By Jim Rossignol on May 17th, 2011 at 1:19 pm.
UPDATE: Hurray, made some progress. Seem to have unblocked the storyline and carrying on towards chapter two. To clear up some misconceptions from the comments below: I’m playing the retail version patched the same as anyone who would have bought the game today. My saves from the preview build do not work, and I am not using them – or I’d already be hours into chapter two!
Also, I am talking to CDP directly about this stuff. They are super-helpful, and annoying as it was to not get any early code, I certainly don’t bear any silly grudges. This is a huge game for the PC, and I’m just keep the conversation going over here.
There so seem to be some driver issues, too. Take a look in the comments below and you’ll see a bunch of updates for people with issues.
The game is clearly going to be patched a whole bunch more, and that’s a shame. I’ll be reviewing it as soon as I get it finished, whatever state it might be in at that time.
17/05/2011 at 13:24 Valvarexart says:
Give it a little time :( Please don’t saw it because of a buggy release
17/05/2011 at 13:48 Sleepymatt says:
I believe Jim’s point is that the pre-release teaser he played, and the full pre-release build that other reviewers were given a week before the full release (which RPS were forced to wait for), didn’t contain this bug. In other words, any site that wasn’t one of the chosen few got screwed over despite being vocal pre-release supporters of the game.
What a shame.
17/05/2011 at 14:04 Unaco says:
@SleepyMatt
If, indeed, this is an actual bug, and not just Jim fucking a quest up and jumping the gun to post it as an article. Haven’t seen anyone else mentioning this bug, yet, either on the (limited) GoG.com/TW2 forums, or in any of the threads in various forums.
17/05/2011 at 14:10 Sleepymatt says:
True Unaco. Also, it is heart-warming to see the devs posting below in an attempt to find out what has happened to Jim’s game ASAP… Just a shame they wouldn’t give him the pre-release review copy.
17/05/2011 at 14:24 El_MUERkO says:
I’ve just started. I’ve set it to ‘Normal’ difficulty but I’m finding combat very tough.
I feel like I’m missing something.
I’m constantly put against multiple enemies and have to keep back peddling to kill them.
Any tips?
17/05/2011 at 14:27 Jim Rossignol says:
“If, indeed, this is an actual bug, and not just Jim fucking a quest up and jumping the gun to post it as an article.”
The side quest is definitely broken, as it just traps me a room. Not sure about overall quest however. I’ve played through all this before, remember, and didn’t get stuck, which I have been for an hour or so. Just managed to progress however, having not really done anything different.
Talking to CDP about it, anyway.
17/05/2011 at 14:55 Nick says:
It can’t be buggy, everyone knows Obsidian are the only developer to release buggy games.
17/05/2011 at 16:00 Alder says:
Same shit with fighting.
I think, tip is “switch to easy”
17/05/2011 at 17:48 HexagonalBolts says:
If anyone who is reading is worried about buying the game because of bugs – albeit I’m not as far as Jim, I’ve enjoyed stellar (and very fun) performance so far. It seems very polished, bar a few animations being a little funny.
17/05/2011 at 13:27 President Weasel says:
I believe it’s wise to applaud CD Projekt for their great ambition, and then wait a couple of months for their product to be patched to live up to it.
They may not currently be leaping that tall building in a single bound, but they’re leaving a pretty high mark on it. Admittedly it’s going to be hard for you to produce a review now based on what the game is likely to be like in a couple of months, but I suppose you could do a retrospective/reassessment.
17/05/2011 at 13:55 Mike says:
Of course, but I think Jim very much wants to sing the praises now if possible, as this will help CD Projekt.
17/05/2011 at 16:49 President Weasel says:
I haven’t finished the first Witcher yet, but given CDR’s track record (giving everyone who bought the Witcher in its original buggy condition the Enhanced Edition free?) I fully intend to buy the Witcher 2 pretty soon. I’m just not desperate to do it on release day since I have the first game to be going on with.
17/05/2011 at 13:27 Sinkoristo says:
The game has a lot of technical issues as well.. Some Nvidia users have reported that while playing the game, their GPU usage is less than 30%..
I for one will wait for a patch and proper drivers from Nvidia.
17/05/2011 at 13:33 Item! says:
See my comment in the previous Witcher “no WIT” thread – there are beta drivers which apparently fix the issue now available from Guru 3D – 275.27 I believe.
This issue seems to be a faulty 3D driver component which destroys fps even if you are not using 3D!
Apparently you can also uninstall the 3D components of the current WHQL driver set as a workaround.
17/05/2011 at 13:36 Sinkoristo says:
Could you give a link to those drivers?
EDIT: Never mind. Found it.
17/05/2011 at 13:40 trjp says:
There is NO way to measure ‘GPU usage’ – it’s not like a CPU, you can’t measure a GPU in that way…
Anyone making such a specific claim is talking balls – there may be issues (what PC game doesn’t have them?) but GPU usage is a completely meaningless concept.
17/05/2011 at 13:46 Item! says:
Well there are certainly monitoring apps/tools that will give you a value for “GPU Utlisation” or “load” – MSI Afterburner and GPUz spring to mind…
Whether that information is actually *meaningful* or not, I don’t really know…though I would hazard that it isn’t *completely* redundant, else why include it at all?
17/05/2011 at 14:10 Sinkoristo says:
Tried the Guru drivers.
It’s somewhat better, but still. SLi performance is VERY poor. I have 2x GTX 295 which in most games scale very well but in The Witcher 2:
Single GPU = 30fps
2GPU SLI = 37fps
4GPU SLI = 39-40fps
So umh.. I’m gonna put this on hold for a while. To see if the drivers get better.
17/05/2011 at 14:17 Item! says:
Hm – I would certainly have expected better performance from your setup than that which you are currently experiencing!
As you say, it may be just that the SLI drivers/profile needs more baking.
I will post back as to how I get on with my single GTX570 a bit later…
17/05/2011 at 14:22 Item! says:
To add; have you tried turning everything to max, but turning the “Ubersampling” to off? It seems to be the single most demanding element for all but current gen SLI setups…
17/05/2011 at 15:20 Sinkoristo says:
Yeah. I haven’t even tested it yet. I heard it was a very heavy feature so I just left it off.
I’m also getting a massive FPS drop every time I visit the inventory. When I come back, the game is running something like 10fps for a few secs before coming back to full speed. It’s effin annoying. And all my other games wotk like a charm :/
But I’m not the only one having SLI issues with the game apparently. Users with 500 series have also complained about how bad the scaling is even in the most recent Beta drivers.
17/05/2011 at 16:34 Item! says:
So – I am getting around 60ish FPS on average, with lows of high 40′s and highs of 75+
Runs really well for me…
17/05/2011 at 16:52 Sinkoristo says:
What kind of rig do you have?
