I have always enjoyed foreign movies because they take something familiar, the movie medium, and twist it in ways that reflect other cultures and seem new to me. Occasionally there is a video game that does the same thing.

"The Witcher Enhanced" (Atari)

A while back, I raved about an FPS called STALKER. This year, Im raving about the Witcher.

After a long break, I got back into Bioshock. Great game but man Rapture is DE-pressing. I started to dream about all the good times I had collecting flowers and being a good-guy in Oblivion. There is no new Oblivion right now but I remembered that Jack had recommended the Witcher and I had heard folks on 1Up talk about it several times.

This is the best game you never played. You should play it. It's on Steam as a deluxe enhanced version for $44 and a massive 3GB download. I hear the enhanced version is much better with a ton of voice over added although it removes some of the racy content that American's cant handle.

What is the Witcher? This is Oblivion but its nothing like Oblivion. They take the RPG elements you are familiar with and mix them up in ways that are novel and a lot of fun.

I am on Chapter 2 and I love it.

The familiar

The graphics looks fantastic - when they work. I found a lot of graphic bugs in the Windows 7/DX10 version so I switched back to XP and things have been great. I am playing HD quality 1900x1200 with no performance problems. The world is beautiful, with lighting effects, weather effects, and lots of characters. Some of the character dialogs are lower-rez than I would like but its a small complaint.

Unlike Oblivion, this is not an open-world game. You get small sections of the world and a huge list of quests to do. Quests are split into the main quest and side quests. If you move the main quest along, you move to a new area and you cannot go back. (Tip: Use save games to finish quest before you move on.)

The game is based on a strong quest story line and the main quest itself is a mystery. One of the characters is even an homage to Raymond Chandler, the famous noire mystery writer. It's well done.

Although this is not an open-world game, it is very similar to Oblivion in play mechanics. This is an FPS engine although you can only play in 3rd person - either close 3rd person or distant 3rd person.

As usual these days, there is no game manual but there is an excellent wiki.

the foreign

Even though this is an FPS, there is no jump command. I cannot remember a game with no jump command. It feels weird. It feels a little foreign. Some of the content also feels foreign.

A significant part of this game is drinking to get people drunk and do favors for you and having sex. I dont remember either of these in a game before and it works surprisingly well. (The sex is basically some dialog and then a "sex card".)

The story itself is also a bit different. Main characters die based on your choices and never return. A completist cannot see everything unless they replay the game. This type of world-changing story is difficult to pull off but so far seems to work.

The world is very detailed with tons of lore, monsters, and potion reagents. You cannot loot a monster until you learn about it so you will be spending time looking for books. The monsters themselves seem a little foreign with more than a few German-sounding creatures like the Bloedzuigers.

The combat is interesting and very different from the Oblivion FPS-style and the NWN DnD-style. This is no click-fest. Combat involves magic and weapons. You pick your moves through skill trees as your character levels, and to execute the moves you time single-mouse clicks. The game makes a sound, if you click when you hear the sound, your guys does special moves and crazy animations. I did not think I would like anything this simple but it totally works.

I have killed a lot of monsters and people but this is not a loot game. In fact there is almost no loot. You collect items to make potions but you only have 2 weapons - a silver sword and a regular sword. That part is kind of hard to get used to but the two swords are integral to the combat system. There is little money to be made from looting weapons

Another thing that is novel in this game is poison. Taking a potion poisons you. There is a limit to how many you can take.

the annoying

Although the world models are very detailed and believable, one of the differences from Oblivion is that the world has invisible boundaries - you cannot fall off a bridge or a ledge or even a walkway. Even when it looks like you should be able to just jump down, it wont let you.

The invisible barriers bother me a bit and pull me out of the illusion. Speaking of which, there are also lots of detailed objects and bodies in the game which you cannot interact with. argh.

I also found the persistence distracting. Kill a bunch of guys, zone, come back, and the bodies and items are missing. The world seems to reset at certain points. Flowers are persistent but items are not. Distracting in a single-player game.

One gameplay criticism is that it will drop you into group combats which get you dead before you can do much. For instance, you walk into a house and find 5 Graveir there. They kill you. Reload, try again, repeat. Fortunately you can save game anywhere so at least you dont have to replay big sections of the game.

closing

If you liked Oblivion or Neverwinter Nights, get this game. You wont be disappointed.