Excellent
So that's it, one of the best games I have ever played, plus both of its expansions, completed. After nearly 131 hours played, it is difficult to condense my feelings and experiences of that play time into a short thoughts piece, but I will try. As with almost anything that is simply a pastime, it always comes back to enjoyment, and I can honestly say that throughout my time with the Witcher 3, I didn't once get bored, burned out or otherwise annoyed with it. The games flows beautifully, there were no horrendous spikes in difficulty, enemies and situations slowly ramped up in a perfect difficulty curve, never leaving you in a position where you could mindlessly hammer through it bored to tears, but also not having you smashing your head against a brick wall time and time again. Every challenge in the game could be overcome with some thinking, some skill and most importantly, some preparation. This comes in the form of brewing Witcher potions to drink and oils to coat your sword with, depending on your foe, having the right potions available can turn the tide in a tricky fight, which made the effort and time of brewing these so rewarding. Come up against a bad-ass Vampire, things get a lot easier if you have some Vampire Oil on hand to cover your blade and a "black blood" potion to down. With these in place, your sword becomes poison to the beast and your very lifeblood is toxic to the Vampire, hurting it whenever it feeds on you or otherwise hurts you. Without these things the fight is still do-able, but this preparation side of the game makes you feel like the professional monster hunter you're supposed to be, one that doesn't take chances, who get's the job done and it is great. The world you explore is both lovely and dangerous, the quests you go on, whether they are scavenger hunts to find special equipment, side missions or the excellent story driven objectives are all marvellous, I think it is a testament to the game that side quests in particular didn't become a chore like they do in so many other games, and the characters are believable. In a game as long as this, the main characters need to be interesting, and here they nail it. Like a good book you care about what happens to them, and their relationship with you, something that can only be accomplished with excellent writing, voice acting and in game direction. Honestly, I could probably talk for a long long time about this game and how much I enjoyed it, but I have to give special mention to two very important decisions they made which probably made it as enjoyable as it was for me. The first is that when you brew a potion or oil... that is it, you never need to do it again. As long as you have some alcohol in your inventory your stocks of Witcher oils and potions never run dry. This respects your time as a gamer and you won't spend your finite free time constantly searching the hills for plants and herbs to restock your potion supplies, and I love the game for that. The second mechanic I mentioned is that gaining experience points and therefore levelling up is 100% tied to the quests you complete... not the enemies you kill... which is so awesome I had to mention it. This in one stroke removes grinding and put's the focus solely on adventure, not killing and fighting for it's own sake. If you see some enemies lurking in the woods, you aren't driven to seek them out and destroy them to get XP, you can ride past them without penalty, or perhaps you do want to stop because they are near a village you decide you'd want to protect.. for no reward... but because you're on an adventure, your adventure and it is up to you. Rarely does the game get in the way of you being the protagonist in a glorious story, the systems and mechanics at hand link together so well that it let's you just get on with it. Fantastic. I haven't spoke about my feelings on the narrative in main game and the two expansions as I could go on about that for some time, but it is as much to say they are all excellent with satisfying conclusions and I do encourage you to play the game and it's expansions as one big game. One scene in particular, set in a tavern during the story line for the "Heart of Stone" expansion will probably stay with me forever. It is a moment that someone you're dealing with demonstrates just how dangerous they are.. and for me.. it was a real "oh shit" moment as it dawned on me the situation I was in. If you're interested, I'm sure a search of "Witcher 3 Wooden Spoon" would get you the scene, but obviously... spoiler alert. I haven't spoke about the thousand other things Witcher 3 is and I can't, I'm not sure I can articulate it, or at least do it justice in a short retrospective such as this. All I'll say is that genuinely, if you are a fan of the genre or you're looking for an epic adventure to take part in, currently you need look no further than this game. It is a real achievement and for me, a milestone in what games can accomplish. After 131 hours, there is still plenty to do, side quests I haven't found and literally hundreds of unexplored sites to visit on the map. Should I want to, the adventure can continue for a good while yet, but whether or not that happens, I can safely say I have enjoyed my time with Witcher 3, and if you play it yourself, I think you will too. Cheers.
Enjoyable first person shooter, one of the first to do the whole "World War 2 as inspired by Saving Private Ryan" thing, to which Call of Duty followed in it's footsteps. The game really holds up well, graphically it still looks decent and the enemy animations and AI is great to fight against in close quarters gun battles. However... it really suffers from some serious difficulty spikes which turns this into a quick save management game rather than a WW2 shooter. In the later levels where you're put into more open outdoor environments, enemy troops seem to have laser x-ray vision and can see you through the thickest shrubbery and shoot you instantly and accurately. Switching the game to Easy still proved to be an incredible challenge as all it seemed to do was reduce the damage you take, meaning you had a few extra seconds to figure out who was shooting you and do something about it. Combine this with being hugely outnumbered (especially on the final mission) and for me this meant I found myself quick saving every 2 steps and not having a great deal of enjoyment. Therefore I just turned on God Mode and that solved it and I was again able to enjoy myself. Still played as though I could die, finding cover etc... but knowing I wouldn't sniped and killed from an unseen German suddenly made it a lot more appealing way to spend my free time. Good game, enjoyed finishing it but man alive, games used to be more difficult not sure how I used to play this back in the day like I did. I guess my spare time wasn't as precious back then. :)
