Editorial | The Witcher 3 - The White Wolf's adventure 5 years later.

By Sam Coles:

The passage of time is one that is often a fast journey, what may have been a few minutes or days ago turn into a decade ago. Anyway monologue out of the way The Witcher 3 is slowly crawling its way to being 5 years old, and wow just writing that makes me confused where I have to keep checking my calendar to see what year it is. I want to take a look back at the game, and plus it gives me a good excuse to gush about the game again!

The lead up for The Witcher 3 was a rather long wait for me, I first got a taste of The White Wolf’s exploits when I first played The Witcher 2 on Xbox 360 and read The Last Wish in the summer of 2012. I was instantly in love with the series, where it took traditional fantasy tropes and turns it on its head. The characters were engaging and the political intrigue within its world was fascinating. After finishing The Witcher 2 multiple times I waited patiently for a sequel, fortunately I wouldn’t have to wait long as The Witcher 3 was first unveiled at E3 2013! From that point it was the main reason why I wanted an Xbox One or PS4, then a year later I got one but I had to wait until 2015 to play Geralt of Riva’s next adventure.

When 2015 finally arrived I found myself playing The Witcher 3 5 hours straight (yes really), what captivated me first was the story. The Witcher 2 had an issue with its story mostly stemming from performances, don’t get me wrong it was miles better than the first game as people spoke like…. people. However a lot of the performances were stilted including the White Wolf, but in The Witcher 3 everyone is fleshed out and the performances are excellent. The same voice actor reprises his role as Geralt of Riva, but he feels more comfortable in the role where Geralt feels more alive in this game. I felt like I cared for every character in story, especially the relationship between Yennefer and Geralt although a chemically imbalanced relationship they love each other nonetheless (in my playthrough). They are all fleshed and leaped from page to game effortlessly; it kept me invested throughout the 50 hour story.

Gameplay was where things took a huge leap from the second game in a good way; combat was improved greatly as The Witcher 2 felt a bit clunky as if it were a poor man’s Demons Souls. It had unfair hit detection where they could chip at your health even when they are not even hitting you, you had great advantages such as backstab damage but so did enemies. Combat was manageable with one enemy as it felt like it was designed like that in The Witcher 2, however the game would often throw groups of enemies at you and it felt like you were trying dodge attacks with your trousers pulled down and this was very noticeable on harder difficulties.

The Witcher 3 fixed everything with the combat, it felt more smooth and responsive, the animations look like they have been pulled straight out of the books with Geralt’s twists, turns and pirouettes. Combat was fair but still challenging especially on difficulties hard and above, no longer did enemies have an instant advantage over you when they were in groups but they could still overwhelm you if you got careless. Geralt’s signs were utilised more, as they added flavour and depth to battles as well as being more effective against certain types of foes you come across.

Exploration was expanded too as it is an open world now, The Witcher 2 wasn’t open world in the traditional sense, let me explain. The Witcher 2 was split up into four chapters (if you include the prologue), where the areas are open ended first you are in the town of Flotsam, then Vergen and then Loc Muinne. They are open ended, however you can’t just go off the beaten path and explore as it is rather linear in that regard. The Witcher 3 on the other hand went full open world, you could now explore the Northern Realms at your own pace.

Now when a franchise that isn’t an open world in its initial stages decides to go in that direction it often doesn’t work. The Witcher 3 made sense to go in this direction, as you are a travelling monster hunter across the land, so the jump to a sandbox made perfect sense. Each city, village and locale felt unique and looked exactly how I would imagine them being in the books. CDPR did a wonderful job fleshing out this open world, with crisp and beautiful visuals with awe inspiring sunsets as you see the sky turn crimson with its shepherd’s delight.

Not only that the quests and side quests added to the new layer of exploration, they were all memorable and the side quests weren’t shafted as filler content no CDPR treated them with the same importance as the main story. You could go off and explore, where you can take a side quest that involves as something as stupid as finding an old woman’s frying pan but they bother to include comedic jabs at this seemingly mundane and trivial task.

The Witcher 3 stands as a classic in the halls of video game history, it shows at the time you don’t need a big team to create something passionate and fun. It is the gold standard with game design, storytelling, exploration and visual fidelity. It is easily one of the best games of this generation and it’s hard to believe that 5 years down the line we are still talking about it. The adventures I have had with the Geralt of Riva are times not wasted, but time well spent.