I have i7 920 running @ 4GHz, and 6GB of DDR3.. and of course those GTX’s. The SLI just scales.. horribly.
17/05/2011 at 17:25 Item! says:
^^^^^
GTX570 (slight factory OC), 2500k @ 4.3Ghz and 8Gb RAM…
17/05/2011 at 17:39 Fierce says:
Does nVIDIA even have an SLI profile out for this already?
I’m using Radeons and am using the latest 11.5a Catalyst drivers, but I haven’t heard anything about a new CAP for Witcher 2 performance. I figured they’d either release hotfixes/mid-month updates for it within a week from today due to the PR ramifications, or have both updated drivers and profiles out for later this month.
17/05/2011 at 13:28 Vexing Vision says:
Oh great, dread level rising. 5 hours until I get to play…
17/05/2011 at 13:29 Lilliput King says:
Crappy console port oh my goodness
17/05/2011 at 13:33 magnus says:
A port of a game THATS NOT EVEN ON CONSOLES? I’m actualy going to face-palm so hard I will hurt myself! (sigh!)
17/05/2011 at 13:34 Lilliput King says:
It’s more than possible I may have been having a little bit of fun, but you go right ahead.
17/05/2011 at 13:43 magnus says:
Oooops! Sorry dude, I think I must have got out of the wrong side of my bed this afternoon! :O (facepalm)
17/05/2011 at 13:44 Tom OBedlam says:
Irony Failure Detected
:)
17/05/2011 at 13:51 iHavePants says:
Vocabulary failure detected? I believe you meant sarcasm.
17/05/2011 at 13:56 Tom OBedlam says:
Nah, irony definitely. Lilliput has echoed AIM ironically, as this is not a console game.
17/05/2011 at 13:58 P7uen says:
Serves you right you lazy beggar, you should be getting out of bed in the mornings like the rest of us.
17/05/2011 at 14:01 Vexing Vision says:
Witcher 2 was better.
17/05/2011 at 14:17 battles_atlas says:
Its all been downhill for CD Projekt since they sold out to Activision
17/05/2011 at 15:03 magnus says:
Serves you right you lazy beggar, you should be getting out of bed in the mornings like the rest of us.
Charming! :p
17/05/2011 at 13:29 Lobotomist says:
Reminds me on last week interview where Chriss Avalone apologizes for bugs in Fallout New Vegas.
Now FNV is one of “meatier” RPGs in recent memory. I have been playing it for months and I am still finding new quests , hidden areas , NPCs …etc
Yet – community complained about two quest bugs.
Two quest bugs , among hundreds.
I had to laugh.
Poor Obsidian , they just cannot get a break.
17/05/2011 at 13:36 Nim says:
You can fix over-ambitiousness but you can’t patch a lack thereof. I commend the honorable folks at Obsidian what they have managed to achieve with NV. Amazing game.
17/05/2011 at 13:42 trjp says:
I bought the original Fallout 3 at launch – it ran OK on my PC apart from the completely random “instant crash to desktop” bugs I kept running into (usually miles from a save), so I dumped it.
I tried again recently – I thought with the time that’s passed, the patches and driver updates which have occurred and the fact I have a newer, shinier PC that it would be fine.
CTDd within 10 mins of starting – so I fucked it in the bin – I’m not ensure why they bother…
17/05/2011 at 13:50 Lobotomist says:
(i was not talking about Fallout 3 , but FNV)
People do not understand that complexity of RPG game is far greater than complexity of “manshooter”
And if you try to make a complex and great one – there are going to be bugs.
So many great RPGs were buried by gamers , only to regret it later.
Vampire Bloodlines and Arcanum fall to mind…
17/05/2011 at 13:29 Tori says:
Eh.. I hate when game devs do that. I can understand a bug with the engine, you can’t test all the different setups of a PC. But a problem with a script, especially one near the beginning of the game is something that should not happen.
I hope that a patch will be out swiftly.
17/05/2011 at 13:43 Gnoupi says:
PC Software development:
- Code, implement new features
- Test, fix bugs
- Code, implement new features
- Test, fix bugs
(…)
- Code, implement last features
- Test, fix bugs close to release
- Be in hurry and stress because it’s already a “zero-day” patch.
- Break things which didn’t ask for anything, on the way of your emergency bug-fixes
- Tes… no time, deliver to the download platforms
- Pray deity of your liking
- Don’t make plans for the coming weekends
- Spend the coming weeks bug fixing and handling clients’ wrath
17/05/2011 at 14:04 Diziet Sma says:
@Gnoupi
Pretty spot on. With software becoming incredibly complicated (of which I believe games are at the forefront) it becomes nigh on impossible to guarantee that you can go in and change one thing without some perverse knock on effect occurring. You can have procedures/tests and QA stuff up to the hilt but to test everything after one minor change is not practical all the time. Under pressure one or two tests will get skipped or deemed “This should never effect that” and left for later. Murphy’s Law dictates that this will effect that and bam… you introduce a new and unexpected bug in your software.
17/05/2011 at 18:58 Arglebargle says:
When a company with as much resources as Intel can screw up their version control on something as important as their new Sandy Bull motherboard chipset, what’re the odds a smaller game company can manage it as well?
Of course, I have to wait a bit to buy Witcher 2, so I can afford to be phelgmatic about it.
17/05/2011 at 13:32 batfink says:
I agree, I will be waiting for it to be patched a couple of times and I wholeheartedly agree with prior comments, lets not sour this with “Crysis 2″ like discussions. CD Projekt are our last bastion of hope and I will support them 100%
17/05/2011 at 18:48 Cinek says:
Oh come on – noone will make crysis2-alike discussions here cause it’s damn difficult to release an AAA game as broken as C2 was. With half of it not working, and other part half-broken.
After Crysis 2 it can only get better.
17/05/2011 at 13:32 Nero says:
What a shame.
17/05/2011 at 13:45 stahlwerk says:
Oh, deer.
17/05/2011 at 14:02 iHavePants says:
Silly llama, you’re not a deer. Stop trying to commune with deers. You don’t even have antlers.
17/05/2011 at 16:46 President Weasel says:
What an alpaca nonsense.
17/05/2011 at 13:37 Tom OBedlam says:
When I finish work I need to finish the end of act V and the epilogue. Then there’s a chance I might not sleep tonight…
17/05/2011 at 15:17 Azradesh says:
Of the first game, right?!
17/05/2011 at 13:39 Ohle says:
Jim, we’re looking into this for you… or rather, check your email!
17/05/2011 at 13:43 frenz0rz says:
I lawd, my copy should be arriving in a day or two. Praying for a patch!
17/05/2011 at 13:47 TomGop says:
Hi, we’ve tested this quest lots of times, though never noticed particular blocker.
