing exploring is a must for me, the game world just looks so pretty to not do so. Its hard not to go to places you see in the distance just to see whats there. And the other one is what the guys in the vid were doing, drive by horse fighting, which is a thing that was missing in other such games, just ride by enemies or baddies and swipe at them with your sword or ride them down. Hopefully maybe they will have a lance in the game as well, then you can go full medieval on people or baddies just jousting with your lance full charge with your horse at them.

In the past game they had a bunch of mini games like the card game, or arm wrestling mini game even barekunckle fighting mini game. Hopefully maybe they will have the whole medieval tournament type games in there as well, it would definitely be a big bonus as far as minigames are concerned. I doubt it but it would be something they should implement in there, its got the whole story setting for it. Or at least if I was making this game it would be something I would put in as a sidequest/minigame. But the game does look pretty and like it has lots of sandbox things you can do in the world.

Two more teaser trailers for this game, they are putting a lot of things out there early it seems, but still have to wait a week till release date on this game. A bit of a background story on the stories and myths in the game in the first vid in a short animation, and on the wild hunt itself, and the second vid is just a pure teaser but its still cool.

Just shut up and take my money.

All 16 DLC"s are being given out for free.

Shut up and take my money.

200+ hours of game play, before DLC:

Shut up, and take my money.

And if that wasn't clear enough:



~Tenth

Gamespot gave this a 10/10. Since 1996, they've only given a perfect score to 8 other games. That's really something.

I tend to hold off until my favorite youtubers (Angry Joe, Total Biscut, etc....) do their reviews for games, but when big name reviewers give a game a perfect/near perfect score across the board, I'll feel pretty confident that it really is an amazing game.

Also, as tothe10th already mentioned...... free DLC in this day and age? Shut up and take my money!

The full trailer of that teaser I posted last night, dont know why they put up a teaser trailer for a teaser trailer, but you know, whatever. Its CGi so not entirely representative of the ingame graphic engine, but everybody who has played the game said not to give the videos on youtube the final say as it looks much better in person then the videos can show.

Dont know what this trailer is about, the whole world though is heavy reliant on European mythology or slavic mythology and with the whole medieval type settings it fits for this game pretty well. You have Geralt fighting all manner of baddies in the game and in the first game you have the same sort of CG intro as well, which was part of the story from the books.

The game has some of the most non linear good and bad system out there, you never know who is bad or who is good, in fact most everybody and everything you meet out there, and like in the second game, is a mix of the in-between each with there own story in the world and reasons for doing what there doing. The games have never been about good or evil, nor was it about moral choices, it was more about choices you make turn out to be some bizarre set of events which did not turn out, or were like, you though they were.

I played for an hour last night. Had at least one crash during one of the opening dialogue scenes in the tutorial castle, just like I was getting in Dragon Age before lowering the post processing setting. The game seems to have adjusted for this however, as i noticed the quality was lowered slightly. I am playing with a GTX 780, so I don't like it when the game just can't handle being run at high settings and implodes like that. It kind of nullifies having a fast system in the first place.

Technical difficulties aside, the game itself isn't as impressive as I was hoping. I have a tendency to try and gather anything and everything around me when exploring, and I feel like I'm missing a lot of things when exploring in Witcher. I think this may be because Dragon Age has spoiled me with it's area search function which easily highlights things you can gather. In Witcher, it's more difficult to spot things you can loot, especially corpses that have been obscured by tall grass. The highlighting you see is kind of a reddish-orange glitter that is hard to see from a distance, especially if the sun is rising.

Graphics wise, the game is kind of a mix of pretty and ugly. The distance scenery is gorgeous, and I can't wait to go exploring into the mountains (assuming I can actually get there). Up close, things aren't as nice. When you're in the muddy, gritty villages it feels like you're trapped a bit. It's hard to describe, like you're a very small fish in a very large pond and going inside a tavern or village is like hiding under a rock. It just feels like I need to keep moving to see everything the game has to offer, and being bogged down in small villages or tedious side quests is going to be irksome. I have also heard monster models aren't as detailed as promised in previous gameplay showcases, although this may be hearsay as I have yet to encounter many.

