Number 200.

Blog number 200. And it's a game blog :) (ok, technically I've only *released* 196; four drafts are pending, perhaps forever, not clear they are topics that can really be discussed)

Witcher 3.

These guys love their mo-cap and their cutscenes. Much of which leads to things I don't like.

They want you to play the game their way, which is not how I want to play these games.

If you want that, to the point that you are going to force me into it, just make a cutscene I can watch without participating. Better still, say so up front so I can skip the game entirely.


Things I like about this game:

It's gorgeous. Probably the best-looking game I've played. Elder Scrolls 6 will look at least this good.

Saves are right. Lotta folks fail on this one.


Things that annoyed me about this game:

The need for mo-cap everywhere, and the idea (like in the Batman games) that what I want to look at most is the mo-cap, and that hyper-realistic is the goal of games. Mo-cap is not the be-all/end-all in games.

The cutscenes that go on forever.

The large amount of pointless profanity.

All the apparent prostitution--was there really that much of it in the past? Walk through Novigrad and count the various prostitutes--it's a lot.

The movement that is scripted. The problems I had over and over about UI control over what I was doing--most of the times I got killed were keystroke failures because I felt my ability to control Geralt was constrained. I use a wireless mouse and keyboard. They are slightly laggy, this causes trouble. Example: you are too close to an opponent, you automatically go into a crouch and slow down--no, I want to run, not creep.

Being unable to use a real bow and arrow. That little crossbow you have is just about pointless.

Having to play as Ciri once in a while without having much practice at it, and her controls are for completely different abilities. And her only health recovery is to run around out of reach. And when the movement controls force those crouches...and she has no armor...and she has no food/etc for health recovery...

The fact that combat does nothing for your Level-up advancement, only quest completion does that.

The fact that quests need to be worked on when you're near the same skill level, else they aren't worth much in XP points. You wait too long and their value drops to one single XP.

You can't drop a quest. Several times where that was really the better solution, esp once the XP had dropped to be worthless.

All the quests that are about finding diagrams for better gear are a waste of time--the gear isn't better. Even the master-crafted stuff; when you finish with Hattori, he makes a freebie for you. It was 3 levels behind what I was already using. Boring--it should scale exactly to where I am.

The 40-mph wind that never stops.

Potions are incomprehensible. And look largely useless. I have yet to use one.

Magic that is relatively useless, and way to weak to do much for you. Part of the story in this game is that some large-ish faction is trying to eliminate all of it. OK by me.

The local "economy", which is pretty feeble. Why is that this is so common in games? All the Bethesda stuff has this problem until the mods get made that fix it. (Remember Morrowind? That was the worst. You could easily find Daedric items that were so high-priced no one could buy them from you. Even after I found several mods that boosted merchants and made more of them, it was still possible to come back from a dungeon crawl with so much stuff that you'd have to drop a bunch on the ground, where it would sit forever. You want the merchant to have cash again? Sleep 24 hours. How many times are you going to do that when they have 5000 gold and you have 150,000 of items?)