For PC owners, the “Enhanced Edition” of “The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings” means four extra hours of gameplay. For those of us whose computers can hardly run “Minesweeper,” it means one of the most acclaimed role-playing games of last year can finally be played on a regular gaming console. The Xbox 360 version proves “The Witcher 2” is just as good as the mouse-and-keyboard set said it was — but, with an unavoidable change that’s distinctly not an enhancement, it won’t cure anybody’s PC envy.
The game puts you in control of a guy named Geralt of Rivia, who’s been framed with assassinating a king and saying Trayvon Martin’s hoodie killed him as surely as George Zimmerman. To clear his name, Geralt-O’ navigates a dark-fantasy world where the men are men and women are nude. Like most modern RPGs nowadays, you’re given tons of freedom over how you spend your time in the game world. Save the woman from the burning building, or pursue the evildoer making his getaway? Or just hang out in taverns, arm-wrestling strangers, wagering money in dice poker and entering fistfighting tournaments?
These types of branching narrative paths are nothing new, as games increasingly implement Choose Your Own Adventure-style storytelling. What is new about “The Witcher 2” is found in combat.
The game reverses the standard genre template, in which you command a team of fighters focusing their attacks on one enemy at a time. Here, you’re in control of just one character dealing with several enemies at once. This gives fights a feeling of desperation more typical of an action game than an RPG, and forces you to think on your feet, slashing at one guy with your sword, slowing another with magic and tossing a dagger at a third. The asymmetrical, relentless fights, and your arsenal of bombs, traps, spells and more, keep things challenging and varied, slapping you back into awareness whenever you start playing on autopilot.
| ‘The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings – Enhanced Edition’ |
| » System: Xbox 360, PC |
| » Price: $59.99 |
| » Rating: 3 out of 5 stars |
Hurray for all that. But there’s something lost in the translation from computer to console. At a time when most games are designed with consoles in mind, PC gamers have taken to playing games with console-style controllers. “The Witcher 2” has an inverse problem: I earnestly wished a mouse and keyboard would sprout from my Xbox 360. The game uses every single button on the 360’s controller, and needs 10 more yet. The compromise — having to pause the game every time you want to use a different spell, bomb, dagger, etc. — doesn’t cripple the game, but it puts a major damper on it.
There’s no question “The Witcher 2” is a fine game. And despite its makers’ best efforts to bring it to consoles, there’s no question it should be played on a computer.
