Know The Witcher before he was a video game star.

You may remember that I had a brief bout of UNBRIDLED FRUSTRATION with The Witcher a few months back.   I’ve recently dove back into it (dialing down the difficulty because my blood pressure is high enough, thanks) and have found it a pleasing experience.  While I’ve gotten to the point that I can’t stand a linear RPG (sandbox game play FTW), I still find this game fun: it is odd how the “RPG effect” has come full circle.  Action games snuck RPG elements into their structure, and now RPGs are more fast-paced and exciting than ever.

It is sad that due to some questionable business practices, The Witcher will not be coming to consoles; good thing I got it for PC when I did.  But if you are a console-only gamer (or if you are a Mac only computer person), then you can still experience thedelight of this game in convenient book form.

You see, Geralt of Rivia (the titular Witcher) was the main character of a short story series written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.  His first span of stories starring Geralt are collected in the book The Last Wish.  If you live in Poland, you can read all of his stories and the few novels he has written; if you live here in the States, you should be able to find and English translation of The Last Wish and the follow-up novel Blood of Elves at your local book store.

I love short story collections, and The Last Wish is among the best I’ve read.  Framed by the story of the atheistic Geralt recovering from a terrible battle wound at a nunnery, the tales of Geralt’s travel are gritty and real while being full of humor and humanity.  My only fault with the book is literally stylistic; there is no table of contents.  While, unlike most modern short story collections, this one should be read straight through, it would be nice to be able to revisit my favorites without having to flip through the pages.

And what are my favorites?  While I love them all, “A Question of Price” reads like one of my other favorite short stories, Robert Howard’s “The God in the Bowl.”  It has a much happier though just as satisfying ending, and it plays directly into the novel Blood of Elves.  The titular short, “The Last Wish,” has a well-orchestrated plot twist; it is one of my favorite short stories overall, not just of Sapkowski’s.

I’m reading Blood of Elves now, and it is a proper novel.  So far so good, though I prefer The Last Wish.  I can’t argue with the novel’s pace though: it’s smooth and logical.

If you have played and loved The Witcher PC game, do please give these books a try.  If you can’t buy them, check with your local library.  I’m sure they would love to do an interlibrary loan for you if they don’t have them right there on the shelf.  You won’t regret having read them, and your appreciation of the game and its characters will be much deeper and richer.  In case you were wondering, the story that the game tells is set after the events of the stories/novels and exists independent of them, so either way you’re getting a fresh narrative unhindered by obligations to another source.

YOU NO BUY POTIONZ YOU CAN NOT HAS WINZ!

I was so excited to finally get my hands on The Witcher, a PC RPG that I had been wanting to get into ever since it released but only recently had a gaming PC on which to play it.  I bought the game before I even finished buying the parts for the computer, knowing that it was going to be a favorite of mine.  Until today, it has been.

You see, at the end of the first act of the game there is this boss.  Earlier in the game, you had the option of buying a potion from a witch that would make killing this boss easier.  I forgot to get the potion and…well, come to find out when the developers said “easy” they really meant “possible.”

That is the problem with any kind of RPG except for the MMO variety: you are punished for not doing things just so.  Unless you are either a pre-cog or an OCD gamer that must gather all possible pick-ups, you will get ganked by the Big Bad.  It happens in every game that Square/Square-Enix has ever made (I swear they get a rise out of knowing that somewhere they have made a gamer cry), and it even happens with games that have RPG elements but are not themselves RPGs (I’m looking at you, Ninja Gaiden).

Isn’t this a bit unfair to gamers?  I mean, I didn’t expect to breeze throug the boss fight; I expected it to be challenging, especially since I wasn’t pimped out with all of the requisite power-ups, but I didn’t expect the AI to slap their “I Win” button just because I made an honest mistake.  I forgot the potion!  Big deal!  Let me load a game save right before the fight, run back to the witch, buy said potion, lay the hurt down and–Bob’s your uncle–I get to progress in the game that I paid for.

No.  Instead, I’ve got to reload a game save from way the deuce back and buy the potion, then re-do a whole bunch of quests leading up to climatic moment. It’s poor design in what is otherwise so far a good game.  No, it’s not poor design.  It’s sloppy design.  Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

That’s okay though; in a fit of frustration, I just started clean over; I even scaled the difficulty back to “Easy” for good measure.  While I love overcoming a challenge and find more intense games more rewarding than cake walks (re: anything for the Wii), I get plenty of challenge playing competitively and/or working as a team in games with better balance.

Sure, I could uninstall and trade the game in, but I would lose money on that.  Besides, I did inherently like the game: the lead character Geralt is cool, I enjoyed the short stories from which the game was inspired (look up The Last Wish if you want a good read; Blood of Elves comes out April 28th and I cannot wait), and it’s a beautiful game with some deep mechanics.

I just doubt I’m going to like it as much now.

BEHOLD! The gaming PC.

Well, it’s done.  After playing WoW on my Macbook for two years and growing tired of being hunched over a 13 inch screen, after salivating over awesome PC games and not being able to play them because I prefer an OS that is clean, easy-to-use, and runs without a hitch, I managed to call a truce with Bill Gates and invest in a gaming PC.  Not satisfied with configurations I could find at retail though, I went one better: I bought the necessary guts and shoved them inside a huge case (with the help of a trained professional who knew what he was doing).

It.  Is.  Glorious.

I didn’t skimp on the video card: a Visiontek ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB that supports dual monitors makes WoW looks gorgeous.  I also installed The Witcher, which is even more drool-worthy, and I’m installing Dawn of War II, which I expect to blow my freakin’ mind.  I’ve also $30 on Alltel rebate card that’s about to see some Steam action.  You see, I’ve got an MMORPG, an offline RPG/adventure game, an RTS, and all I need is a first-person shooter to fully balance out my gaming interests.  I’m thinking Unreal Tournament III.

It’s been years since I’ve done any kind of intense gaming on a PC, and already I’m hooked all over again.  It really does help to be able to have the hardware capable of running the games at a decent frame rate with appropriately eye-popping effects: I have to say it really does put console graphics to shame.  Of course, the trade-off is the fun of patching, updating, and authorizing (my Lord, authorizing) every piece of software you jam into your optical drive.  While console games are quickly becoming the “release now, patch later” joys that PC games have been for a long, long time, as long as you can pop a game in and start playing immediately (or at least only after a short install) we’ll still have to hear the unfounded rumors of the death of PC gaming: it’s simply a distinct advantage that consoles have.

Of course, the distinct advantage that PCs have is that they are upgradeable at your own pace, they are the original multi-function devices, and they are completely customizable.  Since I just plain love games, I wanted options on both fronts: now I have those options.  How many people out there are like me, I wonder?