Decline of Television

Entertainment media in the recent years has changed dramaticly. From the birth of cinema and television, Entertainment available at the touch of a button, with hundreds of movies and television shows being created every year, each to suit the interests of most demographics.

Recently, film and television has gone through a change of quality. Trading artistic integrity for advertising revenue, networks choose to cancel television shows if it doesn’t meet the revenue requirements. Though. Fantastic are cut before their blossom. Shows like ‘The Ben Stiller Show’, ‘Firefly’, ‘Arrested Development’ and ‘Deadwood’. Many of these superb shows were cancelled, for their lack of viewers for the networks.

As these television shows integrate some remarkable story telling, and deep characters, the majority of shows that are cancelled before their prime. On the other side of the spectrum, certain shows are have far gone past their expiry date. Examples of shows that are guilty of this are; ‘Scrubs’, ’That ‘70’s show’, ‘The Office’, ‘X-files’, ‘Two and Half Men’ and most famously ‘The Simpsons’. These shows have been clung to, straining the writers and then becoming shadows of what the shows once were.

The shows like the Simpsons had characters, which were once  deep, multilayered and reflected the stereotypical American, middle-class, white family have become a bunch of two dimensional characters (pun intended) who become stupider every year. The term invented to describe this transition, is aptly named ‘Flanderization’, Named after the The Simpsons, Ned Flanders, who was originally just a kind, clean-cut and quiet, somewhat religious fellow (contrast to Homer), before becoming the passive-aggressive, religious fanatic he is today.

Other examples of ‘flanderization’ in film come in the form of Yoda's speech in the original Star Wars trilogy, simply swapping nouns and verbs in certain situations in a manner as if it were not his first language. This was exaggerated in popular culture leading the writers of the prequels to invent lines such as "Not if anything to say about it, I have!", which makes the once great wise character, a green monster with a speech impediment

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However, there are some successful television series that have avoided ‘Flanderization’. Doctor Who, which has survived for longer than 26 seasons and is still going strong. The writing and lore of the show is the key to this, as they can go through characters, due to the fact that when the doctor dies, he regenerates as a new person, new personality and a new face, allowing the creators to change actors and writers, producing some of the best television to date.

While worthwhile television shows being created every year, such as ‘Community’, ‘Modern Family’ etc. there are still some hope to redeem the industry, but the television executives need to learn how to give a new series a chance and to stop older series from stagnating.

Now for something completely different

A fantastic film clip and a great song. Check it out

The Witcher 2: Continued

When I last wrote I had just finished the prologue to ‘The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings’ and I had thoroughly enjoyed it. I said the game was hard and that I had to lower the games setting to easy to even progress. Well, I finally learnt how to play ( and returned to playing on Normal Setting).

Upon learning how to play the game, my enjoyment increased significantly. As I downloaded the game off www.GOG.com  I did not have a manual on hand; as I have heard a lot of the problems I had a game could have been avoided by looking at the manual, an old tradition in gaming that had died out with tutorials. So I won’t complain about this aspect of the game, as it was my fault and I actually respect the game more for its choice not to baby sit me.

In my last post, I had just finished the prologue, so in the first chapter, many mechanics of the games have come in to fruition, such as monster hunting, traps, alchemy/ herb gather, Potions, boss fighting, story changing choices, and character progression.

Monster Hunting:

The profession that the game is named after, a Witcher is a monster hunter, so the game has mastered the art of this hunting. The game requires you to study a monster, to know their strengths and weaknesses so you can fight them adequately. To do this, you must know the monsters fighting habits, how many numbers they come in, what kind of damage they use (Poison, bleeding etc. etc.), and what they are vulnerable to. Each encounter with the monsters of Witcher 2 is unique and challenging, even the weakest monsters can pose a threat to Geralt (the Witcher) if un prepared.

Traps:

                The use of traps in the Witcher is fantastic, each having their own unique strengths and weakness, they can turn the tides of battle or back fire if you trigger them yourself. Your basic trap is a snare, which can be deployed and reset infinite amount of times, allowing you to reuse the traps. Other traps come in the forms of Fire traps, which do high amounts of damage, but can damage you if you get to close and are not reusable, but are fixable and craftable.

Herb Gathering/ Alchemy:

                The herb gathering in The Witcher 2, is very second nature. Unlike other RPG’s the herbs are everywhere and easy to find, which makes the need to go hunting for herbs less tedious then other RPG’s such as the Dragon Age series.

Alchemy is also intuitive, allowing you to replace some ingredients with others to create potions, which helps if you are low on a specific herb. Alchemy of The Witcher 2 is a necessity and the game makes it easy and hassle free which is a blessing in such a deep RPG such as this.

