Enhanced Edition - First Reviews

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Hmm, I'm not an expert in the matter, but isn't the saturation like the intensity and 'spreadness' of light/colors?

I found the PC version looking too bright, and unrealistic in many places, especially at night..
 

227

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n4meless1 said:
Hmm, I'm not an expert in the matter, but isn't the saturation like the intensity and 'spreadness' of light/colors?
It's kind of hard to explain, but it's more like the deepness and richness of the color. I think what you have an issue with is the bloom intensity, which causes that blurry glowing effect where the light hits.
 
227 said:
It's kind of hard to explain, but it's more like the deepness and richness of the color. I think what you have an issue with is the bloom intensity, which causes that blurry glowing effect where the light hits.

Yeah, that's it, and I hope it's fixed.. :)
 
I tend to ignor game reviews and wait for fan reviews. Which is certainly the case after the ME3 mess. But concidering I thought the Witcher 2 was fantasic I don't see it getting any worse.
 
I´m happy that Witcher 2 is getting great reviews across the world. Its first CDPR console game and it seems that they did helluva job with this one. I truly hope that they´ll get good sales and other companies would bring true RPGs to the market once again. RPGs aren´t about endless shallow DLC waves or basic shooting with lame leveling and decisions without true consequences.. Day by day, more and more this game makes me feel itchy, I want to sniff the brand new manual :)
 
I'm not sure if I said this yet, but I now ignore the review and opinion of every single major reviewer due to the whole Mass Effect 3 debacle. I need people not on the advertising-budget of gaming companies and publishers to review things if I'm going to trust anything.

With that said, Witcher 2 could get 70 perfect scores and like ME3 I would not care because they aren't trustworthy anymore.
 
Aesieru said:
I'm not sure if I said this yet, but I now ignore the review and opinion of every single major reviewer due to the whole Mass Effect 3 debacle. I need people not on the advertising-budget of gaming companies and publishers to review things if I'm going to trust anything.

With that said, Witcher 2 could get 70 perfect scores and like ME3 I would not care because they aren't trustworthy anymore.

That happened before ME3 lol. Gears of War 3 recieved 10s and 9s all around the globe, and it is a good game, but definetly not worth a 10. Me3, Uncharted 3, God of War 3, CoD games, basically - every big installment in a well known franchise will recieve a high score (sometimes - ridiculously high), so if youre wondering whether or not to buy a fresh game in a well known and promoted franchise from a really wealthy publisher, reviews from your friends and common users is what you should be looking for, reviews of game-critics and magazines more often then not are just payed to write a good review and give it a high score...

However, when a game from a relativly unknown developer, with no blow-your-mind-advertising around the globe recieves alot of praise, you know that that game's probably pretty good. For example, Dark Souls, Catherine, The Journey, or your favorite Witcher 1\2. So, it's safe to say that this reviews are mostly genuine and the people who praise this game really did enjoy it and think it's worth the 9's and 9.5's that they gave it.
Unlike reviews for such big, loud names as ME or CoD, just compare the critics scores vs users scores on metacritic, you can clearly see that the critic score those games recieved is mostly bought by EA's\Activisions PR managment xD
 
Yasha08 said:
That happened before ME3 lol. Gears of War 3 recieved 10s and 9s all around the globe, and it is a good game, but definetly not worth a 10. Me3, Uncharted 3, God of War 3, CoD games, basically - every big installment in a well known franchise will recieve a high score (sometimes - ridiculously high), so if youre wondering whether or not to buy a fresh game in a well known and promoted franchise from a really wealthy publisher, reviews from your friends and common users is what you should be looking for, reviews of game-critics and magazines more often then not are just payed to write a good review and give it a high score...

However, when a game from a relativly unknown developer, with no blow-your-mind-advertising around the globe recieves alot of praise, you know that that game's probably pretty good. For example, Dark Souls, Catherine, The Journey, or your favorite Witcher 1\2. So, it's safe to say that this reviews are mostly genuine and the people who praise this game really did enjoy it and think it's worth the 9's and 9.5's that they gave it.
Unlike reviews for such big, loud names as ME or CoD, just compare the critics scores vs users scores on metacritic, you can clearly see that the critic score those games recieved is mostly bought by EA's\Activisions PR managment xD

I've played Witcher 1, that game in my eyes deserved a 6.5 - 7, much like Mass Effect 3 does, and the reason is because of the incomprehensibly large and prohibitive bugs , crashes, and errors. Even with the DIRECTORS EDITION with all the bug fixes, my game crashed every 30 minutes on the dot on a new-gen system. It was ridiculous and it destroyed the game for me. I also found issues in the game and the game itself to be lack luster in my eyes. This in itself made the game terrible to me. The fact I even tried Witcher 2 still surprises me.

As for Witcher 2, in regards to the PC version I played before all these patches, it deserves an oscillating 8.

I have never encountered a game that deserves a 9, nor should any game in existence receive a 10, EVER, because that will be the last game ever created in history because every other game pales in comparison to it for eternity.

