Archive for the ‘Reviews - PC Games’ Category

The Witcher

Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

The Witcher PC packshot

The Witcher represents the newest form of storytelling, role-playing, and action all in on near perfect game. It has all the depth of a good fantasy book. All the realism and adult stituations of real life. RPG style character development and adjustments, with a new form of action style combat. That should keep the teens and well as the older adult fans happy.

The game is a built in a beautiful environment with rich graphics, textures, sounds it is truly a work of art.

The combat system is real time with pause option, easy enough to manage, but still allows for strategy and planning.

There is the brute force way to take out a named enemy, or more strategic ways to do it with some for-thought in mind. Yes this game does a fine job of balancing the fan base of Role-Playing enthusiasts as well as fast action junkies. Your choices truly make a difference in this game, with three different endings determined on how you handled prior choices in earlier missions, npc discussions and so forth. There are usually several ways to handle any quests, each way you handle a situation, answer a question, solve a problem leads you down a path different from the other.

The topics are adult in nature dealing with racism, dictatorship / freedom, costs of war, sexuality and other areas of real life. Your choices are not perfect, in that it is not about an easy good or bad choice / good or bad alignment, but rather about real choices that come with real consequences good and bad.

This game is addictive, and draws you into a world almost are real as are own. Once you complete this game,,, It will be hard to go back to an average DND style game and be happy every again.

This game sets a new standard for the game designer base and what us the players will expect in future RPG games.

* This game should be a real contender for RPG Game of the Year 2007.

Built on a 2007 edition of the Aurora Engine that powers Neverwinter Nights, The Witcher is a mutation of Neverwinter Nights and an action game like Diablo.

I think - any standard RPG / Fantasy Action gamer will enjoy this game.

If you are more of a RGP Neverwinter Nights kind of person,,, Then strap on the sword and be ready to love this game!

** Negatives: I think it should have an equipment bag to store additional weapons, different versions of the silver, meteorite swords and named weapons.

The Boss human npc’s that you fight, should have had named weapons that dropped.

Dual wield weapon fighting should have been available for use with medium and small weapons as a witcher style.

Cheats:

Trainer for Witcher (not tested)

Alchemy Combinations Guide

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Mask of the Betrayer (MotB)

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Mask of the Betrayer (MotB)

It is the first official Expansion for Never Winter Night 2 - the time line picks up shortly after the end of the last game. You find yourself imprisoned in a underground chamber. The fragment of the silver sword torn from your chest and you should be almost dead but not. The location takes place in Rashemens settings (Forgotten Realms). The settings details can be read up on at Wikki Encyclopedia. It also takes place in the Shadow Realm and finally the Realm of the Dead. The settings are all very well done and play well for the encounters and story line.

You have the pleasure of playing much higher level characters then ever before (higher then 20 lvl), with many epic levels, classes, races to create and develop. They added over a 100 new spells and feats to discover and enjoy. 2 new starter classes Favored Soul and Spirit Shaman, plus five more prestige classes added.

The story line is more personal and your actions of course develop the course of the story and how people (NPCs) react to you. Atari link to Game Manual. The game starts you in a room to build / import your character and raise them up to lvl 18 or up to 20th if you where already at that level, before starting your quest.

Warning: your (all) weapons, equipped cloak, and most other items, except what is in your first slot of your pack gets lost.

Your companions are much better developed and all offer positive improvements to you directly if you gain enough influence over them. The nice part is now there is a influence bar on the companion character screen. That way you can view the level of your influence status. They still tend to be not as interactive as you would have hoped, but better then before.

There are several game improvements, mostly dealing with directing your character in combat, and movement. Overall the game is very well done, with no major problems or bugs. I would give it a 8.5 out of 10 on overall game play and enjoyment.

This game as mentioned by other reviewers is a reminder of the Planescape: Torment by Black Isle’s in 1999.

That was a very enjoyable game and so is this one, minus the soul eater problem which at times tends to hinder your explorer time, rest / camp and other basic game play concerns with constant needs to find some poor spirit to devour. The camera angles are improved but still you find yourself caught in a situations where you can not see what is going on, or where to move because of it. The game is complex and not for a beginner, but the rest of us will enjoy it over-all.

Advice - save each section, and sub-quest in its own save file… That way if your soul meter gets to low, or you run into an unexpected bug. Then you can go back to one of your many saved games and start over from there. It is frustrating to have just saved the game before realizing there are no spirits around to eat. So now you are stuck - unless you use a cheat listed above, or go back a older save game and better manage your time.


CHEATS:

Codes
Open command console by typing tilde (`)
Enable cheatmode by typing DebugMode1
Enter the following commands as written below in the same console:
When done - type DebugMode 0 to leave cheatmode.

Cheat
Effect
rs ka_se_terminate
Remove soul eater status
rs ka_se_init
Give Soul Eater status
rs ka_se_points_set(100.0)
Sets your spirit bar back to 100
rs ga_time_advance(1,0,0,0)
advance time by 1 hour.
rs ga_party_limit([number])
Raise amount of party members

rs ka_influence_set(x,#) Increases Influence with party member
Where “x” a particular party member id

safiya
gann
okku
dove
oneofmany

and “#” is an amount between -100 and 100 (0 being neutral).

MOTB Trainer 1.10 (nn2masktrn8.zip, 73k)
I have tested the trainer and it does work.It is not perfect and you need to follow the instruction provided by the design team. Basically unzip, read instructions and launch the correct version of the program for your system.Some of the features: 1 hit kill, 1 button full heal, extra money while at the trader, and so forth.

Concept: A trainer is a program written to intercept and alter the memory addresses of a game. Trainers usually have to be running in memory the entire time the game is loaded. Since trainers address specific memory locations, they usually only support a specific version of a game. This file is not supported in multi-player or online game play.

Vordan’s Hero Creator (vhc_1_5a_nx1.zip)
Easy-to-use Character Designer to create, equip, adjust, and test your character before sending it to MotB to play. It has a complete supply of equipment, ability to adapt your gear to personal liking. A basic list of enemies to choose from varying from vermin creatures to raiding parties and even yourself. This is a quick and easy way to try out new classes, multi-class, and equipment selections.The trainer also has a nice equipment modify system to create, modify your own custom armor, rings, and so forth to carry over to MotB.

* Just remember only the items equipped on character, minus weapons, and most cloaks ,,, will make it into the MotB during import.

Link to VHC Archive: archive


WP-Definitions