So…  We went to see Silent House on Saturday…  Which turned out to be a genuinely unpleasant experience.

I’ve seen a lot of bad movies.  Dull movies.  Poorly-made movies.  Excessively gory movies.  Lots of movies that I didn’t enjoy much, and kind of wish I hadn’t seen.  Lots of movies where I wanted my money back, or those two hours of my life back.  But there have been very few movies that I would actually call unpleasant.  And this was one of them.

The trailers were vague enough that Terri and I both had our own, incorrect ideas of what the movie was about.  Terri thought it was some kind of supernatural/paranormal/haunted house/ghost movie.  I thought it was some kind of axe-murderer/slasher movie.  Regardless – we both thought it was going to be a fairly standard horror movie.

But that isn’t what we got.

To start with, the big gimmick with this movie is that it was filmed in one, long, continuous shot.  No cuts from one scene to the next, no fades, no transitions, nothing like that.  The camera was literally following somebody for the entire hour and a half length of the movie.

This means, first of all, that there’s no re-taking a single scene until it looks right; because that single scene can’t be spliced in to the rest of the movie.  So the acting really wasn’t the greatest.  It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t terribly impressive either.  And I’m blaming it on the gimmick largely to be nice – I’m going to assume that, given the opportunity, they could have all done a better job of acting.  But, as it is, the acting was pretty mediocre.

This also means that there’s a limit to how much you can employ special effects – because if they get too crazy, you lose the impact of that continuous shot.  So most of the special effects were simply noises heard off-screen, or barely-glimpsed people, or something like that.  Nothing terribly impressive at all.

All of which means that the first hour or so of the movie is simply a woman being followed around with a Blair Witch-style shakycam while she jumps at every noise and cries and fumbles with doorknobs and whatever else.  Very little character development.  Very little audience engagement.  Not a whole lot of suspense.

Very, very boring.

It just dragged on and on and on.  As an audience-member, I just didn’t much care what happened to our protagonist.  It seemed like she was really over-reacting to non-existent threats – jumping at shadows and things going “bump” in the dark.  There was really no obvious threat to her well-being.

And as the movie drags on, the credibility of our protagonist is called into question a couple more times.  Nobody else is seeing anything…  And there’s that nasty mold everywhere…  Maybe she’s hallucinating for some reason?

But that doesn’t serve to increase the tension.  It isn’t presented as some kind of threatening disconnect with reality that might server to actually injure her.  It’s presented as some kind of patronizing “ignore the crazy girl until the vapours pass” kind of thing.

As we approach the end of the movie, we find out why that is.  Turns out she was sexually abused as a child, and this is all some kind of mental breakdown.  She’s remembering/hallucinating what happened to her.  She’s maybe got some kind of multiple personality thing going on.  Or maybe she’s just remembering very vividly.  But the end result is that you’ve got an hour of boredom as she stumbles through the dark; followed by 20 minutes or so of Lifetime-special domestic violence and child abuse.

Which is made even more disturbing by the way it’s slowly introduced…  Hints here and there that her Father and Uncle are a little creepy…  Repeated references to having “photos”…  Then some disturbing visions here and there…  And all of it woven through the vague sense that our protagonist is unreliable – a sense that’s largely created by what her Father and Uncle say; which serves to include the audience in the cover-up.

So that, when it’s finally clear what’s going on, I just felt sick.  And it hit Terri like a ton of bricks.

The last 30 minutes of the movie were downright unpleasant.  I didn’t want to see any more, didn’t want to know what happens next, didn’t want to keep watching.  Just wanted to walk out.  But, on some level, I had to see how it ended.

And it was, ultimately, satisfying to see her take a sledgehammer to her Father.  Though I think she should have done the same to her Uncle as well.

So…  An hour of boredom, followed by 30 minutes of child abuse.  Certainly not the movie I thought I was going to see.  Certainly not the movie that I wanted to see.

Which makes me wish that the ratings we used for movies were a little more informative.  Just calling something ‘R’ because there’s nudity…  or ‘PG-13′ because there’s some foul language…  It really doesn’t convey the nuances of a movie.

I might be just fine watching straight-up sexual pornography, or maybe some Aliens-style violence and mayhem, or some disturbing moral ambiguity…

But maybe I don’t want to watch torture-porn.  Maybe I don’t want to watch child abuse.  Maybe I’d rather not see domestic violence.