Jim, since it’s the first time I’ve seen this – is it possible you send us your save game file?
Thanks in advance.
Tomek Gop.
CDP RED.
17/05/2011 at 13:48 Tom OBedlam says:
Amazing service.
17/05/2011 at 13:52 moonwalker says:
Awesome :-)
17/05/2011 at 13:52 Valvarexart says:
Though this doesn’t really concern me, I find it awesome that developers are coming on here and responding to issues…
17/05/2011 at 13:56 godgoo says:
it’s all love with these guys
17/05/2011 at 14:14 Spatula says:
You’ve got to be happy with the speed and help offered here. Nice one dude.
17/05/2011 at 14:18 Sinkoristo says:
Gotta Love CDP RED. ^^
17/05/2011 at 14:24 batfink says:
Again, backs up my previous comment, these guys and DICE are our last hope, fantastic service from CDPR
17/05/2011 at 15:19 Burning Man says:
ALL PRAISE OUR BENEVOLENT OVERLORDS!
17/05/2011 at 18:10 sidhellfire says:
TAKE MY MONIES! All of them!
17/05/2011 at 19:01 Cinek says:
Yes… that’s one of these moments when you are proud to be Pole.
This guy is better than Pope in raising patriotism! hehehehe ;)
17/05/2011 at 13:50 gganate says:
Did the first Witcher have a buggy release? At least they are dropping a patch the first day.
17/05/2011 at 13:51 Item! says:
Did the first Witcher have a buggy release?
…renowned for it!
17/05/2011 at 14:09 iHavePants says:
It had a buggy year or more, even with constant patching. The Enhanced Edtion patch cleared up nearly everything though along whilst improving the translations and voice overs and decreasing load times.
17/05/2011 at 13:52 Sorbicol says:
I was really looking forward to this tonight as well….
17/05/2011 at 13:52 Sigh says:
Mistaken comment removed by poster.
17/05/2011 at 13:56 DeepSleeper says:
I’m often more concerned with bugs I directly experience too. If “some people” are having problems but I can still play the game… well, sucks to be them, but I’m going to talk about actually playing the game.
So I can understand their position.
17/05/2011 at 14:03 GenBanks says:
At least Witcher 2 is actually available to purchase hehe. Still no sign of Brink on the steam store (in UK at least).
17/05/2011 at 14:08 P7uen says:
Well if he can’t WIT the game he can’t just tell you how good it is and that it will be patched, can he?
Because he can’t play it, do you see?
You don’t have to review the game for lots of people, he does.
17/05/2011 at 14:10 Sigh says:
Mistaken Comment.
17/05/2011 at 14:21 Ergates_Antius says:
I’m guessing it’s a case of lower expectations.
Brink just sort of arrived, the build up to the Witcher 2 release has been more high profile (on here anyway).
17/05/2011 at 14:30 CMaster says:
You mean like this one? I can’t think why they didn’t do something like that very article on the site.
17/05/2011 at 14:32 Lilliput King says:
Heh, believe me, there will be game breaking CTDs to come with W2 yet. I’m sure CDP will get them sorted as they’ve done in the past.
Regarding this post, I think it’s Jim’s way of saying we should expect the WIT a little later than scheduled.
17/05/2011 at 14:41 Sigh says:
Thanks CMaster, I missed that post. I removed the text of my mistaken and slightly inappropriate comments. I stand corrected and ashamed.
17/05/2011 at 14:43 CMaster says:
Sorry if I came across a bit sarky, but it wasn’t hard to find.
Of course, the tone of the article is a bit different, but then the problems mentioned in the Brink article are (to my mind) much greater – that some people flat out can’t play.
17/05/2011 at 15:31 Sigh says:
No worries CMaster, you were correct to point that out. For some reason I missed that initial Brink post. I deleted my comments because I didn’t think it was fair to let poorly researched accusations remain on the site.
It was just a misunderstanding on my part due to missing a particular post.
17/05/2011 at 13:54 Nallen says:
Suddenly the delayed purchase seems like a good idea :)
17/05/2011 at 14:03 d32 says:
Well, IMO it always is. I never go to cinema during the first night, never stand in the line for new piece of electronics and never buy unreviewed games. Why anyone behaves differently is beyond my understanding.
17/05/2011 at 14:26 bwion says:
I’ve come to think of PC games like a fine wine or cheese: they invariably get better with age. And unlike wine or cheese, they also get less expensive with age.
17/05/2011 at 15:04 TillEulenspiegel says:
I do make one exception to my “buy it 6-12 months later” rule: when I really want to give you money. Small developer, promising game, here, take some cash now. I will gladly buy your alpha/beta (Mount & Blade, Frozen Synapse…) and never play it, knowing that it will probably develop into something good, and you might make more stuff in the future.
But $50 for the privilege of playing a game early? Nah.
17/05/2011 at 15:42 Gar says:
Yea, I’m with TillEulenspiegel on this one. This game is the first I have ever pre-ordered, and I have only bought a couple of games day-one in the past couple of years. I won’t be playing TW2 today or in the next couple of weeks either most likely, as I’m more of a 1-2 games at a time kind of gamer and I’m not in any hurry. I just wanted to support CDP:R the best I could :D
17/05/2011 at 16:41 FriendlyFire says:
+1
I’ve preordered the game on GOG to 1) support the devs, 2) support DRM-less games and 3) get the free goodies, but I will likely wait a bit before playing, in part due to the fact I still have to finish the first Witcher beforehand :)
(And the website rebuild makes me sad as I can’t activate my TW1 copy…)
17/05/2011 at 18:13 skinlo says:
Hmm, I tend to agree, although I did pre-order Portal 2. But with the 2 pack, it did come out cheaper than buying it from Amazon at the time. Plus I’m a Valve fanboy.
17/05/2011 at 13:56 deadstoned says:
Shame you bumped into bug so quickly.
17/05/2011 at 14:00 GenBanks says:
Since I have an exam tomorrow I’ve been holding out from playing it. I did launch the game though to check it out.
I gave ‘Ultra’ graphics settings a try for curiosity’s sake, knowing that it would probably strain my system (i7 930, Radeon 5870, 6gb ram) and although the lighting effects in particular are GORGEOUS the fps was quite low. When I play properly tomorrow or the day after I’ll probably fiddle with high.
What kind of optimal settings have the rest of you found for your systems?
17/05/2011 at 14:11 Sidorovich says:
I’ll be happy if it just runs on my ailing Athlon 4800.
17/05/2011 at 14:22 Nallen says:
God dammit, really? I feel like this entire upgrade cycle has been a total waste. My flatmate is still using his E8600 and my old 8800GTX and not having any problems. Now I’ll have to replace everything (i920, 5750) again for TW2 and BF3.
