The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

Arguably the most exciting game to come out in the last five years. Creative, engaging and excellent replay value. Easily makes my top ten games of all time list.

Pros: + Superb and unusual story + Intricate battle and survival system, good for player who want non simplistic RPG adventure + Can be used to test hardware performance, even the latest one (turn on the uber sampling, if you dare :) ) + On medium to high pc spec of this game, the game can run over 40 fps (60 fps maybe), which is rare for this genre Cons: - Gamepad support is not native, although there's a layout for one (it's funny that the layout using xbox and ps3 gamepads) - Learning curve can be very steep, but it's a challenge for hardcore gamer Last, but not least, I hope there will be Witcher 3 or at least ones with this game's quality (or better :) )

The legendary Witcher known as Geralt is back and now he finds himself in the middle of a war that threatens to tear the lands apart. Someone is assinating the kings on each side for some unknown purpose and Geralt must figure who it is and stop them. With lots of memorable characters, a complex fighting system with two types of swords and an alchemy system that allows you to make potions that have benefits but also cons that you must think about if you need to use a certain type of potion. A must buy for anyone who loved the first game and wants to step into the world of The Witcher once again.

It seems amazing to me that I'd be willing to pay $20 JUST for the game, which needless to say, is fantastic. Hell, I'd be willing to pay $60, but CD PROJEKT INSISTS to take as little of my money for as much as the product as possible. Believe me people, it's all worth it.

By and large the games that have the most time and money invested in them, and have the resulting "AAA" levels of polish and production values, are also those "play it safe". Publishers with deep pockets also seem to be tremendously risk-averse, and as a consequence nearly every triple A title is tried and true concept that breaks no ground (from a design standpoint, though often they are technically groundbreaking), streamlined and distilled to simplification. On the other end of the spectrum, risk-taking, complicated, and ambitious games are very often done on a shoestring budget, or no budget at all. The Witcher 2, after that long-winded lead-up, is a game that does not compromise between the two; it is complicated, deep, ambitious, and does it all with a level of technical and artistic production that puts most AAA console titles to shame. There are some cracks in this improbably successful best-of-both-worlds, namely some clunky controls, and some poorly explained features, but minor quibbles aside this is one of the finest RPG's I've ever played. The best compliment I can pay to this game is that playing through it is very much like reading a great book. The quality of writing in this game is so far above most (if not all) of its contemporaries, that it sets a very high standard for future games in its genre, and made me reevaluate games I'd previously held to be exemplary. But even this does not fully capture it, because against the contemporary grain of games emulating film, this game fully capitalizes on one of the greatest strengths of the medium; granting the player the ability to author an experience rather than to simply witness it. I'm not typically one to hyperbolize, but I could go on and on about this game with unlimited enthusiasm, so I'll just summarize here by saying if you have any interest in RPGs or even simply story-focused games (and a beefy CPU/GPU), it is a near certainty that you will love this game, and you should probably buy it like right away.