There’s a reason why I watch Chiller all the time, and thoroughly enjoy Sci-Fi‘s made-for-TV creature features…  While avoiding Lifetime‘s movies like the plague.

And, had there been a more-detailed description of the plot…  Or of the specific elements that led to the rating…  We would have known not to go see Silent House; and we could have gone to see something we would have actually enjoyed.

Suckerpunch came out a while back.  I wanted to see it – looked very interesting.  But the reviews were horrible, and there was other stuff going on at the time, so we didn’t.  Finally got around to renting it from Redbox last week…  And, honestly, I’m glad we didn’t go to see it in the theater.

The movie starts with a scene of some dead woman and a couple weeping women – probably her kids.  There’s also a mean-looking guy we can assume is their father.  The kids look genuinely distraught that Mom is dead, Dad does not.

Then there’s a shot of a will, and it says everything was left to the kids, and Dad looks even more frightening – like he’s got something planned.  He storms around the house, one of the girls locks herself in her room, and he goes off after the other girl.

The first one, who’ll later be referred to as “Babydoll”, climbs around the outside of the house and tries to confront Dad.  She grabs a gun, fires it, blows out a lightbulb…  Finds her sister…  But sister looks dead.  And then Dad calls the police and hauls Babydoll off to some kind of assylum.

The problem with this whole opening sequence is that it’s absolutely dialogue-free.  We’re just given a series of images set to music, like some kind of music video.  It isn’t entirely clear who these people are and how they’re related to each-other.  It isn’t entirely clear what happened to Babydoll’s sister…  Did Dad kill her?  Did Babydoll accidentally kill her?  Is she just injured?

And this kind of ambiguity in favor of style pervades the rest of the movie.

Babydoll gets taken to the assylum…  But it quickly turns into some kind of bordello.  The inmates become dancers or prostitutes of some sort…  And the doctor is their matron…

But then Babydoll needs to dance.  And in order to do this she has to face down her inner demons…  Which is portrayed as some kind of kung-fu battle inside her head.

The visuals for these internal struggles are absolutely amazing.  Very stylish action sequences that look truly kickass.  But it’s not at all clear what is actually going on…

The internal sequence shows Babydoll and her friends cutting their way through hordes of steampunk Nazi zombies…  But that’s representative of an internal struggle while Babydoll is trying to dance in front of people…  Except that she isn’t actually a dancer in a bordello – she’s a patient in some kind of asylum…  So…  What is actually going on?

Is she dancing?  Is it group therapy?  Is she just sitting there, drooling?

All this ambiguity makes it very hard to understand what is going on, and very hard to care about the characters.

Are these a bunch of girls banding together against an oppressive system?  Are they just acting out and causing trouble for folks who are genuinely trying to help them?  Is it all happening inside one girl’s head?

There are suggestions that some of the fantasy is based in reality…  One of the custodians gets cut with a knife.  One of the girls appears to be injured or even killed.  But a lot of it – such as the death of the madam/doctor – seems to be completely unrelated to the real world.

Then there’s the strangely passive, us against them, misogynistic tone of the whole movie…

Pretty much all the bad guys are men.  Pretty much all the good guys are women.  The women are generally portrayed in a sexualized manner.  The women are beaten, injured, and abused constantly.  Babydoll’s primary weapon is, apparently, suggestive dancing.

The basic subtext seems to be that these girls keep getting beaten and abused, and the only way they can protect themselves is with sex.

All of which could, maybe, have been OK if we had some kind of heroic victory in the end…  But we didn’t.  Babydoll winds up getting a lobotomy.

I wound up feeling kind of dirty after watching the movie.  Like I wanted to go take a shower or something.

The internal fight scenes were downright awesome, and I’d happily pay for a movie set entirely within one of those worlds…  But the rest of the movie – the framework that those internal scenes fit into – was just depressing and confusing.

So, after 12 years, Duke Nukem Forever has finally been released.  Seems a little weird, to be honest.  What’ll we use as the punchline for all those vaporware jokes now?

Anyway, it’s out there.  And pretty much every self-respecting gamer has to give it a try.  After hearing about it for 12 years, you can’t really ignore it.