17/05/2011 at 14:23 GenBanks says:
Another thing is that the mouse cursor was quite laggy on the home screen… not too big of a deal once I started moving the character around, but slightly annoying.
@Nallen It’s not a big deal, I had settings completely maxed out with 1920×1200 resolution. It felt like I was getting roughly low 20s fps without much going on (no combat etc). I’m’ sure it’ll still look great if I lower some settings slighltly…
I like games having future proof graphics options!
17/05/2011 at 14:42 TillEulenspiegel says:
Well, this whole GPU generation is pretty unimpressive. Minor improvements and a whole lot of electricity usage. I’m limping along with an older card, eagerly anticipating the next generation to be released late this year; AMD and NVIDIA are both switching to a 28nm process.
17/05/2011 at 18:09 Fierce says:
@GenBanks
While I understand it as a PC Gamer, going Ultra everything is never a good place to start with a current generation game such as this. It usually results in fomenting frustration.
Nonetheless, mine are:
None
Very Large
Medium (Shadows are always expensive)
High
Normal
Enabled
Enabled
Enabled
Disabled
Disabled (Also expensive and sometimes more annoying than beneficial)
Enabled
Enabled
Enabled
Disabled
Disabled
Enabled (Meh, cutscenes)
Disabled
Disabled
Disabled
High Spec
i7 920 @ 3.33GHz, 6GB RAM, dual Radeon 5850s, 1920×1200
@Nallen
You weren’t going to get very far with that 5750 anyway. I hope you’re reading reviews before buying those GPUs.
Also, as per what TillEulenspiegel said, the ATI 6900 series/Nvidia 500 series GPUs are all just evolutionary tweaks to 2009′s 5800 series/400 series respectfully rather than revolutionary tech. If you want the real graphical jump, wait until reviews of this years GPUs either this Summer, or around Halloween. I forget when they’re releasing, but it’ll be one or the other.
17/05/2011 at 22:06 GenBanks says:
Thanks for posting your settings Fierce, our specs aren’t too different.
I didn’t really expect to run it on ultra, I just wanted to know what it looks like with max settings since I wasn’t going to be playing the game properly right away (and it sure does look nice!)
17/05/2011 at 14:09 Herbert_West says:
I have two problems with graphics/controls right now:
A, the game plays itself in widescreen mode, aka the top and bottom quarter of my screen are filled with balck, and only the middle shows the actula game, no matter what resolutiln I choose
B, I cant seem to reassign up/down/left/right instead of the WASD controls.
Any help, dear RPS?
17/05/2011 at 14:20 TomGop says:
Herbert_West – we’re right now supporting 16:9 natively. Other aspects are non-native right now and we’re planning to include native support in one of the upcoming updates.
As per WASD redefinition – did you try “Configurator.exe” from /bin folder?
T.
17/05/2011 at 14:21 GenBanks says:
Is your monitor 4:3 aspect ratio?
17/05/2011 at 14:28 Herbert_West says:
Tomgop: I’ll try. The autolaunched config editor says something like “cant be reassigned”. It let me reassign left and right, but not up and down. Weird.
Genbanks: Yep, its almost a decade old now.
17/05/2011 at 15:19 Man Raised by Puffins says:
Black bars in 4:3? Oh balls.
17/05/2011 at 17:25 Zenicetus says:
I pre-ordered (downloading now), but I’m very disappointed to hear it’s a forced 16:9 aspect ratio in the initial release. That means everything scales down and looks smaller on my 4:3 monitor. And no, not everyone uses a widescreen monitor. The one I have is a high-end pro graphics monitor, where color correction was more important than aspect ratio.
It’s good to hear that a 4:3 native version will eventually be patched-in, but I hope RPS mentions this in the WIT/review, since it wasn’t in the day one release. While you’re at it, try running it on a 4:3 display to see how that affects the game.
17/05/2011 at 19:11 Cinek says:
It doesn’t support 4:3? As a PC game? What?! Why?
ODD…. smells console crap, even though I know it’s PC game from the ground.
17/05/2011 at 21:46 kyrieee says:
Glad to hear it’s being patched in. Everything is so small on my screen at the moment =(
Love the game otherwise though
17/05/2011 at 14:13 Hellraiserzlo says:
Bugs? bring them! the game stutters so much on low settings that I don’t even want to play it.
17/05/2011 at 14:15 Keilnoth says:
If I remember well this was already a problem in the first released version of The Witcher 1. The game was pretty buggy and it was impossible to finish some quests including the main quest.
Then they patched the game… and you lost all the saved game you had… and had to start all over again… and finaly you went to the Config Panel and uninstalled that crap and continued playing Mass Effect.
17/05/2011 at 15:28 Squirrelfanatic says:
Doesn’t seem like such a huge difference to me. TW1 took some time to run smoothly and is a great game. ME ran from the get go and was an awfully boring game for me. In both cases I lost some time to get what I wanted. The difference is that with TW1 it payed out.
17/05/2011 at 14:26 Ergates_Antius says:
It’s already downloaded from GoG , just need the unlock – but maybe I’ll give it a couple of days – see if a new patch arrives.
17/05/2011 at 14:33 Lobotomist says:
I just want to say how irresponsible this post from Jim Rossignol was.
0 day Patch breaking saves in pre release evaluation version =/= bug
Posting this loudly as main news at release day = DAMAGE for CDR
A damage that you can not undo.
You could have waited , or posted that on forum instead of main news page.
Well played mate
17/05/2011 at 14:37 Jim Rossignol says:
“0 day Patch breaking saves in pre release evaluation version =/= bug”
I’ve only played it since the patch. There are no broken saves. So you are wrong there.
As for it being irresponsible, it’s my responsibility to tell people what to expect. I am flagging up that one of the most anticipated games of the year has some issues, and it might be worth holding off to play until there are no patches.
I get that you are totally behind this game, but I am too – look at the vast amount of coverage I have done. I am as a big a far of CDR as anyone else, but that doesn’t mean I am not going to post about issues I encounter.
17/05/2011 at 14:38 Lilliput King says:
But isn’t this a bug in the release version? I thought Jim was playing the release version.
17/05/2011 at 14:42 Sleepymatt says:
Except if he had loaded up a savegame from the pre-release build, he would be in Chapter 2. Think about it first, eh?
17/05/2011 at 15:04 Hallgrim says:
I gotta say I read this site because the writers act like actual people when it comes to games, not cheerleaders. If my day1 experience with a game I have pre-ordered is going to include being trapped in a room, unable to get out, I’d like to hear about.
17/05/2011 at 15:25 Lobotomist says:
I assumed you are having problems with broken saves from pre release version.
