[DISCUSSION] Witcher 3 - Reviews

[Sardukhar]

It's really like any other form of information media, you have two choices:

1) Have a trusted and preferred source. I use Eurogamer and RPS, mostly. I like their bias. Kotaku somewhat as well.

2) Really the smarter method than 1, above: akin to Google News, read/skim LOTS of information sources to get multiple viewpoints and contrasts. Form your impression form the repeats of highs and lows you see. Watch for copy/paste data, of course.

In this day and age, no single news/review source should be your go-to and there is no need for that, either. Get a wide sweep of data and sort yourself.

Edit:

On the subject of PC and XBO reviews, keep in mind that CDPR would hold them back most likely because they weren't happy with an issue.

That means there ae issues, which should come as NO surprise to anyone in this day and age, and that CDPR is committed to correcting them.

They are committed to fixing problems. And that's always a good thing.

As for the "not ready for release" argument, I'd say the bulk of reviews indicate that while there may be technical glitches, the game is still quite solid. Just needs an extra inch or so for XBO and PC.

 

[cyberpunkforever]

IGN once gave a bad punctuation to a game for being "too long", so, don't take their reviews too seriously

 

[Moonwalker1982]

Yeah, I understand your concerns.

However, I sometimes have to wonder what a 'fetch quest' actually should be defined as when using the term as a negative. I mean, for me, a game is made to have certain gameplay mechanics, and you're always gonna be using them over and over so in a way everything is a fetch quest.

You want to find Ciri? You'll go places and kill things. You want to craft certain items and need ingredients? You're on a self-given fetch quest to go somewhere and kill things. Want to explore? Want to rescue someone from a tower? You'll be going somewhere and killing things.

In the end, the same base mechanics, including Witcher Sense, are always used and repeated so I think that all that matters is how the 'fetch quests' are dressed up and whether there's any challenge or surprise involved in carrying them out.

In other words, I would say the negative definition of a fetch quest is when a bland npc simply tells you to go get something, with the barest of reasons, and then you simply go directly from point A to collect what's needed and then back again to collect your reward with absolutely nothing interesting, funny or thought provoking happening. No surprise, no funny moments, no decisions, no evolving mini-story, nada.

Let's hope the IGN review didn't mean those.

Spoiler

A good 'fetch-quest' would be like Precious Cargo. You meet a guy, he sends you off but as you 'fetch', you discover and unravel clues about a larger story behind what he first told you. You then confront him, give chase, make a decision and then have a conclusion to your actions.

As long as most have that kind of effort put into them, I'll be very happy. Maybe the IGN guy expected more than something like that example though? I'd say that was unreasonable for a 100 hour plus game+.

Well said. I started to think about this and you are right. I recall several media outlets that said there were several sidequests and each with branching paths and decisions. I hope there are enough of those. But what you say is true, there's a difference between fetch quests. If the quests are similar to what was found in Witcher 2....i can't hate on that.

---------- Updated at 01:42 AM ----------

Wasn't that the review from the editor of Playstation Uk? I wouldn't put any stock in that review at all and the people in the comments said as much too.

He mentioned things irrelevant to the game itself, like CDPR 'attacking/ridiculing' Skyrim, complained the game didn't keep over 30fps (he didn't even bother to find out it's locked at 30?), said that TW3 isn't open-world and shouldn't have claimed so and also seemed to imply that Skyrim was the height of cleverly designed free roam exploration.

I liked Skyrim a lot but I don't see how he can say exploration of the wilds in The Witcher is barren but imply that Skyrim's is full of 'intrigue'.

In other words, I don't think many people will experience the game the way he did

Nah apparently it was Gamesradar.

---------- Updated at 01:44 AM ----------

It's really like any other form of information media, you have two choices:

1) Have a trusted and preferred source. I use Eurogamer and RPS, mostly. I like their bias. Kotaku somewhat as well.

2) Really the smarter method than 1, above: akin to Google News, read/skim LOTS of information sources to get multiple viewpoints and contrasts. Form your impression form the repeats of highs and lows you see. Watch for copy/paste data, of course.

In this day and age, no single news/review source should be your go-to and there is no need for that, either. Get a wide sweep of data and sort yourself.

Edit:

On the subject of PC and XBO reviews, keep in mind that CDPR would hold them back most likely because they weren't happy with an issue.

That means there ae issues, which should come as NO surprise to anyone in this day and age, and that CDPR is committed to correcting them.

They are committed to fixing problems. And that's always a good thing.

As for the "not ready for release" argument, I'd say the bulk of reviews indicate that while there may be technical glitches, the game is still quite solid. Just needs an extra inch or so for XBO and PC.

True, but what i really don't get it. X1 was in great shape last year during E3 and was very close to PC in many ways, but now we are still waiting for X1 reviews? I guess the inclusion of dynamic resolution is the reason for that though, so that would be understandable. But PC?

 

[Canuckodile]

IGN once gave a bad punctuation to a game for being "too long", so, don't take their reviews too seriously

That was Alien: Isolation. One of the few GOOD games we've gotten in the past 2 or so years. IGN is always messed up.


I'm still looking for a confirmation on this by the way, for anyone else reading

http://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2015-12-05-where-s-our-review-for-the-witcher-3

 

[Sardukhar]

what i really don't get it. X1 was in great shape last year during E3 and was very close to PC in many ways, but now we are still waiting for X1 reviews? I guess the inclusion of dynamic resolution is the reason for that though, so that would be understandable. But PC?

