The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (2015)

 

The Witcher 3 is one of the most celebrated games of the modern era. It iterates on the gameplay style of the Witcher 2 by adjusting the combat system and shifting to a massive open world peppered with an exceptional amount of uniquely crafted content, much of it with full voice acting.

CD Projekt Red clearly wanted to finally get its video game version of Geralt more aligned with the literary version, so the story in its early phases sees Geralt summoned to an audience with the emperor of Nilfgaard, the Germanic empire that invaded the northlands at the end of the previous game. Geralt is soon reunited with Yennefer of Vengerberg, his canonical love interest, who's been serving the emperor as an advisor, and the emperor tasks Geralt with tracking down Ciri, Geralt and Yennefer's adopted daughter because the emperor is her biological father and wants her with him. Ciri, as the long-lost daughter of the queen of Cintra and the descendant of a crossbred elf-human line with incredible powers (sort of the Witcher universe's version of Dune's Kwisatz Haderach), is an important person, both politically and genetically, so she spends a lot of time evading people who want to take advantage of her, and in this game she's on the run from the Wild Hunt, a group of extremely ill-tempered elves from another dimension who like to snatch people and press them into serving their ghostly hunting party. Geralt is revealed to have been in their clutches before he was freed and rendered an amnesiac, explaining how he got into the state he was in as the original game began. 

So off Geralt goes to track down leads on Ciri, reuniting with old friends and enemies, and generally having a variety of new adventures. Occasionally, when Geralt finds where Ciri has been, the game will switch to a flashback in which the player gets to control Ciri and enjoy her ability to teleport around the playfield, zipping behind enemies and backstabbing them.

As with many open world games, the overarching story isn't very compelling, little more than a thread to keep players moving into fresh, unexplored areas. What's more notable is what goes on as the player wanders around that world, running into monsters or bandits that need killing, visiting towns and picking up contracts for witcher's work, or just stumbling across strange happenings that need sorting out. When the game is at its best, there is no game that better conveys the sense of being a wandering swordsman simply getting into adventures. The life of a sword-and-sorcery protagonist who's more interested in making some money or satiating some curiosity about strange local rumors instead of saving the whole world. The major subquests, such as the one about the Bloody Baron, often feel like they could pass as well-drawn short stories or novellas in an extra volume of Geralt's adventures. Even the main storyline, to its credit, is really just about Geralt trying to reconnect with his daughter; Ciri might be of world-shaking importance but Geralt is "but a witcher."

The game is a triumph of presentation. The graphics are beautiful, with various environments convincingly rendered with crisp art direction. The music brings a classically Slavic flavor that has never really been popularized outside Eastern Europe. Most notably, the game has a very large amount of unique writing that makes even the most disposable content feel special. Wiping out a generic group of highwaymen will usually yield at least a letter or journal that explains who they were and why they were there, completely unlike any other generic bandit group who have their own brief stories. And the game handles a variety of tones. Much of it is grim and horror-tinged, but there are times it goes for humor or well-earned sentimentality. It brings back the Grimm fairy tale and Arthurian influences that Sapowski worked into his original stories.

Where the game is less triumphant is in most other aspects; i.e., the gameplay. Although it improves on the combat system in The Witcher 2, adding a nice side-hopping move to the full dodge-roll from the previous game, the combat is still rather unsatisfying in many ways. Geralt has a maddening tendency to auto-target the wrong enemies and in more hectic fights the player could end up fighting the controls as much as the characters in the game. Geralt's context-sensitive moves can be hard to predict - sometimes he'll perform a simple quick stab, but many times he winds up with a slow-developing pirouette. And the combat is often formulaic. Many situations come down to dodging or parrying a strike, hitting exactly two counterattacks before the enemy gets its guard up, and then repeating until the fight ends.

The controls for horseback-riding and swimming under water are also frustrating. The player has to keep Geralt facing forward at all times for them to work correctly, lest they start reversing over and over until the player resets the camera behind Geralt and gives the game a moment to settle down. With Geralt's limited air supply, you can literally drown while trying to get the swimming sorted out.