As they say : don’t assume anything because you only make an Ass out of you
So I apologize. :(
17/05/2011 at 14:39 Turin Turambar says:
I see a bit of bitterness in RPS because they didn’t get the review version until only a few hours ago, instead of a full 3-7 days before like with otthers games because CDP wanted a review of the patched version, and in the end the patched version is aso buggy.
17/05/2011 at 14:43 Item! says:
Methinks you need new flavour-glasses.
17/05/2011 at 14:44 TomGop says:
Jim, we’re craving for your save files. Really. :)
We’re totally sorry for all the inconvenience with bugs and late review code delivery. Can’t give you any more reasonable excuse than just: we’ll keep working continuously until things are fixed and patched.
17/05/2011 at 14:49 MasterBoo says:
go CDP go <3
17/05/2011 at 14:51 Jim Rossignol says:
Save files already sent. Talking to Lukasz, John, Adam via email.
“we’ll keep working continuously until things are fixed and patched.”
I know you will :D
17/05/2011 at 15:06 Vega62a says:
CDP folks, you are awesome.
17/05/2011 at 15:21 Furius says:
@TomGop. Please let us know how many times Jim’s visited prostitutes. This is more important than fixing the bug!
17/05/2011 at 15:21 Burning Man says:
Wait, you’re hitting on a group of developers in a comments section??
17/05/2011 at 17:36 Sleepymatt says:
@ Furius …… and in the game!
Sorry, just couldn’t pass that one up.
17/05/2011 at 14:45 Ravenger says:
As much as I love CD Projekt they got some pretty fundamental things wrong with The Witcher 2 that you don’t expect a PC only release to suffer from:
Non-bindable keys
No 16:10 aspect ratio support
Incompatible with some ATI hardware.
These are the sorts of things I expect from poor console ports. The game itself looks amazing, and I can’t wait to play it properly (only had a quick go this morning) but it’s a shame they dropped the ball on some very basic PC functionality.
17/05/2011 at 14:50 Item! says:
I too am a little baffled as to why native 16:10 wasn’t included given what a common format it is…
Still, if that is the biggest issue I experience and they deliver a fix, then I am not going to get too rage faced about it!
About to fire up the game for the first time now, so we shall see I guess!
17/05/2011 at 14:50 Vega62a says:
Pretty much the same thing that happened with the original Witcher at release.
And what is this “Incompatible with ATI hardware” business? Does everyone else know something I don’t?
17/05/2011 at 14:52 Ravenger says:
True, I’m not that bothered about 16:10 support – I can put up with it. The non-bindable keys are a major problem for me though.
17/05/2011 at 15:29 Unaco says:
I woke up and finished off the install this morning, and perused the GoG forums while waiting for it all to do its stuff. I saw a couple threads about problems with ATI, and my heart sank a little (Radeon HD 5770 here) reading about them. Apparently there is an issue with some ATI cards, that you either have to start Windowed and switch to FullScreen, or change some options in Catalyst Control Centre to get it to work (either set AA/AF/MAA to App Controlled, or disable them).
I was expecting to have to jump through some hoops to get it to run in fullscreen, but in the end, had no difficulties at all, game installed and ran fine. It did initially set me to Low Settings, but clicking the Auto Detect/Set Optimal cranked it up to High, and now I’ve tweaked a little so I have almost Max and it runs fine (i5 Quad Core @~2.8GHz, 4GB Ram, 1GB HD 5770)… and looks sumptuous.
So… From what I’ve gathered, there is an issue with some ATI cards (don’t know which ones) but there is a work around available. Also, it doesn’t seem that widespread… there aren’t masses of threads or posts about it on the forums, only a handful. And it’s certainly not an incompatibility with ATI cards.
There’s also a problem with dismal performance on NVidia cards (again, not very widespread, and fixed by uninstalling/reinstalling drivers without a certain component). Also, no support/poor performance with SLI/Crossfire, but I think those will be issues that NVidia/ATI have to fix with drivers.
Also, the 16:9 and no 16:10 think is a little annoying, but It’s won’t stop me from enjoying the game.
17/05/2011 at 17:29 Ravenger says:
The good news is that CD Project, through a GOG representative, have said they’ll fix the keybinding issues in a hotfix in the next few days.
17/05/2011 at 19:17 Derk_Henderson says:
I have hit all the ATI issues – The Witcher is a cursed franchise for me (I wasn’t able to play Witcher 1 despite buying a physical copy until I built a new computer, as the pre-patch copy protection couldn’t see my CD drive and trying to pirate around it bluescreened my computer).
The game doesn’t run in fullscreen, period. I can’t get it to go into fullscreen when I start in windowed mode. Also, I have 2 5870s running in Crossfire, and I’ve had to disable that because they make performance worse, not better (hopefully ATI will fix that at some point).
I hope I can eventually get it to run correctly, and I will probably be able to live with my taskbar on the bottom of the screen for now, but it’s really pretty ridiculous that I have hit every single major issue getting this franchise to run properly. I love the GAMES CDProjekt makes – I just wish I didn’t have to sacrifice a goat to be able to play them.
17/05/2011 at 22:03 Ravenger says:
The keyboard inifile tweaks worked fine for me, so I’m now enjoying the game, and it looks amazing.
17/05/2011 at 14:55 Eraysor says:
I’ve had the game process die on me twice so far, both in Flotsam, usually when I’m going through a door for some reason. The game closes so quickly and flawlessly it’d be amazing if it weren’t so annoying.
EDIT: Though I’d like to add that the game is bloody brilliant otherwise, and looks incredible.
17/05/2011 at 14:57 DigitalSignalX says:
My only issue with the first Witcher right after release was the obscenely long load times between interior and exteriors, sometimes up to 5 minutes. I’d sit and read a book every time I used a door to loot a home. It was fixed in later patches, and my latest run through with enhanced edition was flawless.
Witcher 2 is in the pipe and this sounds even worse :( FIX NOW WANT TO PLAY
17/05/2011 at 15:34 Unaco says:
There really is no show stopping, game breaking bugs… nothing that should stop you playing just now. A few issues, and those without workarounds are really just inconveniences. As for Load Times… they’re no problem at all, from my experience. I’ve been jumping in and out, tweaking graphics, making sure everything is where it should be, editing .ini to get inverted mouse, and the load times have been almost non-existent. Not once in the 30 minutes of loading, checking something, quitting, loading again was I thinking “Hurry up”, or even really noticing the loads.
17/05/2011 at 15:35 Unaco says:
Edit: Double Post.
17/05/2011 at 20:57 JiminyJickers says:
I must be lucky in some respects. I haven’t had any problems. Apart from having to paste some things into my ini file to have inverted mouse. Slight performance issues, but once turning off uber scaling and AA, it was a lot better.
