#therhythmofplay
Any great video game has a groove to it, a kinesthetic dance of feedback and response that can easily be thought of as a kind of music. More »
#itsofficial
Speaking via live broadcast from the CDP Summer Days event, CD Projekt has confirmed the appearance of The Witcher 2 on the Xbox 360 this year, with "no quality compromise" made for Geralt's first journey to console land. More »
Look, we get it: You don't want to buy a game until you know it's good enough for the President of the United States. We hear you, bud, and you're in luck! The Witcher 2 is totally a game in the Presidential library!
Thus we'd like to inform you of a sale at Amazon. The game is available right now at a reduced cost of $40, both as physical media and a direct download. And if you're looking for further reason why you should care, know that we liked the game and stuff. We're no President by any means, but we're constantly asked to furnish a birth certificate to prove our citizenship. It doesn't help that it's our parents who keep requesting it, but still. That basically makes us President, right?
During its "Summer Days" presentation in Los Angeles this afternoon, developer CD Projekt Red announced intentions to release critically acclaimed The Witcher 2 on Xbox 360 by the end of 2011. The confirmation comes after months of back-and-forth over the possibility of a console release, and hot off the bewitched heels of an ESRB rating for the game on Xbox 360.
Little is known about how exactly the title's gameplay, not to mention its impressive graphics engine, will translate to 360, but we're sure to find out more in the coming weeks. We'll keep an eye ... er ... ear on the streaming press conference as well and update this story as it develops.
Describing the opening moments of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings as a "trial by fire" is almost too trite to bear, but don't tell me it isn't accurate. As the dragon swoops overhead and incinerates you yet again, you'll understand that the game's method of delivering a tutorial, which is to whisper it to you in passing, has failed.
Your repeated, humiliating immolation isn't even enough to summon a helpful tip. When one of the characters asks the witcher how one handles such a beast, he responds, "You don't. You run!"
That's the advice from Geralt, professional monster hunter.
During his tour of Europe, President Obama visited Poland and received a somewhat unusual gift from that country's Prime Minister: A copy of Warsaw-based CD Projekt's latest title, the excellent Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Sure, he also got an iPad loaded with Polish movies and some translated novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of The Witcher, but knowing the President's fondness for interactive witchering, it seems clear to us what the most notable gift was.
There's only one problem ... everyone knows President Obama uses a Mac.
You might have noticed that, despite the announcement of a Witcher 2 patch yesterday, you didn't download a Witcher 2 patch yesterday. The patch is finished, CD Projekt reports, but can't be delivered yet due to a server issue. " The bad news," the Witcher 2 community site reports, "is that we have encountered some problems with the server infrastructure, making downloading DLCs impossible."
Ironically, the patch contains fixes for the DLC download process. We aren't sure if it would fix the problem with this download, but what a Catch-22 if it would! CD Projekt pledged to keep fans updated about when they can get this update, the first of two that have been announced so far.
A blog post on the Witcher 2 site details a patch (or, as we're going to refer to it from now on, a "Patcher") that developer CD Projekt plans to release tonight. Version 1.1 streamlines the installation process, fixes an issue with the free "Troll Trouble" DLC (which is included in the patch files), enhances framerate and loading, and fixes "random crashes occurring on some systems, especially after saving and loading saves." Find the full changelist -- with many other welcome fixes -- at the official site.
Even as work finishes up on this patcher, CD Projekt is working on another, due next week, that should fix even more Witcher glitchers.
For some of us, the recommended specs for The Witcher 2 are, let's say, a little daunting. It is thus with a heart full of hope that we look at a recent ESRB rating for an Xbox 360 version. The rating was discovered by Eurogamer, which adds that CD Projekt is planning to announce a game at E3 "that console gamers might be interested in."
CD Projekt has been cautious about a potential console release of The Witcher 2 for some time, though it's aware of the size of the console audience. Given the very warm critical reception The Witcher 2 has received so far, a console port would probably be a safe bet. It's also worth noting that the PC version already plays well with a controller -- the menus even reflect Xbox 360 button mapping when using an Xbox 360 controller.