Editorial | Sleeping Dogs: 8 years later and still beautiful.

By Sam Coles:

The Xbox 360 generation had a lot of games that were really great, but didn’t quite meet certain audiences. This could be a number of factors, such as marketing being more or less non-existent or in the case of Square Enix releasing Sleeping Dogs in the middle of the summer when people don’t really buy games. Anyway now you know what the topic of the article is, Sleeping Dogs is a game that got overlooked, not because it was bad far from it as it was an amazing open world game set within a virtual recreation of Hong Kong. It’s just a game that people overlooked, and I want to take about it nearly 8 years after its release.

First release on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2012 with a later remaster on Xbox One and PS4 in 2014, Sleeping Dogs had a bit of a rough development cycle. The game was originally conceived as a new instalment of the True Crime series with the subtitle Hong Kong; however Activision lost faith in the project due to the last game in the series New York not faring well with critics. It got put on the back burner where Square Enix picked up the project, where the title was changed to what we know today as Sleeping Dogs. I remember this game being one of my most anticipated games of 2012, the setting, the combat and the story looked dark and unique.

Sleeping Dogs takes place in Hong Kong where you play as Wei Shen, who is an undercover police officer infiltrating the Triads who he happens to know from his childhood which is the perfect cover. At first Wei is very uncomfortable with what he sees, as he watches people get brutally murdered and it conflicts with his morality of upholding the law. It’s an interesting setup with the story as he has to choose to uphold law or be a gangster, even when he goes home he as PTSD moments where has nightmares of past events which adds a layer to the story. Now like most open world games the tone does conflict with the gameplay, as Shen guns people down without flinching or kills them in brutal ways during hand to hand fights. However this is always the nature of open world games, because let’s face it they do have to be fun at the end of the day.

Gameplay wise one could be cynical and look at this and think of it being a standard GTA clone, but honestly the gameplay has more depth than GTA and dare I say it more fun. Let’s start off with the melee combat, which may come across as mimicking Batman combat, which it does. However it was a breath of fresh air, as the different martial art combos felt like a more brutal and grounded version of Yakuza’s combat. You have contextual finishers, which can range from slamming someone’s face into a table saw, pushing them into a junction box or to the more cartoonish of throwing their head into a set of speakers. It was over the top yet grounded, as the graphic violence help elevate the tension coupled with the intense voice acting when you brutalised someone.

The gunplay was no slouch either; it took the standard cover mechanics of the time from popular third person shooters such as Gears of War and added its own flare to it. You took cover and shot at people, but this being inspire from popular action films such as Hard Boiled you could leap from cover and it will go into slow motion which gave you an advantage in gunfights. It wasn’t flashy for the sake of cinematic aesthetics. You could pick off your enemies one by one, which showed the excruciating detail of bullets entering and exiting a thug’s skull.

Driving took a more arcade and less realistic approach as you could perform physics defying sideswipes, but also you could perform “air jacks”. What this entails is that you can leap from your current vehicle to another one, where you then proceed to throw the driver out into traffic. It’s slick, stylish and ties physics to a burning truck as it speeds off a cliff.

Moving on from gameplay the setting and presentation is another highlight of Sleeping Dogs, the city of Hong Kong to my knowledge hasn’t really been used in video games in terms of open world games. In 2012 it was a breath of fresh air after the countless games set in the US, the neon lit streets as the rain covered the roads was and still is beautiful even today. The rain effects and character models especially were ahead of their time, characters would get wet in the rain and water kicking up as you drove on the soaked streets looks amazing. You have to bear in mind that this game was running on very dated hardware at this point, and it was amazing how they managed to utilise and squeeze every bit of life out of the 360 and PS3.

They really nailed the authenticity of the culture of the city, especially with the dialogue throughout the story. During the excellently directed scenes the characters will mostly speak English but sometimes in mid-sentence will switch to Cantonese on the fly, this mostly happens when they decide to throw profanity at other characters but it adds a layer of believability nonetheless.

Overall Sleeping Dogs is an underappreciated gem and you should play it, as it captures the world of Hong Kong perfectly and has its own spin on the open world genre. It's a shame that we never got a sequel, but maybe one day. It’s widely available on the Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One and PC! Go and give it a go!