As an RPG, the game feels like it has an identity crisis, similar to its predecessor. Most of the game's design is in line with standard action games and the inclusion of classic RPG mechanics like gathering experience and leveling up feels at odds. Why is Geralt, such an experienced witcher, clowning around much of the game at a low level? Even late in the game, it's possible to encounter random bandits who can slaughter you in a single blow because they're 10 levels ahead of you, so powerful that it's possible you won't even be capable of hurting them no matter how well you've mastered the controls. And the game doesn't even gate off areas with monsters at significantly higher levels. The whole world is open to you right away and it's possible to run afoul of such monsters at any time, leading to pathetic scenes of Geralt fleeing like a wimp from routine drowners or ghouls.

As a major AAA release, The Witcher 3 is also predictably conservative in how it handles exploration and quest design. It insists on holding the player's hand at all times. Although it's possible to switch off HUD elements like the minimap, you'll still need to refer to the map to get anywhere because the game never bothers to use detailed directions when describing objectives. A character might tell you to visit someone in a particular city but they won't give you an address or note landmarks - you have to use your GPS/quest markers to find out where they live. Contrast with a game like Morrowind, where an early quest involves locating Caius Cosades and the player has to work out on their own where he lives based on information provided. Interesting locations in the game world are marked with question marks until the player gets near them, taking some of the fun out of simply wandering the world, wondering what's beyond the next hill or in those ruins off in the distance. Now you just check to see where the markers are and head over, never needing to bother with empty, unmarked spaces.

As a very large game, some pacing issues do occur at times. The game's second major phase, where Geralt visits the island country of Skellige (a nation of pseudo-Celts who follow Norse religion), often demands that Geralt circulate high mountains or sail from island to island. Although it's quite visually stimulating, the relative slowness of the travel can become wearisome and unlocking fast travel options becomes a priority.

Ultimately, the game and the series as a whole exemplify games that succeed based on their storytelling and general ambiance over their actual game design. They resonate with fans who enjoy the characters and the situations they get in, and with those who appreciate games that prioritize choices and consequences, less so with players who would rather just have a nuanced and exciting combat system.

The game does offer a tremendous value for money. In addition to already being a big game, CDPR created two substantial expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. Hearts of Stone provides a major new subplot in which Geralt has to literally beat the devil, taking part in other activities such as organizing a bank heist along the way. It also brings back Shani as a supporting character, giving fans of the first game who missed her some closure.

Blood and Wine is even bigger, so much so that it's almost a full-fledged sequel in its own right (Witcher 3 and 3/4?). Geralt travels to the French high medieval-flavored duchy of Toussaint to hunt a vampire, and it also serves as a homage to the early short story "The Lesser Evil" in how it involves a princess born under a bad sign. Blood and Wine serves as a sort of victory lap for the character and the series. After trudging through so much blood and mud in the northlands, the sunny, colorful climate of Toussaint can be a relief. Sapowski's stories portrayed Toussaint with a bit of a satirical attitude, falling maybe a bit closer to Don Quixote than The Amadis of Gaul, but in the context of the game it's refreshing to explore a place where the beautiful, well-dressed people seem to actually take chivalric virtues seriously (too seriously at times) instead of simply all being bitter-minded cynics and hypocrites. When the expansion closes with Geralt chilling out at the vineyard he's inherited, there's a feeling he's earned his rest and arrived at a better end than what Sapowski chose for him.

COVER ART: HeroQuest (1991)

 Les Edwards's cover was originally created for Milton Bradley's boardgame, faithfully adapted as a computer game by Gremlin. Edwards said it was his choice to showcase the barbarian as the main character, using himself brandishing a pool cue as photo reference.

Victor Vran (2015)

It's hard to look at Victor Vran, a monster hunter in pseudo-Elizabethan gear with a wide-brimmed hat, and not think he looks at least a little reminiscent of Solomon Kane.