Unfortunately, it’d be better if we did.

I’ve never been that much of a Duke fanboy.  I only ever played Duke Nukem 3D – so that’s what I’m kind of expecting and comparing DNF to.  Maybe that isn’t a fair comparison.  Maybe I need to play all the other games in the series, all the spin-offs and everything.  Maybe that’d give me more perspective.

But, let’s be honest here.  The Duke series was never all that deep.  The characterization was never that impressive.  He’s basically a muscled lunk who’s been the protagonist of several different action games, but that’s about it.  And, to be even more honest, there are an awful lot of people playing DNF who’ve never actually played any other Duke games.  Who weren’t around to play the older titles, and grew up hearing about DNF as a joke.  So they’ll have even less perspective than I do.

What made DN3D unique at the time was a combination of provocative subject matter, and solid gameplay.  You were fighting mutant police officers who had turned into giant boar monsters – literally pig cops.  You ran across strippers, and adult stores, and porn theaters.  You could tip strippers, and ogle pixelated breasts.  Duke made some vaguely-offensive comments about his balls of steel, and similarly macho things.

And, while that certainly did get the game noticed, it was all secondary to some very solid gameplay.  DN3D was a first-person shooter much like Doom.  Except that it had some truly interesting weapons like shrink rays and freeze guns, and some interesting equipment like a holographic decoy and scuba gear.  And the levels were large and genuinely non-linear.  Sure, eventually you had to get to the exit or boss or whatever…  But frequently you could go through some vents, or back alley, or somehow bypass the horde of monsters at the front door.

But that very solid gameplay is simply gone.

DNF is very linear.  The path forward is very clear, and there’s generally only one way to proceed.  I haven’t found a single back alley or vent I could use to bypass the main force.  The weapons, thus far, are not terribly interesting.  Standard-issue pistols, shotguns, machine guns, lasers…  No sign of a shrink ray or anything like that.

Of course there may be more interesting weapons later…  But then you’ll run into the Halo-inspired two weapon limitation.  That’s right, you can carry just two weapons.  DN3D, like Doom and Half-Life and Quake, allowed you to carry a ridiculous number of weapons.  You were a veritable walking armory.  You had a pistol, and a shotgun, and a rocket launcher, and a shrink ray, and everything else – all at the same time.  DNF makes you pick just two weapons (plus explosives).

Another Halo-esque feature is the recharging “ego” meter which has replaced your health.  Getting shot doesn’t actually harm Duke’s body, just his ego.  And your ego comes back if you can just duck behind something and wait a few moments.  Which is functionally equivalent to the recharging shields in Halo.  This does add an interesting mechanic of being able to permanently boost your ego by playing mini-games and things like that…  But it doesn’t really feel the same as the old health bar did.

DNF still has the sophomoric sense of humor…  The game starts out in a restroom, where you get to press a mouse button to pee.  Then you’ve got a boss battle that ends with you kicking the thing’s eyeball through a set of goalposts.  It then turns out that you were playing a game (inside the game) while getting a blowjob from a couple girls.  As you wander through Duke’s house there are plenty of statues of topless women.  Duke makes plenty of macho comments.  There’s lots of fan service, and a couple humorous stabs at other gaming franchises.

But all of that seems stale.  Nudity and sex isn’t terribly shocking in a video game anymore – just look at what BioWare has been doing in the last few years.  The gaming industry has grown-up, and is generally treating nudity and sex in a more adult manner.  And even when it’s treated in a more gratuitous manner, like in The Witcher, it isn’t the butt of a joke.

DNF, however, is still giggling over boobs and penises like some pre-pubescent teen who’s gotten a glimpse of his first porno.

Worse, is the misogynistic tone of the whole thing.

In DN3D you would occasionally come across a woman trapped in some kind of alien pod-thing.  You were discouraged from killing those women – you were supposed to be rescuing them, after all.  If you did kill them, several monsters would appear.

In DNF you come across women trapped in alien tentacles.  In one section of the game – The Hive – those women are absolutely everywhere.  Frequently these women will ‘birth’ a litter of small aliens that will attack you.  But if you kill the woman before she pops, you don’t get swarmed by the little aliens.  So the game is encouraging you to kill the women, using exactly the same mechanic that used to discourage you in the first game.

