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Wiedzmin (2007)
Possibly the best RPG ever
First, the good: Graphics are excellent, the game runs well even on a low-end computer, and the story is one of the best in gaming history.
EDIT: The 1.2 Patch has corrected long loading times.
There are a few low points, most notably long loading times, but these are easily forgotten as you get caught up in an incredible universe. Rather than some cliché Utopian Star Trek world like Oblivion had, The Witcher is about the worst of human nature. Racism against non-humans, prostitution, gambling, sex, and violence are rampant here. It's a terrific take on a Lovecrafitan kind of world, and I throughly enjoyed every aspect of it. Mythology and history from our world are combined flawlessly with creative new monsters and an expansive back story. (Be sure to check out the in-game journal for more insight on the world. It's the best I've ever seen).
The philosophical aspects of the story are all there, and I really enjoyed them. Free will vs fate, the meaning of life, what it means to be human, science vs religion, you name it, it's there. And the best part is, you are actively involved in creating these themes through your decisions. Fantastic.
Combat is good as well, the system is original, and while it took some learning to master, I never got sick of it even after around 200 hours of game play (I beat the game 3 times, once for each ending).
Now, the bad: (These are all really just nitpicking, except for the long load times)
-Loading, loading, loading. I swear, this game takes longer to load than any other game I've ever played. 2+ minutes just to load a house? You've got to be kidding me. EDIT: Ignore this, as of 1.2, loading times are now 5 seconds to load a house.
-Mob balance. This game starts off pretty well, but it becomes ridiculously easy in act 4. Act 3, (especially the swamp) was really, really hard, and then, all of a sudden, it's like someone turned down the difficulty. I've never faced such an easy final boss. I defeated him without losing more than 25% of my health (hard mode). Kind of anti-climactic, if you ask me. -Ingi sign is amazingly overpowered.
-Inventory and quest management system needs help. Badly. Icons are tiny and impossible to distinguish from one another.
-Act 3 performance issues. This game runs poorly on single core And processors in act 3 (outdoor areas only). Settings don't matter, the game gets a constant 5-10 FPS in this region while the rest of the game gets 25-60. I've tested on 3 computers, all had the same problem.
-Poor replay value. With most RPG's, you can play whatever class you want. Here, you can play a battlemage, an alchemist, or a swordsman, but that's it. No ranged offerings, no stealth.
-Without going into spoilers, I felt that the story (the game's strongest point), was kind-of a letdown on my second and third time through. The choices you made throughout the game didn't really impact the ending as much as I thought they did the first time I played the game.
-Redundant people. Everyone has clones of themselves running around everywhere. Yep, it's annoying, but it's hardly a make-or-break feature.
The bottom line: It may seem like I'm being hard on the game here, but I really, really loved it. The 1.2 patch should fix most of my grievances. If load times weren't so long, this would be a 10/10 game for sure.
EDIT: If you patch your game to 1.2, you will get much, much better load times. My final rating: 9.3/10; one of the best games ever.
This game is very, very similar to Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines, however the story here is stronger and the replay value is a little weaker. If you like RPGs like Oblivion, Vampire Bloodlines, Gothic, or NWN, or dark fantasy in general (I especially recommend this game to Wheel of Time fans), this is a must play.
EDIT: The below tips are still useful, but are less so as of patch 1.2.
I feel compelled to point out that loading times can be improved upon, if you do the following: RAM upgrades: I upgraded from 1GB 166mhz ram to 2GB 200mhz ram, and loading times decreased 45% Defrag: Get a real defrag utility and defragment your hard drive. I recommend Perfect Disk (free demo available). This one helps in game performance, too. RAID: I can't personally afford it, but if you have the technically savvy and the cash to blow, a friend of mine RAIDed two 15,000 RPM SCSI drives and decreased loading times to around 5 seconds.
Supreme Commander (2007)
Great game, you'll need to upgrade to play it.
Let me just say that this game is incredible. It surpasses every bit of hype, and all of my expectations. It's amazingly fun, and the single player alone will have you hooked for a long time. The single-player is well presented, with a throwback to Starcraft (vanilla) in the mix of short pre-rendered cut-scenes, gameplay, and mission-briefings. The story here is above average, and any sci-fi fan will enjoy it.
Multilayer is where this title really shines. Like Total Annihilation, this is all about macromanagement and strategy. We've got features that should have been though up years ago (movable waypoints on patrol routes come to mind), and some seriously bad-ass units. Shields are implemented better here then in any RTS previously, (they block shots that hit them, rather than giving a unit more hit points), making their use critical to success later in game. There are enough different strategies here to keep you playing for a decade at least; patches, easy-to-create mods, and expansions should add even more tactics. Resources aren't the PITA they were in Total Annihilation, as you can quickly build heavy mass or power generators that provide virtually infinite resources.
Now, the down sides. There are a few minor annoyances which a patch should be able to fix (namely an inability to cue up commander upgrades, and the fact that you can't set patrol points from a new factory to match those of an existing one, resulting in a million different patrol routes by the end of the game). All in all, these are minor, and won't bother 99% of people.
The big issue here is system requirements. I've tried running the game on a couple of different computers, and, I can safely say that when Chris Taylor says the game will run on a 6600, he means, it will start up. At lowest settings, the game gets single digit frame rates on a 256 meg 7600GS, on a machine with a gig of ram and a 3 ghz processor. And that's on the smallest map with two players and a unit cap of 250 (the lowest).
If you want to run the game at a mediocre frame rate (20-25FPS), I would say that a 7900GT would be a minimum. Duel core and a few gigs of RAM is a must.
If you enjoyed Starcraft, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Age of Empires II, Total Annihilation, or Dawn of War chances are you'll love this game. It's the perfect blend of civ building and brutal combat combined with excellent strategy, assuming your machine can run it.
Overall: 8/10. This would be a 10/10, had the game not lied about it's minimum requirements.
Red Dwarf (1988)
Greater than the sum of its parts
***VERY MINOR SPOILERS***
At first glance, this show is a campy, cheesy, low-budget, poorly-acted Britcom. But, once you get past that, it takes on a certain charm that makes it one of my favorite TV shows.
What really gives this show its awesomeness is the soul put into it. Grant and Naylor work very well as a team to write scripts that rival anything in Monty Python.
The first two seasons play out like a standard sitcom, with most scenes being filmed in just a couple of locations on Red Dwarf itself.
Beginning in season 3, however, the show gets a bigger budget, CGI, and the actors even get a couple acting lessons. With the addition of Kryton as a full time cast member, the show really becomes awesome. It's still cheesy and low budget, but at least now they have resources to explore other locations and meet new characters. Think of it something like the classic Doctor Who: a small regular cast, no budget, and very entertaining to a cult audience.
The show slips a notch in the last two seasons, with the addition of Kochanski as a full time cast member. It stops being a bunch of geeks and losers romping aimlessly around the universe; Kochanski is smart and gives the show direction, while the writers seem to be trying to fit a storyline to the randomness of the first 5 seasons. It's like trying to put a storyline to all of the Monty Python's Flying Circus skits, and it fails completely.
Bottom line: Don't judge the show on the first two seasons alone. Give it some time, at least until the awesome episode DNA, before you disregard it out of hand. And, the last two seasons are still worth watching, even if the storyline does interfere with the jokes.