While it certainly looks the part, does this sequel also play like a AAA blockbuster? Find out in our official The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings review!
If you're planning to spend the weekend with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings -- in lieu of bracing for the impending hellfire, of course -- make sure you've got enough space on an NTFS-formatted hard drive to do it. Though the game's PC system requirements note you'll need "16GB of disc space," they don't mention you'll need that space to be on an NTFS drive.
One Joystiq reader found out the hard way, telling us, "My only hard drive with any storage space left on it is FAT32, and has resisted attempts to reformat. I discovered this hidden system requirement after buying The Witcher 2, downloading it, and attempting to install it this morning."
CD Projekt confirmed the situation to us this morning. Community manager Andrzej Kwiatkowski said, "Yes, we can confirm that The Witcher 2 on Windows systems only works on NTFS-formatted drives." Kwiatkowski further explained that the design is due to the limitations of the older FAT32 system. "FAT32 can't handle any file bigger than 4GB, and one of TW2's files has the size of 9GB."
Who would have thought that one of the most educational games of the year would be CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 2? It's got a thing or two to teach us all about the (awesome) perils of Ezio's trademark maneuver in Assassin's Creed 2: The Leap of Faith. Check out said lesson in the video below!
Though we're sure CD Projekt has a nice, beefy amount of adventure in store for players picking up this week's The Witcher 2, a recent Q&A hosted on GameStop's Facebook page has got us hopeful for the title's longevity. In response to a fan's question about planned DLC, a CD Projekt spokesperson wrote, "Let me announce that all our DLCs will be FREE. All of them. If anything will be for purchase, those will be expansion packs."
The distinction between DLC and expansion packs is awfully fuzzy, but this policy doesn't sound like just talk. CD Projekt added that the game's first DLC side-quest, "Troll Trouble," will arrive as part of the title's launch tomorrow, and will cost you zero dollars. That's our very favorite amount of dollars to pay for things.
#thewitcher2
The long-awaited RPG The Witcher 2 drops on Tuesday, and developer CD Projekt has sown the Internet with all of its launch videos, four in all. All carry some kind of message from the studio at the end, such as that one above. More »
In a fairly cheeky response to the Australian ratings board's censorship of CD Projekt's The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, digital distributor GOG has updated its privacy policy to allow users to decide their own location when making purchases, rather than having their location tracked by IP. Shoppers living in Australia can sidestep the censorship (as well as the bizarre price hike to $69.99 AUS that came about due to "licensing issues") by setting their country of origin as ... well, just about anywhere else.
In a sly press release announcing the privacy policy change (posted after the jump), GOG Managing Director Guillaume Rambourg said the site "has always been about trusting the user," explaining, "We've come to the conclusion that there are a number of issues with using a customer's IP address to determine what offer they are being presented with from GOG.com." Well, to be fair, we'd consider "paying more money for a censored game" to be a fairly troubling issue.
It may not have all the excitement of a prison break, but the latest trailer for The Witcher 2 certainly is scenic. It ought to be, considering it's composed entirely of environment screenshots. Still, it's nice to take a break from all the bloodshed and explosions every once in awhile, right?
The Witcher 2 has reportedly been censored ever so slightly for Australian audiences. Games On Net notes that for its MA 15+ rating the titular Witcher can't accept sex as a reward for completing a side quest. Namco Bandai, the game's Aussie distributor, apparently felt that receiving sex as a reward was not suitable for the game. The quest and NPC are still in the game, though the outcome has simply been altered. That's promised to be the only change made for Aussies.
Contacted for comment, a representative for developer CD Projekt told us the company will apparently make a statement about the situation tomorrow. Australia is expected to finally resolve its lack of R18+ rating in a meeting of the attorneys-general this July.
It's very likely that your "people jumping around stabbing dudes" limit for today is well below what you expected and, frankly, that's a bunch of hogswallop. Let's fix that with a healthy dose of jumping stabs, courtesy of The Witcher 2.