In one part of the hive level you come across those same two girls that were servicing Duke in the beginning.  They’re both covered in tentacles, both ‘impregnated’ by the aliens.  They get a few lines of dialogue before dying – they apologize for putting on weight, and swear that they’ll be back to their former appearance in no time.  Duke responds with a callous “looks like you’re fucked” before killing them.  And you do have to kill them, because they’re placed side-by-side in a doorway, so that they block the tunnel you need to go through.  The only way to pass through is to kill them.

Not to mention the “Queen Bitch” boss monster with three very large and obvious breasts…  And the random breasts growing from the walls in the hive, which you can slap for no good reason…

The implication in DN3D was that Duke liked women.  He was macho and crude, but seemed to actually like the fairer sex.  Seemed to want to rescue them from the aliens because he wanted to spend some quality time with the damsels in distress.  In DNF, however, that implied warmth or fondness seems to be gone.  Of course nothing of the sort is ever stated explicitly or spelled-out in-game…  But it feels to me like all those women are simply there to serve Duke’s needs and then be discarded.  Which really lessens my opinion of the protagonist.

And, since this is a first person shooter…  It doesn’t feel so good playing as a protagonist that I don’t like.

As it is, I’m just not enjoying the game much.  There’s the occasional bit of humor that makes me chuckle, like finding a dead space marine that looks an awful lot like Isaac Clarke.  But most of the humor is forced and flat.  The graphics are OK, but nothing amazing.  The gameplay is that of a very simple, repetitive, linear shooter – absolutely nothing special about it.  There isn’t really anything that makes me want to rush home and fire up this game.  And, after an hour or so of playing, there’s plenty that makes me want to turn it off and go do something else.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the appeal of offensive humor.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed many episodes of Family Guy and South Park.  But there’s a significant difference between offensive humor, and simply offensive.

I’ve finished The Witcher 2:  Assassins of Kings – my final thoughts?  What a disappointment.

I really expected to like the game.  The first one was one of the best games I’ve ever played, bar none.  And the book I’ve read is similarly awesome.  So I really expected a decent sequel.  And it wasn’t decent.  It wasn’t even mediocre.  It was downright awful.

The graphics have obviously improved over the years.  It’d be amazing if they hadn’t.  The game looks nice.  And some real time and effort was put into modeling some of the characters…  Geralt looks exceptionally grizzled.  The various kings look very impressive with their half-decorative/half-functional armor.  Saskia looks attractive, but like you really wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.  Iorveth looks like he’s seen a lot of combat.  And the folks you get to have sex with are very well modeled.

But some of the graphical improvements seem downright superfluous.  Like having the ability to change Geralt’s hair style…  It isn’t really a bad option to have, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the context of these games.  It isn’t like you get to dress up for parties, or change other aspects of your appearance, or get tattoos – this isn’t Fable.  But you can change your hair.

The controls, with a keyboard and mouse, are downright awful.  Other folks were playing it with a gamepad, and maybe had a better time.  But I was using a keyboard and mouse, and it was awful.

The big problem was simply responsiveness.  I’d click the mouse button three times, expecting three sword swings, and I’d only get two.  I’d hit a movement key to get out of the way, and just stand there.  I’d try to take a step forward to loot an item or disarm a trap, and take three steps instead – possibly setting the trap off instead of disarming it.

It was all surmountable…  I set the difficulty to ‘easy’, and was able to live through combat.  And I was able to converse with people, loot items, move through the world…  But it all felt a little finicky.  A little flaky.  And I was constantly doing things I didn’t intend to.  The end result was pretty frustrating.

The inventory screen was a mess.  Truly a mess.  I basically just had a scrolling list of items you were carrying around.  I could filter that list by hitting different buttons…  But the end result was still just a long, scrolling list.  Generally speaking, the newest items showed up on top…  But there didn’t appear to be any way to sort the list by name, or weight, or value.  Which made actually managing the inventory somewhat difficult.  Especially after I’d been out adventuring for a while and had tons of different monster parts in my inventory.  Sorting through what was important to keep, and what could be dumped/sold, was not fun.

