The Bank Holiday weekend couldn’t have come at a better time, with the release of the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people will be playing the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt this week, me and Murr are no different.
I will be honest with you, both of the previous Witcher games, I haven’t played. I tried number 2, but I just couldn’t get in to it for some reason. I also wasn’t really following Wild Hunt until very near to its release date. But I’m so glad that I did. I can’t remember a game capturing my imagination like this in quite a long time. So far I love everything about it. The world feels so alive. I love riding through the woods and seeing animals scatter from behind trees and bushes. I love hearing the trees creak in the winds when the weather takes a turn. I love exploring every corner of the map, not wanting to miss anything.
There has been a lot of hoo-ha about that graphics since the games launch, I’m playing it on Xbox One – I was tossing up between that an PC, I think that the game looks great. Luckily I haven’t come across any major issues too either like I’ve heard others mentioning.
I think I’ve played for around 10 hours now, and I’m currently level 6, I’ve beaten the Griffin and one other Witcher contract. So far the missions have been really good fun, taking on the contracts is really interesting, making you plan for your attacks and prepare for the battle you face. The Griffin was a good fight. I’m playing on the medium difficulty and found him a challenge, but not too tough, which personally is what I like. I just get annoyed if things become too hard to do.
I will definitely be taking my time with this game and making sure that I complete as much of it as possible.
The Witcher wasn’t the only new game that came out though. Destiny also saw the release of expansion II, House of Wolves. Ok, this isn’t technically a new game, but it’s new gameplay.
I really feel like Bungie have worked hard to correct the mistakes they’ve made in the past, House of Wolves feels like a step in the right direction. I’m going to keep my views of this quite short as I plan on writing up a full review once I’ve played the Trials of Osiris mode, and played the new strike.
As of writing this I haven’t managed to sample everything from the new content just yet, but what I have played – which is the new story missions, the new crucible maps and the Prison of Elders, it has been really good.
I only played Prison of Elders at level 28 so far – as you have to do that level before you can access the harder difficulties, so I didn’t find it all that challenging, but I think the higher levels could be pretty good fun.
– Will
Yup, another nice long weekend. I feel I took advantage of it, but didn’t dedicate quite enough time into Witcher 3 though. Friday evening I actually didn’t move from my PS4, and spent all evening on it. Will touched up above on some comments on the graphics. I have to say I’m one of those guys that isn’t completely blown away by it visually. The character models and towns are all pretty special I’ll give. But just the general wilderness and foliage doesn’t seem as alive and vibrant as some other games I’ve played like AC Black Flag or GTAV. The only way I can describe what I mean is that the foliage of Witcher 3 reminds me of an oil painting. It has it’s moments of course but my jaw didn’t drop quite so much at first viewing of this game like it did with other PS4 titles. That said though visuals don’t necessarily mean a game is bad. Far from it. I’m loving the game despite the complaint. I’m currently 14 hours into the game now and just hit level 7. I’m 24 quests in but trying to explore as much as possible. Encountering some messed up enemies a lot higher level than I am. I just run and hope for the best.
Saturday we had some glorious sunshine, With that I dragged myself away from the PS4 and worked on the garden then had a few friends over for some beers. Some beers turned into loads and before we knew it we were watching Eurovision hammered. A funny evening.
Sunday I already had the day set out to watch the Monaco Grand Prix which was pretty standard until Max Verstappen’s crash around lap 65 which caused Hamilton to lose the race due to a terrible pit stop call. The final moments of the race were exciting in that Hamilton was driving like a man possessed to get past Vettel and chase Rosberg down, but it wasn’t to be and the guy that had been leading the race comfortably from corner 1 ended up 3rd due to some questionable pit wall tactics. After that I watched Soccer Special to keep up with the final day of the premier league season. The evening was rounded off by heading to a work friends wedding reception at a lovely venue.
The final day of the bank holiday we had plans to go to a car show having heard and seen from other locations the tour had been that 2 cars from The Fast and Furious movie were to show. My wife and I being massive fans of this franchise we wanted to go check them out. To our annoyance though the Green Mitsubishi Eclipse and Orange Toyota Supra from FF1 were nowhere to be seen. They did have BumbleeBee from Transformers, General Lee from Dukes of Hazard and the Batmobile which was actually pretty awesome. We then went onto see Mad Max which was absolutely awesome. A film that’s definitely worth seeing the cinema as I imagine it’d be less impressive on a TV screen in the living room unless you have a stunning quality TV with excellent surround sound to get the most out of it.
– Murr
NEWS ROUND-UP
E3 Hype!
Ok, not really news I guess, but we’ve started to get hyped for E3 2015 and we will be doing a ‘hype’ post for each conference that is taking place. Last week we took a look at what we could hope and dream of from Nintendo and Bethesda. Expect more this week.
Need for Speed
Yes, it’s back, now let’s hope it’s a triumphant return for the series. Check out the reveal here.
Resident Evil 0 HD Remaster Confirmed
On the success of the original Resident Evil Remake HD, Capcom have confirmed their once Gamecube exclusive Resident Evil 0 is getting a HD remake too for PS4,PS3,XB1, X360 & PC.
Witcher 3 has biggest debut of the year in UK
And to stay with the Witcher 3 themed post, it’s been confirmed that Witcher 3 has been the biggest debut of the year in the UK. PS4 marketshare of the game making up for a whopping 63% of the sales.