Potions:

                The potion system in the Witcher is incredibly complex, whilst meditating you can drink up to 3 potions (so no health potion spamming in this game, sorry Diablo fans). Each potion has their positive effects, their negative effects, and toxicity. The toxicity of potions limits the amount of potions that you can have at once, you have a limit of 100 toxicity at the start of the game (may be changeable) and each potion has their own toxicity. For example; a health regeneration potion would have 25 toxicity, but a stronger potion would have 30-50 toxicity. The potion system is deep and requires you to drink the right potions for the right fight. I see this being be implemented in future games due to its fluency and customization.

Boss Fights:

                The first boss fight in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a giant squid monster known as the Kayran (Kraken). The boss fight is hard but as a supporting character is shouting advice at you, it makes the experience a lot easier. The thing about the boss fights is that, as there is no easy way to heal (save for hiding and waiting for regeneration) you really have to be quick and dodge the behemoths large strikes, forcing me to reload the save every time I got hit early in the fight, knowing that my death was inevitable. The boss fight did require some Quick Time Events (QTE) but it wasn’t done to excess and wasn’t a huge part of the fight. I’m really looking forward to some more of these huge fights.

Story Changing Choices:

                Choice is a huge thing in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, everything that Geralt says is a choice by the player. And in the long run there is a lot of choice, I shall not give any spoilers, but you have the choice to help certain groups in the first chapter, and these choices will cascade in to the rest of the games arching story, for example, siding with elves will make the elves a bigger part of the story.

I’ve yet to see much of my choices show through except for my battle worn elven ally. I look forward to seeing more of my choices shine through to personalize my experience of ‘The Witcher 2’.

Character Progression:

                Geralt ‘The Witcher’ goes up in levels as you progress through the game, with each level is given a skill point, you can spend you skill points in The Witcher’s  four tiered skill tree, allowing you to improve you general witcher skills (Health, mana, parrying skills, throwing knives), Swordplay (Extra damage done with swords, countering), Magic (Damage increase, more powerful signs), and alchemy (Trap damage increase, improved potions) there is a lot of customization options given to the player to create their own Geralt.

The Witcher 2 is not without it’s faults though, I’ve had a few AI problems where towns people have trapped me in corners, forcing me to reload saves. But the problems are very minor and easily overlooked in the grand scheme of things.

In my next post I will give an in depth look at the town NPC’s as what I’ve seen is so far is incredible scripting.

Catch you next time readers. 

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (PC) First impressions

As I sat down with my copy of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, I did not know what to expect. I had briefly played the original game, but found the fetch quests a tad stale in a single player RPG (role playing game). With little experience with the story and lore of ‘The Witcher’ I am thrown into the fray upon start-up of the game.

The story starts with Geralt the Witcher, (a monster slayer) being hunted down and captured, awaking in prison to be beat on by guards (so far I have no clue what’s going on). Geralt is then taking to an interrogator and is asked about the events that had happened prior to the start of the game. At this point the only controlling of a character I have had is that of choosing what my character ‘Geralt’ says, which is done quite well, similar to the Mass Effect Radial window, it displays the simplified version of what you want to say, and then followed by the characters voice actor.

(On that note, the voice acting in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is astounding, each character is voice acted very well and the lip-synching has had no errors. And the lines of dialogue that are said can be quite entertaining aswell.)

The interrogator asks you to recap the events of a siege that you and the king were fighting in; you are presented with a list of 4-5 options. I recommend if you read this review before playing the game to start with the first option, as I chose the 3^rd and was confronted with a dragon and some knights when I did not know the controls. The first option you choose is setting up the characters, the recap begins with; Geralt and his witch/companion in bed, she completely naked.I t was a shock to see so early in the game, though it was handled tastefully.

Don’t worry, I will not recap the entire prologue.

The Witcher 2’s visuals are done very well; with cut scenes playing out like that of a fantasy movie, with some great camera angles and well placed slow motion effects, It is a real treat to watch these. I have noticed some graphical tearing, but it has not affected the enjoyment of the game.
The games engine seems to be very solid, I've had no game breaking bugs so far which is a blessing with new release titles these days. The engine is also visually pleasing, for example when I was being roasted by fire from a dragon, I noticed the flames were slowly eating away at the wooden structure I was hiding in, forcing it to buckle.

The Game play of ‘The Witcher 2’ is quite tricky, I started the game on normal and could not take on more than 3 enemies at a time, when it is more common to be taking on 5-6. So I had to lower the games difficulty down to easy (Shame on me). So if you are expecting an easy button mashing RPG, think again. You have to switch between; light strikes, heavy strikes, magic and defence while taking on many foes. It is challenging but very rewarding.

I’ll skip a head a little bit, after recapping the events of this siege, the interrogator leaves, Naturally in most games with a prison, now comes the prison break. The game implores you to use stealth, but does not really teach you how to use such mechanics, so when you’re like me and get spotted, you leave the prison drenched in blood, and a trail of poor olde’ prison guards behind you.

Some gripes I have with the game so far is the lack of a tutorial, it took me a lot of deaths to realise that 'e' was parry.

I’ll keep on updating this play through as I go, but as it stands so far; I think this may be one of the best role playing game in a long time.