Potions were pretty much useless.  In the original game they’d last several in-game hours, which made it possible to prepare yourself ahead of time.  If you were going out at night to hunt monsters you could take a couple potions, and they’d last all night.  If you thought you’d be facing specific monsters you could choose certain potions ahead of time.  It added a tactical/planning element to the game.  If you knew what you were going up against, you could really prepare well and have an easy time.  If you didn’t – if you were caught off-guard – you had a hell of a fight ahead of you.

But potions in TW2 only last a few minutes.  Which means there’s no real preparation.  Sure, if you know you’re about to walk into a boss fight or something you can chug a potion…  But it’ll wear off shortly after that one battle.  So you can’t prepare for a whole evening of killing.  Which means you’re constantly getting caught off-guard, and having to do without the help of your potions.  Which means, in the long-run, that the difference between a fight with potions and a fight without potions is pretty negligible.  They can’t very well make you rely on potions like they did in the first game.

Worse are the sections where you really do need to rely on potions.  There’s a section of chapter 2 where I was walking through a very dark cave, and had to rely on cat potions to see in the dark.  But they kept wearing off.  And I had to keep drinking more.  Very annoying.

The day/night cycle seemed almost meaningless in TW2 as well.  In TW1, monsters generally came out at night.  If you had a quest to kill a pile of drowners, you’d have to wait until nightfall to do it.  And if you weren’t actually looking for trouble, it was a good idea to stay inside at night.  Various quests only showed up at night – you’d run into some woman going home after work and be asked to escort her, for example.

Now, in TW2 there are a couple quests that ask you to meet someone at a certain time of day…  But, for the most part, the time of day just doesn’t matter.  Monsters are around pretty much all the time.  I could go out and kill nekkers, endregas, harpies, and whatever else just as easily at noon, as at midnight.  Which, again, eliminated some of the planning and waiting that happened in TW1.

There was really no explanation of anything in TW2.  There wasn’t really any tutorial.  Most things were left completely unexplained.  I started picking up mutagens during the prologue – they have a chance of dropping off pretty much any monster you kill.  But you can’t actually use a mutagen until you train a talent that can be mutated.  And that won’t happen until you’re somewhere around level 10 (depending on how you spend your points).  But the game never actually explains any of that.  Nor does it explain that mutations are permanent and can’t be changed or un-done, so you really don’t want to use any of those lesser mutagens you find – rendering them simple vendor trash.  Nor does it explain that there’s a talent that makes mutagens more potent, but isn’t retro-active, so you really don’t want to use any mutagens until you’ve trained that talent.  Absolutely none of that is explained.

Nor does the game explain how to chain attacks together…  Or what any of the signs do…  Or where the various ‘critical effects’ like stun and bleed and incinerate come from…  Or whether it is safe to sell recipes and diagrams and formulas after you’ve read them…  Or what and armor enhancement is…  I could keep going, but you get the idea.  Basically nothing is actually explained at any point.

Books seem kind of meaningless in TW2.  In TW1 you needed to know about the herbs and monsters before you could successfully loot alchemical ingredients from them.  This meant that you’d periodically have to go find books on the local flora and fauna.  In TW2 you can just go out and loot stuff.  You don’t ever actually need to go find a book to lean about anything.  There may very well be some bonus for reading a book…  Maybe you do some extra damage or something…  But it isn’t enough to actually make it important to go find the book.

But, ultimately, the single most damning thing was the storyline.

We start out with Geralt in Temeria, helping King Foltest wage a war.  Foltest gets killed, Geralt is implicated, and sets out to clear his name.  That basic goal doesn’t even survive through the end of chapter 1.

By the time chapter 1 ends you’ve got Roche and Iorveth asking you to pick sides in the whole Legitimate Government versus The Rebels struggle.  You’ve also got Triss being kidnapped.  You’ve got corruption and racism aplenty in Flotsam, and racial riots.  You’ve got a war starting in the Pontar Valley, with another king looking to make a grab for land.  And you’ve got a sorceress or two acting very suspiciously.  You’ve got Geralt attempting to recover his memory, and trying to find out what happened to Yennefer.

Sure, you’re still technically following Letho’s trail…  Still technically trying to find the kingslayer…  But the whole “gotta clear my name” thing has kind of stopped being important.