Victor Vran's mission in his game, designed by Haemimont Games of Bulgaria, is to cleanse the Eastern European-ish city of Zagoravia from an infestation of demons that have completely upended the place. The only survivors left are the city's beautiful young queen, her guards, and some advisors. Many other demon hunters attempted this before Victor, but he's the last one (besides a young woman who also appears shortly into the game). The good news is that Victor has special abilities that he gained from making a deal with the devil in the past (so he's maybe more akin to the movie version of Solomon Kane...).

Victor must use melee weapons, ranged weapons, bombs, and demon powers to exterminate the hellish vermin from Zagoravia. There are undead skeletons (our old friends), giant spiders, vampires, zombies, ghostly apparitions, living gargoyles, and elementals, among many others. The gameplay is inspired by "action RPGs" like Diablo, but with a more direct, action-oriented approach compared to Diablo's furious mouse-clicking gameplay. Victor Vran plays better with a gamepad as Victor doesn't just run and attack but can dodge-roll and even execute wall-jumps to access areas at higher elevations. There are also no classes for players to choose - Victor always begins the game the same for all players but can be slightly customized as he levels up and players decide what style of Victor they prefer. Fundamentally, it's still rather similar to Diablo, though, in the sense that the game is viewed from a distance above the action and Victor must annihilate literal hordes of nasties and then pick up money and weapons they leave behind before progressing. Many of these weapons have only minor distinctions in terms of damage output and specialized effects and are best sold for extra money back at the queen's castle.

Despite the flexibility offered through Victor's abilities, the game isn't very much about elegance in its combat. Overcoming the game's challenges often comes down to simply hammering at everything in front of you and making sure your lifebar doesn't erode faster than theirs, but if it does you can just hit a button for the health potion and renew yourself, and health refills aren't rare. One of the game's attempts to offset this matter of attrition is through challenges for each area, such as requiring that you rush and defeat a certain number of monsters within a restrictive time limit or equipping things that will deliberately handicap you. It's not a very difficult game otherwise, and it's relatively short, which is probably for the best considering its repetitive nature.

The graphics are quite nice. The regions you explore are full of gloomy detail and the environment tends to get smashed up as you battle through without ever losing an important sense of clarity for the player. It's easy to get caught up in just running around the game's crypts, smashing up the sarcophagi, hoping money or health potions will fall out like you're in a world of piñatas. This does tend to happen in a lot of RPGs, where players are trained to rummage through boxes and barrels for special items. 

Conceptually, the monster hunter gimmick might remind some of the Witcher, especially in modern times, and the game very much plays into that by casting Geralt of Rivia himself, Doug Cockle, to play Victor. Cockle doesn't do much to differentiate the heroes from each other and if you were only listening to the game you might easily confuse it for another Witcher installment. The game's voice acting is fine, but the story itself is uninspired and generic and feels bolted on top of the game instead of woven into it, which seems to have been the case as the game spent a while in Steam Early Access and the story was apparently one of the final elements added before its official release.

Valfaris (2019)

Valfaris is a semi-sequel to Slain, overseen by Slain's team of Andrew Gilmour and Thomas Jenns. While Slain was a straight fantasy that emphasized swordplay, Valfaris shifts to a sci-fi theme in which the hero wields guns as much as melee weapons. It might be coincidental, but the death metal/gothic/space opera mixture of Valfaris makes the game come across like what you might get if someone decided to combine Contra with Warhammer 40K, especially the old school extra++ grimdark 40K of the 1980s.

Slain ends with a Moorcockian twist that the character you've been controlling, Bathoryn, was actually the hero's sentient sword all along, with Bathoryn and his next wielder looking to the stars for the next adventure. Valfaris picks up with its hero, Therion, landing his wolf-shaped spacehip on his home world of Valfaris (and atop of a bunch of bastards he was going to kill anyway), which was apparently once a paradise but has since fallen into a cancerous decline, doomed to soon be swallowed by the star it's orbiting. It's hard to imagine what an idyllic paradise in these games' death metal aesthetic would actually look like, but Therion seems to have been fond of the place before he left. Much as Bathoryn was battling Lord Vroll in Slain, Therion is on a quest to slay his father, Vroll. Somehow, Therion and Bathoryn are brothers, and Therion even gains the option of wielding Bathoryn during the game.