The highest I can give to any game in existence is an 8.5 and I rate highly on story and replayability and immersion. That being said, sometimes DLC can be sufficiently advanced and capable that it changes the game from an 8.5 to a 9, but that's more like saying the game got an expansion for it to be that quality and when that happens you're no longer just rating 1 game, you're rating 2 games really that when totalled equal 9.

---

Actually, according to my rating history though this was done when I was a bit younger by a few years so perhaps less capable at determining what a game should actually be rated..

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire 9.0
Portal 2 9.0
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 9.0
Dragon Age: Origins 9.0

I have rated 4 games a 9 in my life, granted these are ratings based on when they came out and what they were compared to at that point, as well as heavily on story, replayability, and immersion. So out of the 400+ games I've played over my lifespan, only 9 qualify as a 9. A ton of 8.5's exist though.
 
Aesieru said:
I've played Witcher 1, that game in my eyes deserved a 6.5 - 7, much like Mass Effect 3 does, and the reason is because of the incomprehensibly large and prohibitive bugs , crashes, and errors. Even with the DIRECTORS EDITION with all the bug fixes, my game crashed every 30 minutes on the dot on a new-gen system. It was ridiculous and it destroyed the game for me. I also found issues in the game and the game itself to be lack luster in my eyes. This in itself made the game terrible to me. The fact I even tried Witcher 2 still surprises me.

As for Witcher 2, in regards to the PC version I played before all these patches, it deserves an oscillating 8.

I have never encountered a game that deserves a 9, nor should any game in existence receive a 10, EVER, because that will be the last game ever created in history because every other game pales in comparison to it for eternity.

The highest I can give to any game in existence is an 8.5 and I rate highly on story and replayability and immersion. That being said, sometimes DLC can be sufficiently advanced and capable that it changes the game from an 8.5 to a 9, but that's more like saying the game got an expansion for it to be that quality and when that happens you're no longer just rating 1 game, you're rating 2 games really that when totalled equal 9.

You just rate games too strictly. So your scale doesn't match that of most people and critics. your 8 is probably about 9.5 of the average man if your 8.5 is the highest rating a game can recieve (which basically means it's a 10).
Overall, you can't take away that Witcher 1 was a really good game for many many people, while being developed by an unknown (to most) studio and having a lot of problems because it was their first game (the combat was a rythm-game, the graphics were pretty poor, the RPG aspect was pretty narrow, ans so on and so forth).
But many people liked it because it's amazingly well done story, it's atmosphere, it's characters and great dialogues, it's unorthodox take on fantasy world and character motives, and so on and so forth.
And just for the record, I've passed W1 like 7 times (on 3 different systems, started with the one that couldn't handle it above medium, ended with the one on which it run with 80 FPS on max), and I'm really amazed you had such problems running it on your PC, it run really good for me (except the frame drops in ACT 3 in the market district, which was a common problem and it was fixed in the EE for the W1). Really, I don't remember the game crushing on me even once, so it's safe to say that your experience was something abnormal, rather then a thing that happened to all.
Anyway, this is a little off topic, cheers.
 
^ On Win7 there's a problem with auto save function, so it needs to be turned off, and the game needs to be installed on other partition than that where the OS is at, or else it'll crash a lot..

And, yeah, aside from voice acting, combat and graphics (and I don't understand the hate for TW1 graphics in the last couple of posts, because the game looked great for 2007, and still do).. TW1 is still a better game than TW2, IMO..

 
Yasha08 said:
You just rate games too strictly. So your scale doesn't match that of most people and critics. your 8 is probably about 9.5 of the average man if your 8.5 is the highest rating a game can recieve (which basically means it's a 10).
Overall, you can't take away that Witcher 1 was a really good game for many many people, while being developed by an unknown (to most) studio and having a lot of problems because it was their first game (the combat was a rythm-game, the graphics were pretty poor, the RPG aspect was pretty narrow, ans so on and so forth).
But many people liked it because it's amazingly well done story, it's atmosphere, it's characters and great dialogues, it's unorthodox take on fantasy world and character motives, and so on and so forth.
And just for the record, I've passed W1 like 7 times (on 3 different systems, started with the one that couldn't handle it above medium, ended with the one on which it run with 80 FPS on max), and I'm really amazed you had such problems running it on your PC, it run really good for me (except the frame drops in ACT 3 in the market district, which was a common problem and it was fixed in the EE for the W1). Really, I don't remember the game crushing on me even once, so it's safe to say that your experience was something abnormal, rather then a thing that happened to all.
Anyway, this is a little off topic, cheers.

I don't think I'm strict, so much as I rate things based on qualities, and a 10 would obviously be the perfect game in existence with no flaw, a 9 would be something that is both replayable numerous times, is memorable, has no plotholes, and is of a quality story which doesn't need to rely on other factors to make it good. The issue is that graphics errors, bugs, physic problems, continuity issues, errors, and numerous other factors including gameplay detract from this and then there's the possibility of repetitive content which means it's just not really worth replaying. The 4 9's are things that you can just... go back to, and there are no errors, but mostly the 9's are simplistic and it's that simplicity which leads to their high quality.