I sided with the Scoia’tael which meant that chapter 2 was spent trying to heal Saskia, protect the city of Vargen, and figure out what happened to Triss.  There was very little mention of Letho, and basically no talk at all about clearing Geralt’s name.

By the time chapter 3 rolls around, Letho isn’t even important anymore.  We were trying to stop some nefarious plot involving sorceresses and dragons.  And I was trying to find Triss.  And various kings were trying to stab each-other in the back and take over various chunks of land.  Nobody seemed to care about Foltest’s death anymore.  Nobody seemed terribly concerned about who the kingslayer was anymore.

And then, at the very end of the game, we find out that The Emperor is actually the big badguy…  Just before everybody of consequence either runs away or is suddenly absolved of any wrongdoing.  And then the credits roll.

By the end of the game I really didn’t understand what I was trying to accomplish.  I didn’t know who I was fighting for, or against.  I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters.  I was just kind of trudging along, following the carrot on the end of the stick, hoping that things would suddenly gel and start making sense.  But they didn’t.

There was absolutely no sense of resolution.  No feeling of accomplishment.  It felt like I spent the entire game getting yanked around and lied-to.  And, ultimately, didn’t actually have any impact on any of it.  Felt like I’d really wasted my time.

Made it to Chapter 3 of The Witcher 2 last night…  Chapter 2 ended with Phillipa and Saskia teleporting away to some big summit.  But Saskia was acting weird.  So Ioreth and I took a look through Phillipa’s belonging, found a book of poisons and antidotes, and discovered that Saskia was being mind controlled.

So, we ran off to the summit as well.

And that’s when the rails re-appeared.  Chapter 3 was almost entirely devoid of real choices.

To start with, I’m told that I can either follow Iorveth through the caves or go take a look at the camp…  I went to look at the camp and got jumped by a pile of Order soldiers.  I fought them off, and was then told to follow Iorveth.  I suspect that I could’ve allowed myself to be captured…  But I’ll come back to the whole ‘imprisonment’ thing again later.

So, I follow Iorveth through the caves.  We eventually wind up inside this mostly-ruined city where the summit is being held.  And Iorveth tells me that I can either make my way to Phillipa’s cell through the sewers, or I can let myself get arrested.

I didn’t want to do another sneaky/stealthy thing, so I decided to try for the sewers.  I wandered around and around for a good, long time.  Trying various doors.  Looking for signs.  Trying to talk to people.  Trying not to get arrested.  Simply could not find the entrance to the sewers.

Eventually I gave up and let myself get arrested.  Which, after some interesting dialogue, results in my death.  I assume something similar would have happened if I’d allowed myself to be arrested earlier as well.

So, I have to find the sewers.

As I’m looking around, I stumble across some boxers and gamblers and arm wrestlers and a notice board with some witcher contracts…  And none of that makes any sense to me at all.

I’m a criminal.  Any guard that sees me immediately attempts to arrest me.  I can’t walk more than ten feet without having to fight a guard or run away.  The summit is happening any minute now, I’m racing against time to stop some nefarious plot.  I have to rescue Triss.  I have to find Phillipa.  I have to free Saskia.  Everything in the game says run, run, run!  And yet, they’re providing me with an opportunity to sit down and arm wrestle people…  Or kill some gargoyles for coin…  Which just seems weird.

Eventually I find the sewers.  Make my way through them, and into the dungeons.  I kill some guards and talk to Phillipa.  I’m given the choice of either freeing her (and she claims she’ll take the spell off of Saskia) or rescuing Triss.  I’m a bit of a romantic, so I go after Triss.

I rescue Triss, we disrupt the summit and expose Sile as a murderess.  Saskia goes all dragon on us and starts burning down the city.  Phillipa has apparently made her escape.

I chase Sile up to the top of a tower, we have words, and then she tries to teleport away.  I’ve got a choice between allowing her a messy, painful death at the hands of a malfunctioning teleporter; or saving her.  I save her, she tells me where Yennefer is, and teleports away.

Then I’ve got to fight the big ol’ dragon – Saskia.  We wind up battling our way up the tower…  Then fighting on the very top of the tower…  And then I’m clinging to her back as she tries to fly away…  And then we crash, she’s impaled on a giant log, and I’ve got the option of killing her.  I let her live, thinking I can still find Phillipa and break the spell.