Well, see, we don't really know what kind of shape the X1 version was, in terms of a complete game. We don't know what kind of shape it was in last month, after thousands of bugs and debugs. We don't know much and, frankly, we aren't entitled to know. When's the last time a movie director updated people with the current standing of his movie beyond "prodiction..post production" etc. How about a AAA director? These people play stuff close to their chest.

I do think it means mostly what it seems like it means - they found some bugs in the PC and XBO code and were fixing instead of sending to reviewers.

I'm still looking for a confirmation on this by the way, for anyone else reading

http://www.gamewatcher.com/news/2015-12-05-where-s-our-review-for-the-witcher-3

I don't understand? What's to confirm - that they don't have PC review code? Isn't that consistent with the current state of things?

 

[azrael.1289]

I don't understand? What's to confirm - that they don't have PC review code? Isn't that consistent with the current state of things?

I think he meant their claim that they would finally be getting the PC code today.

 

[Gadfly_Jim]

For everyone who is concerned that combat, scaling, quests, and other gamplay will not hold up for hours and hours. Keep in mind that a lot of these reviewers have played this game for 100+ hours and are still giving out 9's and 10's.

If a reviewer feels that a game still holds up to that score after playing it for that long than I am sure whatever gameplay/balancing issues there may be are not as big as some people are making them out to be.

 

[Krugaming]

For everyone who is concerned that combat, scaling, quests, and other gamplay will not hold up for hours and hours. Keep in mind that a lot of these reviewers have played this game for 100+ hours and are still giving out 9's and 10's.

If a reviewer feels that a game still holds up to that score after playing it for that long than I am sure whatever gameplay/balancing issues there may be are not as big as some people are making them out to be.

Fucking great point if no one here minds my saying.

 

[Solid_Altair]

Do the reviews contain new and exclusive combat clips? Are they spoilerish? I was gonna watch gamespot, but saw the "may contain spoilers" message and bailed on it.

 

[azrael.1289]

Do the reviews contain new and exclusive combat clips? Are they spoilerish? I was gonna watch gamespot, but saw the "may contain spoilers" message and bailed on it.

Depends on what you would consider spoilers. If you consider scenes from the middle of the games and characters not previously shown appearing as spoilers, then avoid the gamespot and gametrailers video reviews.

 

[Solid_Altair]

Thanks. I ended up seeing gamespot. I was liking their coverage. Nothing new in the combat clips, but it was nice to hear the praise. The spoilers seemed... mild, but still considerable. I'll survive, I guess.

 

[Psykosonikninja]

Skimmed through some reviews - most complaints seem to be about technical issues with that PS4 debug version that was provided. So that should hopefully be solved with D1 patch on all platforms.

It's sad that CDPR had to send out this version for reviews then. I'm sure the framerate issues did negatively impact people's impression of the game. I bet it would have scored even higher if people were playing on PC.

 

[Mgec]

Regardless of the score, I'm playing this game from in and out!

 

[Krugaming]

Well shit, this is the best thing I have read of all the reviews on Witcher 3, and it is not even a actual review. It is PCGamers 5 observations from 30 hours of the game, and the writer or editor played it on a PS4. Their is more detail in this write up then some of the major reviews on metacritic that I have read. I have a feeling PCGamer will be giving the Witcher 3 a authentic full review.

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-witcher-3-5-observations-from-the-full-game/

I will also add, taking that write up as a whole, it sounds like to me that they are spending more time with Witcher 3 then any other review I have personally read (IGN, Gamespot, Gameinformer, Gamesradar, etc, I have read a few so far).

 

[Psykosonikninja]

Eurogamer Poland - 10
Ausgamers - 10
ImpulseGamer - 10

I mean... I didn't expect THIS much. Whoa. Totally awed right now. You crazy bastards at CDPR, you did it

I know what you mean. I expected this game to be good, but these scores are just phenomenal.

 

[IMRicko]

Official Playstation is review is by far the most biased review for Witcher 3. The reviewer is clearly a skyrim fanboy. Complaining about the "open world" of the witcher 3. Nuts

 

[ChrisStayler]

I was gonna do Hard. So i guess i gotta do Death March.

 

[mico11]

Official Playstation is review is by far the most biased review for Witcher 3. The reviewer is clearly a skyrim fanboy. Complaining about the "open world" of the witcher 3. Nuts

yeah, I noticed that two. In several reviews. This is why developers shouldn't focus on getting scores but make a game they would want to play.

Some reviewers are biased, some even laugh at the concept of objectivity. Some are manchildren, fanboys, and the worst are pseudo intelectuals and wanabee academics. Metacritic is a mess right now, and that it effects sales so much is a disgrace

 

[andykww]

Again I would recommend people to go dark and avoid the reviews and TW3 features. There are too many spoilers. Although they are short clips with no context, they do still lessen the surprise for when you stumble into them yourself. I saw a clip of Ciri decapitating something and I thought, "Nope, I'm seeing too much."

 

[IMRicko]

yeah, I noticed that two. In several reviews. This is why developers shouldn't focus on getting scores but make a game they would want to play.

Some reviewers are biased, some even laugh at the concept of objectivity. Some are manchildren, fanboys, and the worst are pseudo intelectuals and wanabee academics. Metacritic is a mess right now, and that it effects sales so much is a disgrace

As always, take reviews with a grain of salt. I can see myself replaying this game over and over to get all the 36 endings. Will keep me busy until another great triple A title comes out