As grim as the game's story and characters are, there is a sense of nobility and honor conveyed through them. Valfaris comes to a tragic end but the hero keeps his square chin up and never loses his resolve. There's no crying in metal. There's even a bit of humor in the form of his female AI sidekick, who has a wiseass personality similar to Cortana in the Halo series.

Valfaris plays quite similarly to Slain in the sense that in many ways it's just Slain with guns added, but that's in no way a bad thing. The extra layer of gameplay provided by the guns makes the combat a bit more lively and requiring different solutions in different situations. The guns, which are named like all the other weapons in these games (e.g., the Bastard, the Hellhammer) can be upgraded for extra effects. And much like Slain, the game is tough but fair, requiring that the player really learn how to play it instead of button-mashing through.

Graphically, it's even lusher and more impressive than Slain, and it features another very good, heavy soundtrack by former Celtic Frost member Curt Victor Bryant. There are some instances in which the game's art direction can get a bit out of hand and obscure the player's view of the action, overwhelming parts of the screen with particle and lighting effects that completely cover up the characters. Even despite this, it's a dazzling game to look at.

Valfaris does tell a complete story, but much like its predecessor it ends with a hook for another sequel,  which will apparently be more of a horizontal shoot-em-up that continues Therion's journey.

Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials (2020)

 

The reason it's called Batbarian is because you control a barbarian and his sidekick, a magical bat. The game opens with them being chased off a cliff by a horde of ogres. The barbarian falls so long that the game introduces you to its sense of humor by doing a gag based on the guy falling so long that he starts getting bored. Eventually he hits the ground, deep inside a cavern. He picks himself up, reunites with his bat friend, and they head off to figure out how to escape this strange place.

The game is a Metroidvania with the gimmick that the bat is luminous and can be manipulated by tossing different kinds of fruit for it to eat, and you can get power-ups that allow you to switch among different elemental affinities. Up against an ice-based enemy? Switch the bat to fire mode to make the enemy thaw enough for you to damage it with your sword. Some switches are operated by light, so you'll need to toss a fruit over to the switch so the bat's light will turn on the switch and open the door or create the platform you need to advance. It's an interesting concept in a genre that has rapidly become crowded over the last decade.

It's a light-hearted, humorous game, with the humor slanted more toward farce. It's not funny in the same way as Age of Barbarian, where the humor is based on a specific familiarity with the genre, but more like something you'd find in the old Dragon magazine comic strips, broadly poking at fantasy cliches. Sometimes it's genuinely funny, but most of the time it's merely smile-inducing.

It's a pretty nice-looking game. The graphics are a bit on the miniaturized side, but they still convey a lot of personality and atmosphere. On the downside, between the player character, the bat, and the extra sidekicks you can acquire through the course of the game, things can get very chaotic when combat picks up a lot. Are you tracking your guy or your partners along with the bad guys? 

It's also probably one of the more challenging examples of its genre. Metroidvanias tend to emphasize exploration more than anything else and often make the player feel very powerful by the end thanks to all the powers you gain, but Batbarian likes to make the player work for everything by throwing out increasingly tricky combinations of enemies and requiring deft handling of the hero, the bat, and your partner. Although there's an RPG-like leveling system, upon a level-up the game presents the player with a slot machine that, based on when you click, will determine if your offense, defense, or "awareness" increase (awareness seems to increase the radius of the bat's illumination?). The slot machine isn't too hard to use, but it's also a needless bother and if you're not paying attention to it, you might get stuck picking up more awareness increases than is advisable and then handicapping yourself in terms of attack/defense power by the later stages of the game.

The biggest issue the game has is that it's yet another pretty good Metroidvania in a genre that's stuffed with similarly pretty good examples. You could pick it up and have a decent time playing it, but you could say that about many other games as well and when really top level games like Hollow Knight are out there, you need to be better than just decent to stand out. The barbarian theme is amusing but not explored very deeply beyond gags about how he expresses himself in dialogue scenes (do you pick the brutish option or the eloquent one?).