I wander back towards town…  And that’s about the time the “Epilogue” title comes up.  Yup, that’s right, that was pretty much the end of the game.  Chapter 3 was very, very short.  Very linear.  Very rushed.  Offered absolutely no resolution.  Felt very unfinished.

But there’s still the Epilogue, right?  Maybe there’ll be some closure to be had yet…

Nope.

I talk to Triss as we walk through the city, find out some of what happened while I was fighting the dragon.  We stumble across a badly-wounded Iorveth.  I help him out.  Then I go meet with Letho.

Letho tells me all about himself, the Emperor, the Wild Hunt, Yennefer, my past…  Long, rambling, boring dialogue about all this stuff.  In literature, they tell you to show it, not tell it.  Well, the same is true in games.  Sitting there and listening to Letho ramble on about all this stuff was just plain boring.  Would’ve been more interesting if I’d gathered more of these clues myself, through exploration and gameplay.  Just being handed all this information was intensely unsatisfying.

I didn’t kill Letho, in the end.  I let him go.  Didn’t seem to be much point in killing him.  He was just a tool being used by the Emperor.  And he’d apparently helped me out in the past.  So I guess I owed him his life.

I was looking forward to going after the Emperor…  Or going to see Yennefer…  Or to confront the Wild Hunt again…  Or going after Phillipa…  But absolutely none of that happened.  The credits rolled, and that was the end of it.

I could probably have come up with more resolution if I’d killed some of these people.  I’d at least know that their stories were at an end.  I wouldn’t have to wonder what was going to become of Saskia, or Sile…  But that wouldn’t have given closure to the game as a whole.  The storyline that started with the Emperor killing off Kings won’t be ended until the Emperor is dealt with.  The storyline that started with the Lodge of Sorceresses conspiring to take over the North won’t be ended until the Lodge of Sorceresses is dealt with.  And neither of those things happens in The Witcher 2.

I’m kind of curious to see how the game would differ if I’d followed Roche…  I suspect that chapters 1 and 3 would be nearly identical, and that chapter 2 would be different.  But I’m not sure I’m curious enough to actually do it.

Obviously they’ve set themselves up for another game.  An expansion, or a sequel, or something.  But I’m not sure I care enough at this point to actually play it.

I’m really feeling pretty dissatisfied with this game.

I wound up siding with Ioreth and his Scoia’tael at the end of Chapter 1…  Which means I wound up in Vargeth, siding with some lady named Saskia.  She’s fighting to create a free state where everyone is equal.  Sounds noble, but I’m sure there’s a catch.

Iorveth is providing archer support in the upcoming battle.  Roche is on the other side of things, siding with the rightful king in the area.  And I find myself wondering just how different the game would be at this point, if I’d sided with Roche.  I can’t imagine that Roche would have wound up in Vargeth, siding with Saskia.  Would I have actually been in a different place, with a different pile of quests?

Well, anyway, Saskia gets poisoned.  I need to gather some rather obscure components to cure her.  And I have to lift some kind of epic curse from the battlefield-to-be, so that we can resolve the impending war.  And then there’s an assortment of other things to tend to – young men disappearing around town, harpies in the area, Triss is missing…

I have to go hunting for some special herb in the mines beneath the city…  Took a few dwarves with me…  Was a very, very annoying journey.  To begin with, the dwarves were always under foot.  Kept running into them, tripping over them, having to shove them out of the way.  Was fairly difficult to make my way to the monsters and kill them.

The second problem was the short duration of potions.  It was really dark in there, so I was using cat potions.  But they kept wearing off.  I must’ve gone through at least 5 potions.  Very irritating to have it wear off in the middle of a fight…  And then have to meditate just to drink one again…

I helped out some trolls.  Figured out what was happening to the young men.  Killed a bunch of harpies.  Recovered various ingredients for the antidote.  Fought my way through the killer mist, to the enemy camp, and got some noble blood.  Then lifted the curse on that battlefield.  We cured Saskia, and fought a huge battle.

It turns out that Saskia is a dragon.  That wasn’t actually all that much of a surprise to me, though.  I’m not sure why.  I guess because Iorveth was fawning all over her, and there were reports that the Scoia’tael were friends with a dragon.

And then the mage who’d been helping me, Phillipa, appears to have somehow bewitched Saskia.