I can assure you though, that if a game can along that actually fairly deserved a 9 or 9.5 or 10, I would give it, but unlike most reviewers, I view games in a sense of the whole of games before and after them, with exceptions of course, and this means they are rated more fairly rather than just on their own merits, because their own merits compared to a game of quality may be poor but compared to a basic game may be high, and a balance and fair merit system needs to exist, as well as a comparison system.

So in turn, I don't agree that I'm strict, I think that reviewers have just become too typical and easy to please.
 
n4meless1 said:
^ On Win7 there's a problem with auto save function, so it needs to be turned off, and the game needs to be installed on other partition than that where the OS is at, or else it'll crash a lot..

And, yeah, aside from voice acting, combat and graphics (and I don't understand the hate for TW1 graphics in the last couple of posts, because the game looked great for 2007, and still do).. TW1 is still a better game than TW2, IMO..

The graphics were okay. The thing that made the game look uglier were:
1) Really few models for NPC (especially the crowd NPCs). Heck, one of the big (story-wise) NPCs Leuvaarden had the same model of a wealthy trader that we met every 10 seconds on the bazar...
2) Aside from combat, all the other animations were done on a lower or much lower lvl. Characters moved awkwardly durning dialogues, there were no face mimic to speak off (which is kinda a problem for the W2 as well, the characters still look dull durning dialogues, Mass Effect still holds it's title as the game with the most cinematic dialogues in RPGs)
3)A lot of copy-pasting in places like tombs and caves. Basically, every tomb with vampires (or with salamadras in the 3rd ACT) was the same, just with different layouts, which is strange, considering there weren't even so many caves to begin with, so making them all look the same didn't add to the games sharm.

Overall, the game graphics was okay, neither too bad, nor too good. It had it's strong sides (marshes, field with high grass in act 4, graveyard, most locations in act 5) but it had it's bad side as well. The thing that bothered me most were the animations (after the 3th playthrough you couldn't really look at the cut-scences without a sour smile) and the three and a half models for crowd NPCs.
 
Yeah, I agree on the reused character models, but the animations are not that big of a deal. You have new games with the same or lower quality of animations (skyrim, fallout 3/NW, Risen). And there were some copy pasting in areas, but also there were ton of unique, beautiful locations, so it was not an issue like in DA2, Mass Effect..
 
yayodeanno said:
If it weren't for TW1 I wouldn't be here today, neither would the vast majority of the regulars. Enough said? ;)

For sure man, I wouldn't have bought and read the books, and I wouldn't have bought the CE of W2. W1 did an amazing job of introducing many people to the world of Anjey Sapkovsky, after reading the books, you start to see the hints that CDPR made for all the fans, it's really funny how many things you start to see once your'e familliar with the saga.

W2 was kinda undone I felt. It wasn't as good as W1 for sure. Here's hoping EE will give the game the hours of gameplay and story-telling it lacked (specially in Act 3) and make it so that I can honestly tell that it was as amazing as W1 :)

yayodeanno said:
Yeah, I agree on the reused character models, but the animations are not that big of a deal. You have new games with the same or lower quality of animations (skyrim, fallout 3/NW, Risen). And there were some copy pasting in areas, but also there were ton of unique, beautiful locations, so it was not an issue like in DA2, Mass Effect..

Just for the record - animations are really a big deal man. That's even more important then the graphics these days (because the characters in most games already look like they're close to how they would look in real life, but when those characters move like a broken mannequin the difference is standing out much more obviously, then the fact that the characters face lacks a few wrinkles).
Look at Blizzard games. The number of polygons on every unit in SC2 is much lower then in WH40k Dawn of War 2 (it aint even that much better then Dawn of War 1 lol) but the game looks beautiful because of the art design and the superb animations of every single unit.
 
Ganishka said:
Just for the record - animations is really a big deal man.

Skyrim has shitty animations, but that didn't stop it to sell 15 mil of copies, and receive all those glowing reviews (criminally undeserving). And, don't get me wrong, I love good animations..

Also, ME3 is basically a TPS, and just look at this joke..

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHS7xexH8kA&feature=related[/media]
 
n4meless1 said:
Skyrim has shitty animations, but that didn't stop it to sell 15 mil of copies, and receive all those glowing reviews (criminally undeserving). And, don't get me wrong, I love good animations..

Also, ME3 is basically a TPS, and just look at this joke..

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHS7xexH8kA&feature=related[/media]

Yeah, the animation of running is terrible in ME3 (I literally was shocked at how poorly it was made, and even thought that maybe it was a bug xDDD), but the only reference I did to ME3 was the dialogue scenes, and they are still the best in the genre. The characters move while they talk, they change positions, wonder around, gesture a lot, and so on and so forth.

As for Skyrim, I think the animations in there are.... interesting? They are bad in some cases (the way your enemeies trying to flee is really funny xDDD) and they are really good in other ocasions (two handed combat is beautiful, you can feel the weight and the impact). And besides, Skyrim (as well as the whole TES series) is loved for different things. But overall, I think animations in Skyrim are pretty good. But that's me, you have your own opinion on the matter :)
 
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