Rock, Paper, Shotgun

In what may be a first for humanity since the (admittedly fictional) film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Good Old Games de-aged. Out with the “Old,” in with the GOG, as no one’s said until now. Or, if they have, people just looked at them funny and told them to go lie down. Anyway, seeing as change is afoot and GOG’s trying very hard to make us pay attention, I briefly spoke with managing director Guillaume Rambourg about why the site’s taken an abrupt turn toward a new direction, why Steam sales are hurting the industry, and — with even Ubisoft removing its ponderous yolk — whether or not DRM is finally dying.

Read the rest of this entry »

I think I’m going to buy CD Projekt a cookie basket. Yes, that’s what I’m going to do. What other language, after all, can express misty eyed gratitude in a more nuanced way? One cookie, I think, will be a witch, and another will be an emergency room. Spelling out “Enhanced Edition” in sight gags will be slightly more difficult, but I’m up to the challenge. So, why all the affectionate confections? Because CDP took the stage during a streaming conference to announce – among other things – an extra DRM-free copy of Witcher 2 for all previous owners regardless of which platform they originally nabbed it on and pre-load details for the Enhanced Edition. More info can be found in this post’s briny depths.

Read the rest of this entry »

CD Projekt will never use DRM again, said joint CEO Marcin Iwinski at a talk at GDC. Speaking to a rather thinned crowd, presumably dented by the post awards celebrations of the night before, Iwinski was explaining CDP’s philosophy for success with a PC exclusive game. And one element of that was to completely abandon DRM, since “It doesn’t work at all.” The talk also revealed how The Witcher 2 had sold over a million units, mostly in retail, but only 75,000 of them in the UK.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of our favourite things about CDP was the fact that they didn’t just give up on The Witcher and move on, they redid the voice acting and the animation, as well as fixing a whole buinch of bugs with their Enhanced Edition. They’re doing something similar with The Witcher 2, although this time the changes are more substantial, with new features and content. The big features are listed below, but include a load of entirely new locations and characters, extended the game significantly. GoG reports that anyone who purchases the game before the release of the Enhanced Edition (17th April) will get the upgrade for free.
Read the rest of this entry »

Remember how we all cheered when CD Projekt removed the DRM from The Witcher 2? Although the GoG version was always free of the legitimate-customers-only punishing code, all other sources came with the straitjacket. Post launch, however, they patched it out, letting customers enjoy the game without concern. It seemed an all-round sensible way to behave, and despite piracy they sold over a million copies of the game. A happy story. Except, well, now according to TorrentFreak (and seemingly corroborated here, along with mentions of a few other titles) the publisher is reportedly threatening alleged (but unproven) pirates with ludicrous legal letters demanding large amounts of money.

Read the rest of this entry »

Confusingly-named The Witcher 2 mega-patch, 2.0, is now live. I’ve posted the full list of its contents below. It’s a big list. A list that address many of the criticisms from my review. For even more elucidation of what is going on with TW2 check out this interview with the development director. (I also notice that the game is $29.99 on GoG for the next week. It’s a cracking thing, and I’d recommend anyone who hasn’t yet taken the plunge to do so now. It’s going to be in my top five games of 2011.)

Read the rest of this entry »

EDIT: Boo! Looks like the patch has been delayed after all, due to an issue with DLC compatibility. “We will update when we know more,” say CD Projekt.

Inbound at some point this evening is a v1.1 patch for The Witcher 2. Anything exciting in there? Ah, not really, it’s all bugfixes and performance upgrades. That said, the patch notes promise an “approximately 5% to 30% better framerate and faster game loading for many users, depending on their individual systems and game versions. Owners of retail versions can expect the biggest improvements.” So, mostly of interest to twitching luddites who insist on owning DVDs and any of you who bought the absurd Collector’s Edition, then.

v1.1 will also bring with it an option to invert the mouse, for those of you who think Geralt is an aeroplane. The developers are promising a second patch next week, and you’ll find the full patch notes after the jump.
Read the rest of this entry »

So. Finished. I even had a little time to play through some of the alternate storyline stuff. What do I think? Well, I don’t think I’ll be putting any spoilers in this review, so you can read my thoughts on the subject with some degree of safety. If something else needs go above the jump here, it should probably be this: The Witcher 2 is going end up being talked about for a very long time to come.

Read the rest of this entry »

Still not quite ready for the WIT, but I have some more thoughts on The Witcher 2, below. Share your impressions too, if you are playing!
Read the rest of this entry »