After several weeks and hours, I have finally beaten Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings for the PC, and it is one of the finest RPGs I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing – though it has a few faults here and there. The overall adventure is a blast, with an incredible fighting system that requires actual skill and balance, as well as a bounty of fun quests, side quests and fully-voiced characters. And not enough can be said about the gorgeous graphics.

The grim and the grimmer

Witcher 2 is the continuing adventures of Geralt of Rivia, monster slayer-for-hire. I never played Witcher 1, so I assume part of the story picks up from there, it’s never made particularly clear. Witcher 2 is a mix of the overall saga and a storyline just for this game, with a lot left over for Witcher 3 to pick up. I can’t wait.

A mysterious assassin is killing kings and Geralt has been framed. He and his companions must travel across the land to clear his name and get to the bottom of an even larger conspiracy that has plunged the world into war. Those kings who are still alive want more power, while those nations who have lost their heads of state have to find a way to maintain. Meanwhile, in each city he visits, Geralt can pick up monster-slaying jobs, help out the local townsfolk and get into fight clubs or arm-wrestling tournaments. So there’s plenty of fun things to do as the story moves along.

And it’s a fun story, though confusing at times. The game does not hold your hand and expects you to use their Journal system to read up on the different countries, kings and characters. You’re thrown right into a lengthy prologue and introduced to a myriad of characters right off the bat, all of whom remain important throughout the game. Even the naked chick. Then Witcher 2 is broken into three acts and an epilogue, and each act gets its own city and surrounding area for you to explore. And it’s simply beautiful to explore! The luscious forests and squalid towns create a rich atmosphere of medieval monster-killing and bottom-dwelling!

Pretty Forest

And the best part is that at the end of Act 1, you have to pick a side and stick with that side through the rest of the game. Which means once you beat the game, you can start a new game and have actual new content waiting for you by picking the other side! I know I can’t wait to start my next play through.

There are a lot of big decisions in this game, from that major game-altering decision to more nuanced choices that effect the story. Some of these choices pay off by the end of the game, and some, I assume, will pay off in Witcher 3.  Several times you’re given the option of letting someone live or die, but both options have their pros and cons. One big distinction between this game and other RPGs is that the choices in this game aren’t necessarily good vs. evil, nice guy vs. jerk. Geralt and everyone around him seem to live in a perpetual shade of gray. I only wish some of these decisions had a more immediate impact. I let one guy live in the prologue, and then he shows up in Act 3 for a brief, pointless chat. And when everything is gray, the dialogue options aren’t very dramatic.

Especially when Geralt’s voice actor sounds lethargic and only semi-interested in anything he says. Talk about a droning monotone voice. But then it feels like they planned it that way to make Geralt more badass. Oh well. He’s a good protagonist, the strong and willful type. And you can play him as either altruistic or more concerned with getting paid. At least your friends and enemies are fun and exciting. Most of your allies are a delight to hang out with. In the storyline I picked, me and one of my allies became a sort of buddy-cop team kicking ass and taking names.

But you probably want to know more about that naked chick, right? She’s there in the beginning, and there are plenty more like her throughout the rest of the game. This is an adult RPG, with sex, swearing, drinking and epic violence. It’s low down and dirty, and I’m glad for that. It may be silly to giggle at naked chicks in a video game, but it adds an extra level of seriousness that I like. The sleaze and the raunch means anything can happen, and there were some truly disgusting and heart-rending twists. If the game makers are willing to show sex in their game, then they’re also willing to do a whole lot worse.

But they're definitely willing to show sex!

But you don’t care about the sex! You want to know about the gameplay, right? Right? Of course you do. The gameplay is great! It’s a keyboard and mouse control, of which I’m a fan. Sword-swinging is tied to the mouse, and spells get one button to cast. You just have to go into the spell selection screen (which slows down gameplay) to switch spells. It doesn’t ruin the pace of fights at all and is very easy to pull off. However, as much fun as the fighting can be, this is also one of the game’s biggest faults.

Witcher 2 is not your typical hack and slash. Yes, your main form of attack is the sword, but if you don’t add a variety of spells, potions and grenades/traps to the fight, you’re going to lose. You need to throw up a shield spell one second, then a stun spell the next, all while blocking, rolling and waiting for an opening to slice. The enemies will gang up on you to an annoying degree, and you’ve got to juggle them effectively if you hope to win. It can be frustrating at first (especially since the game just throws you straight into massive fights in the prologue), but once you get the hang of it, it can be fun and strategic.

