Hahaha I'm not Gfree man. My opinions of ethnic superiority (or inferiority) are purely for comedy value.

Hah, fair enough. Besides, you're Belgian. It's not like you're in any position to make fun of, well, anyone.

You weren't complaining so much when you were stuffing your face on Belgian cuisine, waffles and beer when you were here.

What was the plan again for your next venture out into the eurowilds? Like time and countrywise.

I don't know, nothing solid. I'd considered going to Russia in March, but that fell through. I'm not especially surprised, honestly. With the expense of now having a significant car payment, my disposable income has declined a good deal. I find it unlikely I'll be making a Eurotrip this year at all. Still, if anything changes, I'll be sure to let you know.

Crimea and Donetsk should have really nice low prices for that authentic soviet feel .

You might even run into some authentic Ukrainian freedom fighters.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/if-the ... 0-6441249/

If The witcher was a noir thriller. Looks good.

I'd play it. After I actually play The Witcher 3, obviously.

So, I snapped up the Witcher 3 + all the expansions during the sale last week for around 40 euros. Not actually a bargain, but very reasonable considering it's a recent game + tons of extra content and is almost collapsing under the weight of GOTY awards.

It's also a good game to push my now finally fully assembled rig to its limits.

Spent a shitload of time yesterday trying to figure out which Witcher 2 save was my "final" save. It's not fucking marked in any way, just another autosave. So I actually had to download the full Witcher 2 (25 gigs) game and load the saves in to see which save did what. Motherfucker. Way to make it easy CDprojekt. But...I found it.

So tonight I'm starting my game. Not sure yet if I will play on he PC with k+m or on my TV with controller. Oh yeah, I got my Steam Link + controller. Seem to work just fine. I'll post some pics later!

I've been playing The Witcher 3 extensively for the last few weeks and god, it's an amazing game. I mean I was always a fan of the series, but this game is truly monumental, and I'm not even nowhere near the end as far as I can tell. It kind of feels like this is what every Bethesda game wants to be, if it was low-fantasy.

I had some struggles at the beginning though, not gonna lie. The initial difficulty curve is insane. I played on the "experienced players" setting at first, but after a few hours of raging and failing I dialed it back to 'normal' until I understood the game mechanics a bit better. I've recently turned it back to the original setting and I've been doing fine, but it took me the first 10 levels to get to terms with the game's mechanics. There are two reasons for this, I think:

1) the game looks like a popcorn blockbuster action rpg with its incredible world, graphics and ambition, but it there's an old school and hard RPG under the hood. So I was deceived a bit by all the bells and whistles and treated it like a game where I could just press the win button and succeed. Also, unlike many other games, the game isn't afraid of placing you near opponents that are impossible to beat at your current level. While I applaud this (versus a 'world levels with you' system), it takes some getting used to.

2) the introduction to the game's many, many different mechanics is extremely succinct. There is a short tutorial, which basically teaches you how to do different types of attacks, parry/dodge, use a the signs and throw a bomb. The end. Takes like 15 mins. But there's also a whole achemy system, an adrenaline combat factor, potions and their toxicity when imbimbed, a complex character customization process, crafting, and usually combat will differ greatly from opponent to opponnent. So yeah, I was getting owned like I've rarely been owned so early in a mainstream game.

In addition to all of this I feel the quests/opponents in the early game were a bit too challenging given the short introduction and the little money you start with. On the difficulty setting I'd chosen you can only regenerate health either very slowly naturally or by consuming food/healing potion. But food is ridiculously expensive in the early game, and unless you resort to robbing every peasant hut blind hard to come by. As a goddamn witcher I felt it out of character to go steal from freaking peasants, so I refused to do that. As a result I would sometimes end up mid-quest without any means of healing, and some balls hard fights to follow. Lots of reloading to get through it (it was a story quest).

I am now some ways into the game and starting to master the combat techniques and various other disciplines, and am carrying a ton of gold and can now buy all the food I freaking want, which makes the whole early game thing a bit silly again. In the first 5 levels I barely had enough money to buy bread (15 gold), now I'm carrying 3000 gold.

HAVING SAID ALL THAT...the game is quite amazing. It feels great to be able to travel the world freely and negotiate monster contracts with local people, and researching your opponents (through personal experience, through books you buy, or good old detective work) so you can prepare for them with the correct tactic or equipment. And you'll often need it!

The graphics are gorgeous, the writing is top notch and the characters have the proper "witcher" feel. None of the stale heroic or villainous stereotypes, but people of flesh and blood with very human motivations. A lot of what you do is mired in grey. Just today I was walking through the Novigrad slums and ran into a bunch of elves roughing up a human they said was a drug dealer, who sold some bad drugs that killed a few young elves. The human claimed that they were lying and after his coin, and begged for help. I asked them if they searched him for any of this drugs, and they said they did but didn't find anything on him. But that he probably sold it all and should die anyway for what he did. I decided to stay out of it, and they gutted him. Still don't know if that was the right call to make, since I had no proof either way of who was lying. This was only a very minor encounter, but the game is full of moments like this, and some small decisions can end up having grave consequences.

I also love the combat now that I've figured it out - I wear all light armor and basically have a very fast, dodgy fighting style mixed with some sign (combat magic) usage. It's pretty beautiful when you dash from opponent to opponent and slice and dice them like an instoppable machine.

Oh and I've picked up a serious habit of playing the in-game collectible card game, Gwent. It's surprisingly addictive.

Sounds awesome. The game is absolutely on my buy list... eventually.

This reminds me that i have yet to play the Witcher 2, think i played the tutorial (or something similar) and that's pretty much it.

Witcher 2 is a pretty good game. Way better pacing and stuff than the first one, which was still a good game. I definitely recommend taking the time to get into it.

Yeah, if you're a new player than I would recommend skipping the original Witcher game but to definitely play Witcher 2. It's pretty great, especially the enhanced edition they have now. You should totally read the Witcher books though, which are good to great.

Been playing more Witcher 3, feels like I'm halfway through the game but I'm pretty sure that in realityland I'm like 1/4th in. This game is ridiculously massive.

So I've gushed in Novigrad before, the biggest city in the The Witcher 3 (and the biggest city in the world of the witcher). It's huge, glorious and probably the best city anyone has ever recreated in a video game. Here's a non-spoiler leisurely horse ride through part of the city to give you an idea of what it's like.



You can skip ahead a few times of course, but you'll see what I mean. I love how it already starts way outside the actually city gates/walls, in the wooden slums full of beggars and non-humans, then you ride through the inner city slums and towards the markets, upper class areas and port.