And Triss has been hauled off to some other city, so I’ve got to go rescue both Saskia and Triss…

And there are constant references to the Wild Hunt.  And Yennefer.  And I’m really curious to see where this all goes…

Finished Chapter 1 of The Witcher 2…

I never did make my peace with the combat system.  I wound up in some kind of haunted asylum where I kept getting attacked by pairs of wraiths.  I simply could not fight them.  Didn’t matter which potions I drank, didn’t matter which oils I used, didn’t matter which spells I cast, didn’t matter how much I ran around or dodged…  Roughly three hits and I was dead.

If I got lucky, I could kill one of them.  More often than not, I died before either of them did.

After about an hour of this, I got frustrated enough to turn the difficulty setting down to “easy”…  I’m now able to survive combat, but it isn’t a whole lot of fun.  I don’t really need to dodge or use special stuff or anything…  I can pretty much just spam the attack button and win.  Which is disappointing.  There ought to be a setting somewhere between IWIN and IDIE.

Oh well…  At least I’m able to progress now…

So, I killed a bunch of nekkers, blew up their nests.  Killed a bunch of endregas, smashed their eggs, killed their queens.  I killed the kayran, which was impressive.  Solved the mystery of that haunted asylum.  Found out what happened to the troll’s wife.  Helped out some random people.  Beat everyone at boxing, and arm wrestling, and dice.  Picked some flowers for Triss, fell into an ancient elven ruin, fooled around in there.

And then all hell broke loose.  Some kind of riots in the town of Flotsam.  Humans and non-humans killing each-other off.  And I had to pick sides.

Rather than slowly introduce me to the conflict, let me get to know the players, let me form an opinion like they did in The Witcher – I’m immediately required to choose a side.  And I can’t even choose “witcher neutrality”.  I have to side with either the Scoia’tael, or Roche and his humans.

Once again, I sided with the Scoia’tael.  It’s hard to say ‘no’ to a bunch of plucky rebels fighting for their freedom.  Although, in this game, nothing is nearly as clean as that…  Pretty much everyone is a monster, it’s just a question of who they prey on.

It seems that I wasn’t the only one who complained about inventory management in the first game.  You’ve now got separate slots for gloves, pants, boots, and armor…  And plenty of items to equip in each of those slots.  All sorts of different benefits and bonuses to consider.  Trophies now give you bonuses, instead of just being turned in for cash.  There’s a variety of weapons to use, many of which are actually useful.

There’s also a full-blown crafting system now.  You aren’t personally able to make anything beside potions…  But you can collect components and blueprints for armor, weapons, and traps; then have a crafter build them for you.  Unfortunately, you don’t just learn recipes like you did in the first game.  You have to actually carry the recipe around in your inventory.  They’re light, so that isn’t a problem…  But they add to an already-cluttered interface, making it even harder to find what you’re looking for.  And if you accidentally sell a recipe, you can’t craft that potion until you acquire a new recipe for it.

At this point, now that simply staying alive is no longer an issue, I think I’ve got two major complaints left.

First, the controls suck.  Not so much which buttons you have to press to perform various actions…  But the responsiveness of those actions to the buttons you press.  I’ll hit the dodge button, for example, and Geralt will just stand there and get hit.  Or I’ll hit the block button, with enough stamina to do it, and he’ll just stand there and get hit.  Or I’ll try to strafe to the side, and he’ll just stand there and get hit.  I’m sure if I complained about this on the forums they’d blame my newly-upgraded computer…  But I’m inclined to believe it’s the game itself.  There’s really no reason I should be seeing any input lag at this point.

Second, potions annoy the living hell out of me.  It makes no sense that I need to meditate in order to drink a potion.  Yes, you can meditate anywhere you want…  But it’s still an un-necessary step.  Rather than simply clicking on a potion, I have to click the meditate button, selection the ‘drink potion’ button, select the potion, and then click the drink button.  Very annoying.  And, given the limited duration of everything, not being able to drink them in-combat is just plain stupid.  If you get jumped by random critters, you’ve got no time to chug a potion.  If you walk into some kind of encounter you didn’t know about, you can’t chug a potion.  And you can’t very well dose yourself before you go out hunting because it all wears off after a couple minutes.  Very annoying.