It's on like Donkey Kong

So it’s a fun RPG with a nice story, great characters and a cool combat system, but it’s not without its flaws. Along with the ridiculously difficult (at times) combat, you also don’t get to heal during a fight. No drinking potions with the push of a button. What you have to do is predict when you may get into a fight and go through an elaborate inventory system to drink several potions in advance. But a lot of the time you don’t know when a fight is coming, or the cut scenes eat up  the brief window that the potions last. And sometimes it seems that the potions are critical to surviving a fight.

Spells are difficult at first. There are only five and they all have weird names. For example, your stun spell is called Aard and your shield spell is called Quen. Who know why they need those complicated names, but once you figure them out and memorize their placement on the spell selection screen, it won’t be a problem anymore.

I also had a problem with a slow mouse at times, but I don’t know if that was design or a problem on my end. Not only during the heavy graphics scenes, but also in the simple menus and dialogue options. The mouse was just sluggish, which was annoying. My computer was able to handle the graphics for the most part, but slowed down in the epic army scenes or boss fights. Yet I managed.

The minor gripes do not ruin Witcher 2 by a long shot. It’s a great adventure with a challenging and fun combat system. I can’t say that you’ll fall in love with any of the characters, and the story is pretty thick at times, but you should be able to enjoy it nonetheless.

Now it’s time for my second playthrough! I hear you get to shag a cute elf chick in the other storyline!

This is the name of the game

I’m hoping to do a lot more reviews on this blog, of movies, video games, comics; whatever. Personally, I like reading reviews online because it involves someone of critical skill writing in depth about something I love. So maybe if I start giving my opinion, I can get some conversation going.

Portal 2 was awesome. I definitely need to play Portal 1.

It’s a rare event in any media these days to deal with an original property. Everything is remakes, sequels, reboots, adaptations and whatnot that an original idea rarely gets any traction. But Portal wowed the gaming world when it came out a few years ago as part of the Orange Box, a collection of several games. And it earned a sequel that I finally got around to playing, and I loved it.

Portal, for those of you who don’t know about video games, is a quirky little puzzle game with an incredibly sarcastic and hilarious sense of humor. It’s a basic game that is boosted up several levels thanks to the writing and dialogue. As a writer myself, that sort of thing is the bee’s knees. Anyway, the hook to Portal is the title weapon, the portal gun. With this you can open two holes in space, one orange and one blue, and then step into one and come out the other. Let’s say you have to get across a large chasm in a room. Well you put a blue portal on the wall on your side of the chasm, and an orange portal on the wall on the opposite side of the chasm; then you step through the blue hole and come out the orange hole. Simple, but so much fun!

Portal 2 takes that basic gimmick and gives it a variety of different uses, all in the quest to get from Point A to Point B. Like I said, it’s simple, but that simplicity is fun. Some of the puzzles are real brain-burners, and you feel really smart when you figure them out. I found the puzzles to be tricky, but I never lingered too long before solving them. They were just hard enough to get me thinking, and then rewarding enough to allow me to believe that I’m actually clever. Lucky me!

I beat the single player in a week or so, and it was fun. Like I said, the writing is superb. The story is that you’re a young woman trapped in this ginormous laboratory, and this diabolical/sarcastic AI is putting you through tests because that’s what she’s programmed to do. And she’s not above making snide remarks about your weight while she’s running the tests.

The best part about Portal 2 was the co-op mode. It featured two players with their own portal guns, and required Alyssa and I to work together to solve the puzzles. It was a lot more fun having someone on hand to share the joy of puzzle-solving with. I’m looking forward to some DLC stuff this Summer.

Not a great review, I know…but I’m working on it. I’ll leave you with some fun quotes from the game so you can see just how witty the dialogue can be.

– “Well done. Here are the test results: You are a horrible person. I’m serious, that’s what it says: A horrible person. We weren’t even testing for that.”

– “Most people emerge from suspension terribly undernourished. I want to congratulate you on beating the odds and somehow managing to pack on a few pounds.”

– “Those of you who volunteered to be injected with praying mantis DNA, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. Bad news is we’re postponing those tests indefinitely. Good news is we’ve got a much better test for you: fighting an army of mantis men.”

-“The two of you have formed an excellent partnership, with one of you handling the cerebral challenges and the other ready to ponderously waddle into action should the test suddenly become an eating contest.”