Definitely not having any load time issues, my loading times from start menu takes no more than about 5 seconds and between indoor and outdoor is nearly instantaneous. Sorry to hear you are having problems. Mind you I have just arrived at the first village after finishing the prologue.
17/05/2011 at 15:02 RakeShark says:
This is not a bug, but this is bugging me:
Geralt is starting to look like a slightly freakish Kevin Costner.
17/05/2011 at 16:00 godgoo says:
hahaha brilliant!
17/05/2011 at 16:53 phobic says:
I hate you! Cannot unsee :(
17/05/2011 at 15:20 Lukasz says:
I will be building new computer next month or so but i will keep my old gpu till christmas when i presume we will get 600 and 7000 cards from red and green teams.
will 4850 handle TW2 on med settings?
17/05/2011 at 16:03 godgoo says:
a user on gog with a good duo core, 4gb ram and a 4850 claims to be running it well on high. It stuck in my mind because that is exactly the machine I just upgraded from.
17/05/2011 at 17:27 Wizlah says:
That’s cheering. I’m currently running a dual core with 4 gig and a 512mb 4870, so it’s nice to know I might get some prettiness out of it.
17/05/2011 at 15:20 symple19 says:
great to see CDP all over this.
17/05/2011 at 15:33 AbyssUK says:
I like all this it’s much more like the old days of pc gaming were the first part of the game was to correctly figure out which emm386.sys and himem.sys settings you needed….
17/05/2011 at 15:35 Some_Guy says:
Hey, how do you import the witcher 1 save?
17/05/2011 at 15:47 Sidorovich says:
Would like to know this also but their official forum is still non-operational :(
17/05/2011 at 16:02 Uthred says:
When you select New Game it comes up with “Do you want to import a save from The Witcher?”, select Yes and it gives you a list of your Witcher saves, select whichever one you want and off you go
17/05/2011 at 16:33 db1331 says:
I just read a post on the GoG forums where a guy said he imported his save and the silver sword he got from the Lady of the Lake carried over, as well as the steel one from King Foltest. I ditched the sword from the Lady of the Lake for the Moonblade (+100 damage) you get from the Royal Huntsman for killing all of the special monsters. I’m going to have a sad if it doesn’t import.
Update:
I went home for lunch and fired it up. I was able to import my save with one click, and was pleased to see both swords and my Raven’s armor did not miss their connecting flight. I set my settings to ultra and turned off SSAO, ubersampling, and motion blur, and the game runs smooth as silk even on my 2-3 year old rig. I’m very impressed so far, can’t wait to jump into it tonight.
17/05/2011 at 15:48 MrWolf says:
POSSIBLE SPOILER OF EARLY GAME LEVEL BELOW:
Has anyone actually gotten past the dragon level? I’ve rage quit after being burned to death 20+ times.
17/05/2011 at 16:18 Jajusha says:
I’m there right now. If you wait too long, your cover burns down and you get dragon burned.
If you rush, you get dragon burned.
After trial and error, i noticed the dragon does 2 quick swipes (onto the gate, and from the gate back) and then theres a little pause. I still haven’t been able to cross from cover to cover on this very very small gap of time.
Hmm, just went to the manual, one of the signs gives you a protective shield. Will have to try it.
17/05/2011 at 16:36 YohnTheViking says:
Quen sign, use it a lot on that run. When the roof starts collapsing (roughly) you should be crossing to the next roof.
So far my biggest problem is the timing on the parry. If you hit “E” (or whatever key you’ve bound parry to) just a microsecond before the previous animation finished Geralt will simply stand there and take swords to the face. So annoying.
17/05/2011 at 15:50 Zanchito says:
I actually like some bugs in my RPGs and strategy games. It makes them feel much more old school and brings me fond memories of my younger times, when games were buggy but there was no internet for patches ot bitching, women were coy and men wore monocles.
17/05/2011 at 15:56 Harlander says:
I’ve always known that one’s view of the past is often through rose-tinted spectacles, but this is the first time in my memory that someone’s come out and said “Remember when things were rubbish? That was great!”
17/05/2011 at 18:38 Felixader says:
I am pretty shure i detected sarcasm in what Zanchito wrote. X-P
But probably you were beeing sarcastic or playfull yourself, sooo,,, whatever. X-P
17/05/2011 at 16:24 zipdrive says:
quote: “It seems likely we’ll have to hold off WITing until we get another patch or two.”
Wasn’t RPS pretty adamant in the past to “review games in the form they are released” and rightfully disparaging on zero-day patches and so on?
Do you not hold CDP to the same standard?
17/05/2011 at 17:04 Peggle20 says:
The real question is how much palm grease CDP is throwing their way for all this fawningly positive coverage of a mediocre game.
17/05/2011 at 17:17 zipdrive says:
Nah, you’re just being nasty. I’m sure it’s a really gripping game, but still- I expect more consistency from RPS.
17/05/2011 at 17:29 Peggle20 says:
The site plastered with witcher ads and a daily update on how it’s more excellent than drinking unicorn giggles, while the much better Dragon Age 2 gets largely passed over. Pardon me for being cynical, but I feel I do detect less than ironclad journalistic integrity.
17/05/2011 at 17:33 bleeters says:
RPS doesn’t get to pick what adverts they host.
So, yeah.
17/05/2011 at 17:40 Sleepymatt says:
One assumes that Peggle has played TW2 to completion in the few hours it has been out in order to make the comparison? Oh, what’s that, you haven’t?
*adds to mental ignore list*
17/05/2011 at 18:26 JohnnyMaverik says:
@Sleepymatt
My sentiments exactly.
Also I seem to remember Dragon Age 2 getting a hell of a lot of coverage on RPS, a damn site more than most games get, all the way through development, right up to and a couple of weeks after release. I don’t think Rock Paper Shotgun can be accused of “passing it over”, sure ultimately they were underwhelmed by it, but they’re allowed to be underwhelmed by big name releases, as is the nature of being put in a position of being expected to give an opinion.
17/05/2011 at 18:31 Jim Rossignol says:
Peggle20: I’m baffled as to why people still think advertising = corruption. It’s just not how it works. If i were taking money to write about this game positively, would I be talking about bugs and scripting errors? If people were *paying money* for editorial, they would want it to be actually positive. It’s just ludicrous paranoia. We depend on people think we’re credible, and whether or not you agree with our verdicts on games saying that we are taking bungs for points is unfair, and plain wrong.
Everyone else: We’ll be introducing an ignore function soon.
zipdrive: Yes, games should be released without bugs. We hare day-zero patches. The reason we’re not reviewing this yet is actually because I haven’t finished it yet. The patches comment is misleading (i thought I wasn’t going to be able to get any further) so i will remove it.
17/05/2011 at 19:19 Cinek says:
Two great news in a day! Witcher 2 and this:
“We’ll be introducing an ignore function soon.”