I'm still not sure what to think of it all or how the developers intended for us to explore the Witcher world. I think I need to go finish Dragon Age first and then focus my attention on Witcher.

Only Played a couple of hours so far but already lovin the game , it's the Witcher but smarter , prettier and bigger.
I've had no crashes so far but if it happens it happens , I'm sure there will be more patches in the near future but although I've encountered a couple of small bugs I think that's to be expected from such a large RPG.

I like the option to import Witcher 2 saves , luckily I saved my saves.

My copy arrived on time for once, only an hour or so into it right now, but I can already tell I'm gonna love this game. the scenery is beautiful, bloody gorgeous in parts! I'm liking the combat, feels good in this one.

I see myself being obsessed with this till Arkham Knight drops through the letter box.

originally posted by: gortex
Only Played a couple of hours so far but already lovin the game , it's the Witcher but smarter , prettier and bigger.
I've had no crashes so far but if it happens it happens , I'm sure there will be more patches in the near future but although I've encountered a couple of small bugs I think that's to be expected from such a large RPG.

I like the option to import Witcher 2 saves , luckily I saved my saves.

I have to agree, great, great so far.

I don't expect anything else though.

~Tenth

a reply to: Septimus

I played for an hour last night. Had at least one crash during one of the opening dialogue scenes in the tutorial castle, just like I was getting in Dragon Age before lowering the post processing setting. The game seems to have adjusted for this however, as i noticed the quality was lowered slightly. I am playing with a GTX 780, so I don't like it when the game just can't handle being run at high settings and implodes like that. It kind of nullifies having a fast system in the first place.

Im about 3 to 5 hours in now. Pretty much just running around the wilderness trying to level up before fighting the griffin. Everything's on ultra settings and it looks great. One thing that bugs me is try to loot stuff. If I just run an inch over the item, I have to maneuver a bit just to get it, even though it's literally right under my feet.

As for crashing.... the steam forums have been filling up with freezes. 970's, 980's, and pretty powerful rigs all seem to have some types of problems it looks like. Some of the guys over there are saying it's related to setting the max fps at 30 or 60, or there's something buggy with the foliage visibility. Others are saying it's the day 1 Nvidia driver updates.

Oh wow, DAM. I got the game a day ago for my PS4 and have not touched it yet. Mostly because I restarted reading the books, and really got into the story, there is a lot on the backstory in there, and the books are just plain entertaining and interesting. I told myself months ago I was going to read the books before the game comes out, but I never got around to it, up till a couple of days ago.

That and had other things on my mind, headaches literally for the past months or so and work. But now? Will start it up for the first time sometime tonight and from all I heard it will take many hours just to get leveled up to take even the beginning quests up, I plan on finishing the last few books while I play the beginnings of this game, before I really put any hardcore time into it and the mainstoryline. But with hundreds of hours of content, its bound to keep anybody who plays it busy, so there really is no rush to blow through the game as I dont really have the time anyways.

ATS always seems to read my mind, lol. Was thinking about buying this for the PS4 but I'm not familiar with this game at all. I'm not a huge gamer and currently play BF Hardline and Destiny. I was debating about this and the latest Far Cry game. It sounds like this game as a lot of open play which I like. Almost sounds like Assassins Creed, which I've only played a handful of times. I'm going to watch the vids now.

a reply to: buni11687

Some of the guys over there are saying it's related to setting the max fps at 30 or 60,

There may be something to that , the game automatically set max frame rate to 60 on my system on the first play yesterday and although my fps was between 30 something to 40 something the game was smooth enough and stable , I changed the setting last night to max fps 30 and got my first crash.

I'm at level 3 now so am off to slay the griffin tonight.