Who Am I?
I awoke today to a gray dawn, the rain pouring down outside my window. I looked around, uncertain of where I was... and come to think of it, who, what, and when I was. I stood up from my sleeping mat, glanced around the unfamiliar surroundings, and managed to find something that would pass as clothing. Opening the door to my room, I found a small package outside with a note. "You have amnesia. Try this — it will help." What the...?
 Deja vu |
Along with the note was a rectangular box with a strange looking fox head on the cover and the words "The Witcher" across the top. Opening the box, I found a shiny circular disc. Memories poked at my fogged mind: "It's a DVD — you put it inside a computer." My unknown benefactor appeared to be right; the box was helping my memories to return. Walking down the hall, I found a convenient table with food and a laptop sitting on it; might as well get started….
As I watched the opening sequence of this "game", I began to recall more of my past: books I read, people I knew, getting sick at tradeshows, working on computers, and doing something called "benchmarking" until my eyes bled. Another phrase kept popping into my mind: "A non-tech". Who or what that meant, I just couldn't guess. Back to the game, I was walking around a virtual world, talking to people, killing people, and occasionally sleeping with people. Every now and then, I would level up, regaining lost memories and skills.
While my virtual counterpart became more adept at slicing and dicing monsters, my real-world skill upgrades were less dramatic. Typing could be upgraded with 60 WPM and Enhanced Carpal Tunnels, with the level 5 upgrade being Speech-Recognition. Strength upgrades featured skills such as Mountain Biking, Hiking, and the ability to Lug around 20 Pound Desktop Replacement Notebooks. Stamina skills were similarly useful: All-Night Gaming Sessions, Extra Caffeine Tolerance, and Resistance to Tradeshow Meetings. Perhaps I should've started with the Intelligence category, however: Improved Wit, Analogies, Insightful Commentary, and Internet Author were available. Unfortunately, I ran out of skill points after choosing the Author upgrade — it was Improved Wit or the Nacho Champion stamina upgrade! At least you're getting a review, even if it is for a two month old game….
If you're thinking right about now that that's the most clichéd introduction to an article you've ever read, you're probably right. Nevertheless, the same cliché serves as the basis for The Witcher, a game developed by CD Projekt and published by Atari. Don't let that deter you, however, as what follows that generic introduction is anything but. The Witcher is set in a fantasy world based on the books of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
 Believe it or not, there's a laptop on a desk inside |
Who? Okay, so most of us very likely don't speak Polish and have never read any of his books, but they appear to be extremely popular in Poland and they are being translated into other languages. I'm a huge fan of fantasy and sci-fi books, and I often wish that the stories in computer games could reach the same level as what we find in the pen and ink world. Some of my favorite games of all time have been based on literature — Neuromancer and Betrayal at Krondor — so I was more than happy to give The Witcher a shot.
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punko - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Is the demo North American or European ;)legoman666 - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
I had major problems with the games DRM scheme. It absolutely refused to load even though I had a legal copy and the DVD was in the drive. It kept telling me to enter the original disc. I was at my wits end trying to fix it and I was about to take my copy of the game back.However, then I installed Vista x64 and it worked perfectly. (had XP x64 prior).
kilkennycat - Friday, January 25, 2008 - link
Er, did you have any virtual-disk software (Alcohol etc..) installed on the machine when you had your so-called DRM problems? If so, did you try experimentally uninstalling it to see if the problems cleared up?legoman666 - Friday, January 25, 2008 - link
Yes, I did have Daemon tools installed, but I uninstalled it and made sure there were no traces of it left in the registry.Ironcically, Using Daemon Tools Pro is how some people with DRM problems managed to get the game working. The game will install fine with the original disc, but then fail to load the game. A solution is to make an image of the DVD, and mount it using a virtual IDE drive with Daemon Tools Pro.
The reason it has to be an virtual IDE drive is because of the draconian DRM scheme that the game uses; It will not work on a scsi virtual drive (what Daemon Tools and Alcohol 120 use by default). Some people even reported having issues trying to play the game with their original disc using a sata drive.
BikeDude - Saturday, January 26, 2008 - link
Uninstalling the "offending" tool might not have much of an impact.I had briefly tried a tool for ripping discs (or similar -- I don't recall its name or purpose) and one game refused to run. Using Sysinternal's regmon (now Process Monitor) revealed that the DRM was looking at HKEY_CURRENT_USER and found the offending utility's user setup there. Most uninstallers leave HKCU alone, since users want to keep their settings in case they ever reinstall (or upgrade).
So, before you reinstall the OS, simply create a new user (thus giving you a fresh HKCU) and see if that helps. I think such DRM approaches warrants a full refund from the game's publisher. It is despicable.
FWIW: I use daemon tools to mount ISO images downloaded from a pirate site called msdn.microsoft.com. I get all sorts of OS and utility ISOs from there! grrr....
JarredWalton - Friday, January 25, 2008 - link
Amazing how often that clears up problems.... Anyway, I have Daemon Tools installed on many of my PCs, and that didn't interfere with The Witcher. I think I had it whine about not having the correct disc once in all of my testing... I just closed out of the dialog and restarted and it worked. I will say that I'm not using any SATA DVD drives right now, so maybe that helped?ecat - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
Nice review. Though I'd consider less emphasis on the problems to be more in keeping with the actual game play experience, I'm glad to see The Witcher receiving more main line coverage.I played this game in the run up to Xmas, best game I've played since VTM: Bloodlines. The writing and cross plots create a level of involvement that leaves Oblivion looking, well, empty. Bioshock ? Stalker ? Best I don't go there.
On stability:
XP, AMD 64 x2 (2.8GHz), 2Gb, 7800gt, DFI on board sound.
I could certainly play for 2 or more hours without a crash, but sometimes less. Crash was usually proceeded by voices starting to stutter.
Re-booting before starting the game appeared to help.
Greatest improvement came from forcing the game to run on a single core - fixed issues with stutter and allowed hours (and hours and.. lol :) of play.
dragosmp - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
The fix for the crashes is very well put on the official forums, but for whoever is interested here's how it goes:Start Command Line Console and write this (this DOES NOT apply to 64bit OSes):
"BCDEDIT /set IncreaseUserVa 3072"
This increases the max adresable memory/process from 2GB to 3GB. It works in 99% of the cases, but it's true that this game seems to urge for a 64 bit OS where the UserVa is no longer limited at 2GB.
Sc4freak - Thursday, January 24, 2008 - link
The reason it didn't crash as often on Vista x64 is probably because it allows the full 4gb virtual addressing range to any 32-bit program linked with the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag. On Vista/XP 32-bit, this limit is by default 2gb (and expandable to ~3gb).Incidentally, you'll find the same behaviour with Supreme Commander. 32-bits just isn't enough for modern memory-hungry games.