Katosepe 最近的评测

Based on Andrzej Sapkowski's character and world, The Witcher is a finely crafted Dark (with a capital D) fantasy adventure that any fan of RPG's should play. Be aware though that this game is very mature and should not be played by kids. Sure there's the sex scenes but more importantly, it deals with mature themes that require a little world experience to fully comprehend and thus, I only recommend this game for adults.

The game features a Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, who travels to the city of Vizima to investigate an attack on The Witcher's home castle. Witchers are a dying race of humans subjected to experiments and magic in order to make them into the perfect monster hunters. Despite being necessary in their monster-infested world, Witchers are treated with disdain by most people and tolerated only by those requiring their services.

Geralt of Rivia has had many adventures already throughout Sapkowski's five novels and numerous short stories featuring the character. Unfortunately for us foreigners, the books were never translated until after this game was released. Because of this, the game utilizes an amensia story that, while never fully realized, is a huge help to those of us who are just now being introduced to the character. There are some references to the stories that are undoubtedly more meaningful to those who've read them but I never felt lost despite having no prior knowledge of the series.

While the combat is fun and requires a unique sense of timing and preperation to master, the storyline is really the biggest draw to this game. Many previous games have attempted to capture the meaningful sense of choice and impact upon the storyline but few are as successful as The Witcher, primarily because it isn't about good versus evil. Some choices will clearly have a moral facet to them but even those aren't clear cut, even if you usually play games a certain way. A decision that you will need to make throughout the game involves the conflict between the Scoia'tel and the humans in charge. It's clear from the beginning that non-humans are consistently abused and oppressed by the human-dominated society and the Scoia'tel want to change this through violence not always targeting their direct aggressors. Most players will sympathise with the non-human's plight but it is hard to get behind the murders they commonly commit. While their tactics may be reprehensible, are you really willing to side with the religious extremists who want to wipe the non-humans out completely?

Choices like this permeate the game and your decisions will always come back to you later. At the time, almost all are about choosing the lesser of two evils. Sometimes, these choices can come back to help you later but most don't ever allow you the satisfaction of knowing you made the right choice. Instead, it's simply about making choices and living with the consequences. In the dark world of The Witcher, these choices make for some memorable experiences.

The gameplay is based on a heavily edited version of the Aurora engine used by BioWare so RPG elements should be readily familiar to most fans. The combat is rather unique though in that success is based on preparation and proper timing. Geralt is equipped with two blades, the silver blade and the steel blade. Silver is for monsters, steel is for humans. Each blade has three fighting stances: strong, fast and group. Fighting enemies means being able to switch, on the fly, to adapt to whatever situation you find yourself in. If you are fighting a group of wraiths, you should use Silver Group, but some situations involve you fighting more ambiguous groups of enemies, such as humans aided by mutant dogs. Figuring out the best option is key but you must always keep your cool. Attacks are done by simply clicking the left mouse button but to keep a combo going, you must click in rhythm with Geralts attacks. Clicking too soon or too late will leave you open to attack.

You also have several magic abilities to assist you but they are not your typical options. More often than not, your magic will be supplementary, requiring strategy to actually help you in any way. For example, you can stick with Igni, your fire spells, to cause some direct damage to your enemies but it may be better to Hex a strong foe and have them fight on your behalf against the rest of the enemies, wiping out the party completely without you needing to get your hands dirty. This strategy plays into the preperation aspect of the game as well. If you play on easy, you won't need to worry about potions and oils but if you plan on playing at a higher level, mastering alchemy and predicting what enemies you will be facing off against is key to your success. Potions will help boost your abilities and oils will help you target specific types of enemies and can make the difference between death and success, even against basic encounters. This focus on strategy may turn off gamers more interested in fast paced hacking and slashing but for those of you looking for a more strategic level in your RPG's, look no further.

The game isn't perfect, however, as glitches often muddy your experience. While I never had the game crash completely on me, graphical glitches were common and sometimes NPC's did some very strange things. At one point, I had a cow that would appear by my side whenever I traveled to a new area or meditated at a camp. Otherwise, it would stay perfectly still. While it was exciting to see my cow companion backing me up in conversations, it didn't do much for the atmosphere. The game can get bogged down by filler quests too. Act II is a problem offender and will likely be where most players quit playing the game. I urge you to power through this section of the game as the rest of the game sets a much higher bar.

For those of us who haven't been introduced to the world of Geralt of Rivia yet, The Witcher is a masterpiece of dark fantasy fiction. While it's not as outwardly gory as, say, Game of Thrones, it deals with many of the same mature themes. If you appreciate a little philosophical soul-searching in your RPG's, The Witcher is one of the best games you'll find.

The Cat Lady is what happens when a great story gets tied up by subpar game design. Fortunately, the story is the most important aspect of the game so don't necessarily turn away just because of that.

