The Witcher - Reviews @ Yahoo! Games, LoadedInc

4/5 is the score for The Witcher in a short review at Yahoo! Games. It's hard to take too much out of the article, which is heavily constrained by the word count:

Many games have tried to do this and few have delivered, but The Witcher is one of them. Decisions you make early in the game will come back to haunt you, and not in the transparent light-side/dark-side format that you might have seen in Bioware games. In The Witcher, almost everybody is either corrupt, a crook, immoral, or downright insane, and you'll often have to pick between sides that are all, at best, morally dubious. If you're used to having your hand held through more conventional role-playing games, you're in for a shock.

Meanwhile, LoadedInc's much longer review calls the game a "hidden classic" and awards 9/10:

Wow: (interjection) An exclamation of surprise, wonder, pleasure, or the like. (verb) To gain an enthusiastic response from. (noun) An extraordinary success. Excitement, interest, great pleasure, or the like. All of the above interpretations of the word 'Wow' are applicable to my view of The Witcher from newcomer developers CD Projekt. First of all I am absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of non-advertising that I have seen about this game. I mean sure, you've got your obligatory banner ads on various gaming sites, but for what the game is I was half expecting to see trumpets and red carpet laid out for it!
Secondly, I was left figuratively and literally speechless by the game from the outset. As soon as I had witnessed the lengthy intro in all its glory I knew I was in for a treat. The visuals are the very best that current games have to offer and of course it's all high definition. More on the visuals later. And finally, the realisation set in that I am playing potentially one of the all time classic games…

More information.

Is it me, or have the scores for The Witcher been creeping up lately?

I understand that usually the opposite is true -- the initial reviewers give top scores, and then things settle down to a more realistic level; especially if the game has been hyped up a lot. It would be very nice if the opposite happened to TW.

It is because the initial reviewers didn't take the time to play the game and since they wern't getting paid off to give a good score they gave a bad one. The reviewers that have taken there time and played it (and wern't idiots) got there reviews out later because it took a lot more time.

Certainly seems to support most of the Watch posters statements, many of reviewers not actually playing the game past the first couple of hours and then trying to pass off an poor quality review with a low score.

The game has been underhyped. Why care about some small developer from Eastern Europe while we're having EA and Microsoft games to be reviewed?So some of the reviewers didn't feel like playing the game nobody seemed to be interested in. And Atari didn't do a good job either treating The Witcher almost the same way. At long last,after the feedback from the players, the reviewers started to play the game.

Originally Posted by fantasta
At long last,after the feedback from the players, the reviewers started to play the game.

What a paradox.

Originally Posted by fantasta
The game has been underhyped. Why care about some small developer from Eastern Europe while we're having EA and Microsoft games to be reviewed?So some of the reviewers didn't feel like playing the game nobody seemed to be interested in. And Atari didn't do a good job either treating The Witcher almost the same way. At long last,after the feedback from the players, the reviewers started to play the game.

Indeed. Isn't it great we have reviewers?

Originally Posted by fantasta
The game has been underhyped. Why care about some small developer from Eastern Europe while we're having EA and Microsoft games to be reviewed?So some of the reviewers didn't feel like playing the game nobody seemed to be interested in. And Atari didn't do a good job either treating The Witcher almost the same way. At long last,after the feedback from the players, the reviewers started to play the game.

I care because I want The Witcher to sell a bunch of copies so that there will be a true sequel or at least an expansion pack.

Originally Posted by doctor_kaz
I care because I want The Witcher to sell a bunch of copies so that there will be a true sequel or at least an expansion pack.

So do I. I hope they will sell decent amounts - like a million or two - and won't get spoiled by the success. I'm not a reviewer but I can imagine the pressure from the big guns in the industry.

I would bet money that The Witcher will break 1 Million if you include all the languages. It wouldn't surprise me if it had already done that.