The Witcher 2 - Roundup #6
 

Zohaib sent in this list of early Witcher 2 reviews at VG247 a couple of days back. Hit up the link for the full set but I'm going to break out the one from NowGamer, because it has the lowest score at 8.4/10, although they don't really expand on any negatives:
PC Gamer has a review with a score of 89%. Here's the intro:
Shacknews says a patch will be released next week that adds keyboard mapping and mouse inversion - I know some readers will appreciate that.
Witcher2Game explores the combat in their Day 2 examination.
The Witcher Vault has the full soundtrack, including bonus tracks, for you to listen to.
More information.

Yes well I don't think we will be seeing anymore of those "lengthier epics of Bioware". They're a thing of the past.

20 to 30 hours!?!? Oh wait, free DLC coming, this could still work out nicely.

Even if it's only 20 to 30 hours per play-through, it's great value for money. I don't understand critics judging length being all that important, my wife doesn't.

That soundtrack is very good. It's the only spoiler I'm allowing myself until my copy arrives. Which will not be today. :(

I don't trust most of these reviews because they either don't play the game all of the way through, rush through the main story, or don't even care about the games they are reviewing so I would take some of this with a grain of salt. Like in the first review saying that this game is less open-ended then the first when the devs have said the opposite.

Hang on, does the game have mouse inverting at the moment?

I am debating whether to buy for this weekend or not. No mouse invert would be a deal breaker unfortunately.

You can do it now manually through editing an ini file. It's not hard to do. The ability to do it in configuration has been said to be coming in a patch next week.

Yeah, the lack of mouse-inversion almost killed the game for me. You have to locate the right ini file and set a certain value to negative. MouseaxisY, I think. Say it's currently set 2, change that to -2 and it will invert the mouse. It's a config file that will be in a Witcher 2 folder in your Documents folder.

I seriously doubt that's even close to being an accurate estimate of TW2's length. Maybe if he was playing on Easy, and skipped all the sidequests. Otherwise, He's full of shit.

I am usually a slow player. I needed 105 hour for DA:O, last game I finished… I actually hope this one is shorter, with my limited playtime I prefer somewhat tighter designs these days… 30-40 hours would be great.

Am I the only one playing the game with an Xbox 360 controller? I haven't played more than an hour yet, so I don't know if that'll get me in trouble, but I like it so far. But I go more for story and immersion than for combat, anyway.

He's full of shit. I'm at least 10 hours in the Chapter 1 and still have some sidequests unfinished. And to skip sidequests and concentrate only on the main quest? Not in this lifetime!
Based on my tempo I'll need at least 20 hours only for chapter 1, and I somehow don't think that this game has only two chapters.

I am nearly at 10 hours and i'm still on chapter 1. Reasons:

- The graphics are gorgeous at 1920x1080 ultra settings (no uber-spampling). Sometimes i find myself just looking around losing time apreciating the scenery, looking at what people are doing, exploring most corners.

- The journal is full of lore and writen from a storyteller POV, i find myself going a lot of times there and just read it.

- The crafting system, if you like it, its a time-sink for decisions :)

- I don't play on easy combat. I alternate between hard and normal.

- I do all sidequests and i normaly only go towards the "main quest" after i'm nearly done with everything else.


There is no way i'll get less than 70-80 hours out of this game if i continue like this, and i'm glad for it :) its awesome.

The estimate might be correct, as 29,5 hours is still within "20-30". I think I'm at about 15 hours, and it certainly doesn't seem about to end, but that doesn't mean I have more than 15 hours left - hard to predict how much is going to happen in a game in a whooping 15 hours.

I must be around 15-20 hours, and still in chapter 1.

I took a lot of time to explore and get immersed in the environments etc

Note that I'm usually not a slow player, Dragon Age: Origins I must have finished in around 20-30 max at most (more like 22 hours).

They made a game with lots of charm.

20 ~30 hours of almost relentlessly superb moments… Can mean that the 20~40 other hours are not almost relentlessly superb moments.

Whatever, the review does not take the angle of RPG but rather adventure game as the RP potential of the game is barely assessed.

Implications :

- not everyone has such a system
- everyone who doesn't have such a system will play less time because there's fewer things just to look at ???

Or maybe he just wanted to express how beautifull and immersive the game is… Besides a bit of gloating is not all bad. I remember that feeling when you have a brand new pc and can run some game at full details. :) Heh I'm happy if witcher runs on medium settings. My pc is getting old :)

Please don't try to create flame posts, not everyone is on the forums to try and fight everyone. You are much more sympathetic on the larian forums :)

I also play on my laptop on low and the graphics are still awesome. Probably at ultra have an extra "WOW" effect, but honestly there's not a gigantic diference overall. It's the ARTISTIC graphic quality, not the quantity of volumetric smoke or shadows that make the graphics in a game "gorgeous" or just "bland".

;) no flames please.

I can be very ironic and bitter at times.

It's usually when I have the feeling that someone wants to try to put himself/herself over/on top of others.