In fact, the story is what undoubtedly drives this game home and is what will stick with people long after the credits have rolled. The dark and macabre story of a suicidal woman looking for her reason to keep going is not for everyone but it will resonate with anyone who has been touched, directly or otherwise, by depression. Throughout the seven chapters of the game, you will have to make several choices that don't seem to have a right or wrong answer. I haven't played through the game a second time but on the first playthrough, these choices made me feel as though I was not only making a difference in the storyline but also I felt that I was the character, an impressive feat considering I'm a 24 year old male and not a middle aged woman.

The choices are masterfully crafted so that you don't feel pressured towards any particular answer. Unlike games like The Witcher, however, where this is done to make you feel like you have to choose the lesser of two evils, The Cat Lady makes these choices feel perfectly natural. An early conversation has a psychiatrist asking you questions about your life. At this point, no backstory has been given about Sarah Ashford, the main character, so you have to choose what feels natural to you. If you are like me, you may see no reason to lie and will answer truefully to your real-life self. Perhaps, however, you don't trust this man asking these questions and choose to lie. Either way though, the game has already made you feel at one with the character and it happens so easily that you hardly even notice. There are a few minor slip-ups throughout the storyline but as each person will approach the game from a different perspective, your results may easily vary.

Unfortunately, the writing is easily the best aspect of the game. The voice-over actors do a very nice job at their respective roles but the written dialogue sometimes feels at odds with their performances. The common use of all caps and multiple exclamation marks feels forced, especially when the actor's speech doesn't sound any different from before. There are also several typos and glitches, even though the English dialogue seems to be the default. For one early character in particular, the spoken dialogue repeated frequently despite the text moving normally and later, for every line of written dialogue, she repeated every previous line up to that point from the whole conversation. These were minor but noticeable enough to detract from the experience.

The gameplay itself also mostly felt contrived. Adventure game tropes abound as you have to determine the correct level of minutiae the game expects of you. You will find that often you know what to do but not how to do it. I spent several minutes trying to figure out how to make coffee at one point. The game wouldn't let you make coffee directly from the kettle, despite there being an option to do so, because it needed to be filled with water. Despite having two sinks nearby, I couldn't seem to get water from them. Little did I know that I needed to fill it with water directly from the kettle. Other times, you will have to open a door before entering it (as though someone may want to try entering a closed door) or lift the toilet lid before using it. Inconsistency strikes though during item mixing, something thankfully rare in The Cat Lady. At one point, when you have two items that need to be combined, you can simply combine them from a menu item once you're holding both. At another point, you have to use one item on another but you can't do so from the inventory. Instead, you will need to put the first item up somewhere before using the second item as though you were using it on the environment. Finally, one point in the game requires you to find a specific phone number and despite having seen the phone number multiple times throughout the chapter, you have to find it in one specific area, ignoring the giant signs plastered around. These may seem like small gripes but they are constant and feel needlessly specific, preventing you from doing what you already know needs to be done.

The Cat Lady uses a unique control scheme that uses only the arrow keys and the enter button to perform every task the game requires. I have to give them credit for making the game work this way as it is very simple if you learn to use it right. However, during my 8ish hours with the game, I could never get it to feel perfectly natural. The down key will bring you to the inventory while up will interact with the environment. Enter brings up menus on items and makes choices while left and right will move you around. Text is continued by using the arrow keys. Some people, I'm sure, will grow to enjoy the inventory system but it never quite felt natural for me. The real problem though, with this is the fact that arrow keys skip text. Frequently, pauses occur between lines of text. When checking if I need to be moving, I found that I would accidentally skip text when it suddenly appeared. Fortunately, this only happens for observations and not spoken dialogue (which can't be skipped) but it was still a major nuisance.

Finally, the graphics felt limited and stiff to me. The character animations was like watching puppets move and while the art was fantastic, the movements just felt wrong. The game's use of color is great, mostly sticking with black and white unless emphasizing something with color, but sometimes I couldn't tell what something was entirely supposed to look like. For example, I could never get a grasp of what the main character was supposed to really look like on a detailed level throughout the entirety of the game. Sometimes, I'd be convinced she was supposed to look quite a bit older but other times, I doubted that this was the case. I simply couldn't tell from the graphics alone.

That may sound like a lot of gripes about a game I'm giving a positive review towards but I can't stress enough that the reason to play this game is for the story, and it is presented masterfully. I'm almost loathe to play the game a second time because I don't want to discover that I didn't have as much free will as I initially thought but the first time through, it felt like the story was entirely moved by my decisions. I felt I had the freedom to do almost anything, make any choice that I wanted. This is a rare feat in any game but especially in an adventure game, a genre almost always steeped in linear progression. The story is poignant throughout the 8-9 hours it'll take the average player to complete and will be especially meaningful to anyone who has dealt with depression in their lives.