17/05/2011 at 19:20 Vinraith says:
I can’t fathom why someone would continue to hang around a journalism site, of any stripe, that they were convinced was corrupt.
Anyway, that ignore function will be a very welcome thing.
17/05/2011 at 23:26 Lukasz says:
what’s wrong with zero day patches?
games are currently too big to be released without bugs so patches are needed.
and there is a gap time from developers sending the final code to companies which make physical copies of the game till the moment a shop is allowed to sell it.
no idea how big but i would assume it takes at least a week.
during that week or maybe even longer developer can dedicate almost 100% of their staff for bug search and bug fixing.
Day one DLC is bad
Day one patch is nowodays completely justified.
17/05/2011 at 16:32 Item! says:
Well FWIW, I have been pleased with the performance on my (reasonably high-end I guess; GTX570, 2500k @ 4.3Ghz)) PC.
I have installed the beta NVIDA drivers (275.27) turned everything up to 11 with the exception of the “Ubersampling” and I am getting a fairly solid 60ish FPS…drops to mid-40s at worst, sits around 70+ at best.
With V-sync on it is nice and smooth and looks really rather good…in fact it is much prettier than DA2 and runs much better too.
My only gripe is that it doesn’t work with my Logitech G35 USB headphones for some reason – and looking at the boards, I am not the only one. Fortunately I have an alternative, but still…
Anyways – back to the game!
17/05/2011 at 19:49 chickdigger802 says:
indeed. Had to use the shitty speakers on my monitor for now (left my speakers at parent’s place).
oh well.
17/05/2011 at 16:35 Uthred says:
Not sure if its a bug or a “feature”, when you rotate the camera is the background supposed to go all blurry? Its rather annoying
17/05/2011 at 16:41 YohnTheViking says:
Turn off the motion blur in the graphics options. It’s kind of a nice tech show off effect, but it’s annoying and a huge drain on performance.
17/05/2011 at 16:53 The Hammer says:
“It seems likely we’ll have to hold off WITing until we get another patch or two.”
Er, what?
17/05/2011 at 17:13 Jajusha says:
Good lord, just had a fight against 3 of those squishy unarmored dudes + 1 shielded + 2 in full armor. At the same time. That was hard. Beeing pummeled to death by the dragon again now.
17/05/2011 at 17:24 Wizlah says:
Usually, I’m envious of the time the likes of the hivemind have to spend on and cogitate about games, but when I hear of Jim pannelling through the witcher, I feel a bit sorry for the RPS staff. seems to me this is one to be savoured, and even if you do get to play through at a more leisurely pace at a later date, I’d hate to have to my first impression of such a potentially atmospheric and hotly-anticipated game framed by the need to write up your thoughts.
Maybe I’ve become so used to enjoying a game in bite sizes now that I don’t have time to sink 5 hours into one at a sitting, I prefer it more. I dunno.
17/05/2011 at 17:51 Jake says:
I haven’t been able to download it all day from Steam as servers are too busy. If one of you would please log off so I can download that would be great.
17/05/2011 at 18:01 Zenicetus says:
I’m seeing several comments saying the fighting is pretty hard at the Normal setting. It may be too early to ask this question, but is it the kind of thing where it just takes time to get used to the controls, and it improves as you get more familiar with the combat? Or is it just intentionally designed to be difficult at the Normal setting? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that).
And a related question: Does the game allow changing the difficulty mid-game, or are you locked in at whatever difficulty setting you choose at the start?
17/05/2011 at 18:05 Item! says:
I really want to like this – it all looks so good in potentia, but the combat is making me miserable already.
There doesn’t seem to be any way of focusing on a target properly, or indeed strafing, so the camera constantly whirls about along with my character movement.
I would try and stay still, but it seems the only way of avoiding damage is to constantly somersault like a tartrazine-crazed toddler.
Geralt seems randomly unresponsive at the most inopportune moments as well…
I am trying now with a gamepad instead of mouse and keyboard and trying to fight these 3 dudes in a small room.
Sadly, the camera keeps taking a smoke break behind a nearby portcullis and I keep getting my head stoved in.
I hope this is just a learning curve thing…but I am getting a sinking feeling.
:(
17/05/2011 at 18:33 Jim Rossignol says:
It’s definitely a big issue. Easy is slightly too easy and normal is too hard. But you can switch difficulty any time.
17/05/2011 at 18:45 Jajusha says:
Playing on normal and must say Combat does get easier. Chapter 1 and i no longer have problems taking 3 or 4 unarmored enemies. Armored/shielded on the other hand are still a problem.
Space bar is my best friend. Dodge dodge, fast hit, dodge. The block (E key) sometimes doesnt work for me, still don’t know what it is.
17/05/2011 at 19:22 Soon says:
I hated the combat at first. But you do get used to flicking between foes, efficiently slicing your way through the right enemies, momentarily diverting your attention to knock down a more distant foe with some magic, then quickly back into the fray. You can see what they were trying to do once you get there, but it’s really a pain before then, drunkenly stumbling into a crowd of stabby things.
17/05/2011 at 18:21 Brumisator says:
Am I the only poor SOB who can’T get the game downloaded from steam?
17/05/2011 at 19:29 Jake says:
Nope. Been trying for quite a few hours now.
17/05/2011 at 18:48 Jajusha says:
PS: Can i lock a target? meaning, hard lock my aim on him, so that no matter where i look the target stays the same?
17/05/2011 at 19:17 Jim Rossignol says:
Hmm, I thought you could by pressing alt or something, but maybe not.
17/05/2011 at 20:17 Item! says:
See my comment above.
Technically, hitting alt “locks on” but it doesn’t fix the view/camera and you still run in any direction – you don’t stay facing the same way.
I have got over my initial loathing of the combat – now it is merely “passable”…though I still swear that fairly often, I just get no response from a key when I hit it.
17/05/2011 at 19:31 ran93r says:
Just got my retail copy installed, activated and patched, played through a couple of parts of the prologue. Seems to run just fine and looks great on ultra. Will have a proper chance to get stuck in later on but at least I don’t seem to be having any initial problems. Starting to think that I shouldn’t have picked “hard” though, might sort that out based on comments above.
17/05/2011 at 20:32 sidhellfire says:
http://imageshack.us/f/847/metascore.png/
I really love these marketing games.
17/05/2011 at 21:46 Lilliput King says:
I really don’t want to cast aspersions with this comment. I don’t really care for either game much at the moment. But consider the following:
http://www.metacritic.com/user/Valvar
http://www.metacritic.com/user/Furusu
http://www.metacritic.com/user/thesisko
http://www.metacritic.com/user/speedyzia
I could go on. What does this prove except that people are tiresomely partisan?