Forbidden Forest (1983)

 

Forbidden Forest was the first game designed by Paul Norman, who was kind of a big deal in 8-bit computer gaming - also creating the C64 version of Aztec Challenge, Beyond Forbidden Forest, and Super Huey - before fading out in the 90s, like many of his distinguished peers. 

Forbidden Forest at the core is essentially a Space Invaders descendant but with a heavy dark fantasy mood. Many C64 players remember it for being a tooth-gnashing horror experience (some even call it an ancestor of the survival horror genre) as much as a shooting game. Norman was asked by his bosses to make a simple bow-and-arrow game, but as a movie fan he decided to entertain himself by designing something more stimulating. Although the graphics are blocky in that early C64 way, they create an effective impression of a distinctly British setting full of overgrown shrubbery, gnarled trees and rotting stumps, and cryptic altars. It feels like a place that might have once been full of druids. As Norman told Retro Gamer magazine, "[T]he brain does the work for the audience. Put enough simple things together, working towards the same effect, and it can look like you know what you're doing!" There's a simple parallax scrolling trick to give a sense of depth, and as the moon passes through the sky, the lighting shifts from the gray of early evening to a black, starry night. Very impressive stuff for the time. 

 

The player controls an archer who's stuck in the Forbidden Forest for the night and has to battle through waves of nightmarish creatures before facing the dark lord of the forest, the Demogorgon. The archer is planted at the bottom center of the screen and pushing the joystick to the left or right will adjust the angle of his aim (up or down also adjusts the vertical angle), or if held long enough will cause the archer to start running horizontally through the forest, which is important because he's faster than the enemies and they'll disappear if they're run off the screen. One push of the button will notch an arrow and another press releases the arrow. The archer can't move until the arrow hits its target or vanishes from sight. Conserving ammunition is also a concern because the archer only has five quivers with 10 arrows each. The guy isn't anything like modern depictions of archers, like the cinematic version of Legolas, who can accurately shoot arrows at all ranges like a machine gun while flipping all over the place. His actions are slow and deliberate and he's highly vulnerable to anything that gets too close to be shot.

The game is brutally difficult! Setting it to the easiest setting will replenish the quivers and require fewer monsters to be slain per wave, but the monsters themselves remain consistent through all four difficulty levels. They're very fast and will annihilate the archer if a shot misses or if the player makes the split-second mistake of attempting a shot instead of running like hell. Advancing through the game will require real skill and practice no matter what.

Norman drew from classic movies and folklore for the creatures. The player will face giant spiders, dragons, giant frogs, giant (everything is big) venom-spitting serpents, and cloaked phantoms. Giant bees were swiped from Ray Harryhausen's adaptation of Mysterious Island, and the undead skeletons were (yet again) taken from Jason and the Argonauts. The demogorgon himself, who can only be seen when lightning flashes and must be slain within a brief time limit, is heavily inspired by the demon in Night/Curse of the Demon. 

Death means the player gets to watch the archer be brutalized by whatever killed him in a gory, befitting manner. The spiders devour the archer from head to toe, with blood spurting out of the carcass the whole way. The frogs leap down and crush the archer as surely as if he'd been splattered by a boulder. The skeletons stab the archer in a frenzy, blood once again spraying everywhere. The snake's venom melts the archer. Successfully making it through a wave results in the archer dancing a happy jig. Defeating the phantom is especially memorable as the thing loudly shrieks as it slowly fades from sight.

Forbidden Forest is a case of a young programmer going well beyond the bare minimum expected from him and creating something memorable. It's atmospheric, intense, and very challenging. It isn't a cutsie-poo fantasy like so many other games (not that there's anything wrong with that), but it's got an Old World grit to it with its vulnerable protagonist simply trying to survive a night in a single creepy setting.

Suggested reading: The Black Stone by Robert E. Howard

COVER ART: Xyphoes Fantasy (1991)

 

Something familiar about these images...can't put my finger on it...