The Witcher 2 is Pretty Good

In 2007, The Witcher earned a strong reputation among RPG enthusiasts because it felt like a traditional, old-school RPG in a modern era of streamlined, dumbed-down pseudo-RPGs. Its sequel from 2011, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, feels less like a true RPG and more like a mainstream action-RPG, as if it's trying to appeal to the crowd of gamers who turn to Bethesda and BioWare for their annual RPG fix. That would ordinarily be a pretty damning criticism coming from me, but compared to the likes of Bethesda and BioWare games, The Witcher 2 is a mighty fine game that still understands what makes a good, satisfying RPG.

I Miss Rareware Difficulties

Back in the 90s, Rareware was a juggernaut among game developers, rivaling and perhaps even surpassing the great and almighty Nintendo. Games like GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Conker's Bad Fur Day were just as essential to the N64's library as any of Nintendo's flagship IPs. Without Rareware, the N64 would've only been half the console it was. When Microsoft bought Rare, it was an attack on Nintendo that's still felt to this day; Nintendo lost one of its best developers, and Rare has since developed barely anything of worth on the Xbox.

Rare's presence is sorely missed, but one thing I miss in particular is how they handled the difficulty in their games. When most game developers put different difficulty options into their games, they tend just to provide the same game experience with certain statistics on a slider. Enemies deal more damage and have higher hitpoints, resources are more scarce, there might be more or fewer checkpoints, and so on. What Rare did, by contrast, was provide a completely different gameplay experience for each difficulty.

Retro Review: Conker's Bad Fur Day

Ever since its release back in 2001, Conker's Bad Fur Day has been lauded as one of the best games on the Nintendo 64 and is considered by some to be Rareware's best game. Rareware and Microsoft liked it so much they remade the game for the original Xbox in 2005 in the form of Conker: Live & Reloaded. For some reason, the game never appealed to me when I was younger (I guess because it had a cartoon squirrel as the protagonist and I didn't really know what the premise was supposed to be about), and as such I never played it. Until now.

I can definitely see why Conker was so highly praised back in 2001. It's a very impressive game for its time, especially in terms of the technology in its graphics and sound, and many of its gamepay elements still hold up well today. The thing I like most about it is that it was a refreshing change of pace from similar platformers of that era. It does show its age in a few areas, however, and there are a couple of design choices that bother me and things that I think could've been better.

Should Dark Souls II Have an Easy Mode?

When it was announced that Hidetaka Miyazaki -- director of both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls -- would be stepping down as director for the new Dark Souls II, his successor, Tomohiro Shibuya, expressed an interest in making Dark Souls II "more straightforward and understandable." With news of a new director who said he wanted to make the sequel more accessible for gamers inexperienced with the series, fans immediately began to speculate that the difficulty of Dark Souls II might be "dumbed-down" in order to appeal to a wider audience.

The argument, as these fans proposed, goes that the challenging difficulty is one of the core, fundamental elements that made those games great, and that making the difficulty easier would ruin the experience of Dark Souls. This brouhaha got me thinking: would the inclusion of an "easy mode," or having a more accessible start to the game actually ruin the Souls experience? After some consideration, I don't think it would be such a big deal, and I think a lot of people are just overreacting.

Impressions of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

This past weekend, Steam held a free weekend event for Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, an indie first- or third-person action multiplayer game. As its subtitle suggests, the gameplay revolves around medieval warfare, with armored knights and archers waging war against each other in bloody, brutal combat. You play as one soldier on the battlefield, selecting from four classes and picking specific weaponry. The various game modes include typical team deathmatch, free-for-all, and last team standing, with "team objective" pitting teams against each other in attacking or defending specific objectives.

The combat is based mainly on timing and stamina management; blocking attacks and stringing together combos requires precise timing, and each attack or parry consumes stamina. These features make Chivalry's combat feel a little more tactical than your average hack n' slash game, while the weapons have an authentic feeling of weight and impact to them. Coupled with the intense gore and the in-your-face nature of one-on-one combat, Chivalry has a lot going for it. It's exactly the kind of game I want to like, but I just couldn't convince myself it was worth it from the free weekend event. Here are my impressions of Chivalry, based on the free weekend.

Impressions of Playstation All-Stars

With the introduction of Playstation All-Stars: Battle Royale into the gaming scene, the "mascot brawler" can now be considered something of an actual genre, as opposed to just being that one game series by that one company. In case you didn't already know, Playstation All-Stars is basically Sony's answer to Nintendo's Super Smash Brothers franchise; it's a side-view multiplayer fighting game starring characters from iconic Playstation exclusive games. I've been playing the game on-and-off for a few weeks now, so here are my initial impressions on it.

Great Games You Never Played: Afrika

"Fine, obscure gems." Part of a periodical series: Great Games You Never Played.

Back in 1999, Pokemon Snap proved that games about photography can be just as engaging as an action-packed shooter, yet ever since then, games with photography as the central gameplay mechanic have been few and far between. Some games like Dead Rising have featured elements of photography, but Afrika (a PS3 exclusive released in 2009) is the only other game I know of where photography is the main and only point of the game.

In Afrika, you play as one of two photojournalists sent to photograph and document wildlife in an African conservation. Each day begins in your tent at base camp, checking your email and conducting any preliminary business before setting out on safari. Email is the source of your missions, with various clients requesting photographs of certain animals, sometimes in specific poses or in a particular setting. You're then free to roam about the African wilderness sandbox-style, taking pictures and completing missions at your leisure. At first you're limited to the nearby steppe region, but as you advance through the main missions, you gain access to a swampland, a large lake, a rocky canyon, and a green plains region.

Photographs submitted for missions are graded based on technique, and your pay is based on the picture's grade. The money that you earn can be spent buying new tools and equipment (such as a portable tent so you can spend the night in the field, instead of having to return to base camp at sundown), as well as upgrading your camera body and lenses for better pictures. Missions are split between sandbox-style side missions where you observe the wildlife in real time, and important main missions where you watch a more dramatic, scripted cutscene (such as a fight between a lion and an elephant) and take pictures of critical moments.

The photography in Afrika is rather satisfying, thanks to the breadth of options for getting the right shot as well as the game's emphasis on emulating real photography. For instance, you can unlock eight different lenses, and some are more suited for certain kinds of shots than others, and you have to worry about settings like depth of field, aperture, and shutter speed (among other things). While the photography aspect is great fun, there are, unfortunately, a number of really annoying things about the game's design that feel like noticeable blemishes on a great formula. Still, there aren't many photography games out there, so Afrika is easy to recommend if you're interested in that style of gameplay. More of my thoughts await after the jump.