17/05/2011 at 22:46 green_genes says:
What Lilliput King said. Though, if you want to read something funny read i_hate_poland’s user review of W2. http://www.metacritic.com/user/i_hate_poland
17/05/2011 at 20:39 porschecm2 says:
I’ve got a few thoughts so far:
The game looks gorgeous, and I’m really enjoying the setting/story thus far. The fps seems to be decent–I haven’t measured it, but I’d guess it’s around 40fps, which is a wee bit low, but playable. Of course, I’ve got everything set to ultra, with AA on, etc.
But there are a few things I’m a little surprised to encounter.
First: I’m having an issue with downloading the English Voiceovers. It’s a 921MB file, and I’ve downloaded it 3 times already. It downloads entirely, verifies, and all that good stuff, and then it loops and starts downloading again. It’s going on its 4th download spree now, and I can’t see any way of stopping it. No, make that fifth. It just verified again, and is now starting over.
After I downloaded the other DLC (Troll Trouble, and Mysterious Merchant), it says that it’s “ready to install” now. But I can’t see any way to install them? Am I missing something, or do they install automatically, and the message to install them simply remains?
Not having a keyboard configuration menu in the game is an unfathomably stupid oversight. The tutorials in the game seem to be rather hard to follow (and I’m experienced RPGer and Witcher player). They flash on screen briefly, but they’re small, and it’s while I’m concentrating on other stuff, like, oh, not getting killed on normal difficulty…AGAIN. Then they disappear, and if I didn’t happen to catch the key they referenced, well, then it’s just button mashing until what I want happens. And forget rebinding the keys in the game. I’m not accusing this of being a bad console port any such nonsense, but I really am flabbergasted that a PC dominant dev could overlook something so fundamental. And apparently swtiching signs in combat causes you to cast the sign? Whuh?
Also, no user-defined save game slots? Really? C’mon…
18/05/2011 at 04:28 m4x1u says:
@ porschecm2
Yes, it is an oversight – just like the frigging ‘no invert mouse – but you have keyboard mapping printed out to games manual. Also, as far as tutorials go – just open up your journal and check it out under an appropriate section.
Also – i have the same languague pack issue for my polish pack. I guess may will be heavy on game patching :>
17/05/2011 at 21:42 sebmojo says:
My aging 9800GT, Athlon ii 250 and 2 gig of stock RAM manage it fine on Low settings with vertical sync and AA. It’s still pretty.
Think I’ll finish the first one though, halfway through Act IV. Then I can take a run at a patched version with a proper save :)
17/05/2011 at 21:48 jwfiore says:
THIS GAME IS NOTHING COMPARED TO STARCRAFT 2
17/05/2011 at 22:13 Freud says:
Started playing, but I got so annoyed with not being able to configure the keys that I’ll take a break until they hot fix it. No point ruining my experience by having an unintuitive key mapping making me stop to think about stuff.
It looks great and the dialogs and voice acting were very well done during the 30 minutes I played.
Also, it was a bit annoying that the Signs/Spells had no explanation of what they did when choosing them. I know I got a PDF manual with my game but I’d rather not have to alt-tab out just to check.
17/05/2011 at 22:37 Uthred says:
Did you turn the tutorials off? Because whenever you first use a sign it pops up telling you what it does
17/05/2011 at 22:59 Freud says:
No, I have tutorials on. But I don’t really see how that makes a difference for us that doesn’t have a photographic memory. I want to know what I am about to choose when I have the quick menu up (Ctrl). When I choose a spell, it would be much easier if there was a short description of what it does instead of just have the Witcherspeak-name for it. If I pick Aard I want to know what Aard does if I Aard people with it.
It’s not the end of the world. Just annoying to not have the information there in the game. There are only six of them. I might learn what they do eventually. Or I’ll write it on a post-it and have it next to my screen.
17/05/2011 at 23:06 sebmojo says:
Check the journal.
18/05/2011 at 07:48 Sorbicol says:
Freud you can map key bindings using configurator.exe, it’s in the game’s \bin folder. Not terribly helpful in game but at least you can do it.
17/05/2011 at 22:22 xGryfter says:
I’m getting some major performance degradation here. It runs beautifully for about 30 min then it drops from around 50fps to 16-20fps and I have to save and exit out of the game completely then reload to get my frame rate back up.
17/05/2011 at 22:24 sebmojo says:
Can’t you remap keys in the configuration utility? Configurator.exe.
18/05/2011 at 00:01 Howl says:
I’d like an invert Y axis option on the camera. It’s upside down on my XBOX360 pad. =/
I’m enjoying the game a lot but the combat is a bit iffy. If it was as responsive, slick and had the same kind of feedback on the attacks as Batman:AA then this would be perfect.
18/05/2011 at 05:38 Gravy says:
My impressions are that the game looks amazing but the controls make this a somewhat annoying encounter. Pressing E for block or parry has a 50/50 chance of working so i’ll just be pressing space and hop skipping and rolling all over the place. Sometimes whatever you press just doesn’t work and yes your dead.
Its quite infuriating to replay fighting 6 men and running round waiting for you magic to charge up and picking them off bit by bit. Now don’t get me wrong i’ve played demon souls and its harder fighting but its also fairer, the controls won’t let you down and I find it quite flawed theres knight flinging giant swords around who can’t hit their pals only me. This means that when enemies are gathered in 3s darting in a sniping becomes an extremely dangerous affair – tie that with the lock on system which still allows for total camera movement (pressing alt) it becomes more tricky than it should be. Cutting to a video when you do a finishing move ain’t my cup of tea either likely to return dead if you haven’t spammed space bar enough already. Why couldn’t finishing moves be implemented in real time and situational?
Im all in favour of a challenging game if the controls are up to it. Otherwise you just have little faith in the game.
Also the tutorials are poor, why can’t i read through the tutorials at my leisure ? Can I?
As already stated key binding is a huge oversight. (clicking left mouse button for looting and performing actions feels so wrong! E E EE E…)
Without those problems good game so far not run into any bugs as such going to try the nvidia beta drivers to see how it effects performance.
18/05/2011 at 05:56 Item! says:
I agree with your points on the controls 100% and have said similar elsewhere in the forums…and yes, the “lock-on” is a total misnomer.
It’s funny you mention Demon’s Souls as this also came to mind for me whilst playing – combat in the Witcher 2 does seem like a slightly broken, unresponsive tribute to the PS3 game.
Demon’s Souls’ combat has the same steep, steep learning curve, is brutally unforgiving, demands that you constantly learn new tactics and utilise all your abilities for each encounter…and yet I never felt it was unfair or that I died because of the controls or the camera.
The same, sadly, cannot be said for Witcher 2!
Still – I am enjoying the game and want to play more. I gave up on Dragon Age 2 midway through the second act…I am hoping W2 will hold my interest.