Problems with Witcher 2

AAAAARRRGGGGHHH

This is one of the main reasons why I have grown to hate mainstream PC gaming. I have bought Witcher II last week, eager to give my money to brave Polish developers from CD Project Red. On Saturday I sat down to play it on a powerful PC - what could go wrong? Well, a lot of things.

I installed the game for the first time, then downloaded the patch. Patch refused to install, claiming the version of the game is wrong. Right, I did install English voices, maybe that's the problem. Oh, there's now way to remove them without removing the whole game? All right, uninstall, reinstall, patch. What, still wrong version? Googling, googling... ah-ha! I have English version of Windows 7 and need to install Polish character encoding for non-unicode something. Okay, I will. It is a little strange that a Polish game has problem with Polish diacritic characters, but I will. What, I need to restart computer after that? In XXI century? Whatever.


I finally get to run the game. Five samey animations reeking of standard After Effects effect? Mmkay. Menu - wow, pretty. I can't see the actual menu items, but it's still pretty. I start playing, see Geralt running, then tortured, then someone asks him a question and game hangs. No, wait, it didn't hang. The game is actually waiting for me to chose an answer... but I can see them! Yes, each line of text only shows itself when I hover above it with cursor. Dammit.

So I quit the game, run it again a few times with different settings, nothing changes. I chose to install newer ATI drivers then, which turns out to be a big mistake. Blusescreen of death. Two hours and four different drivers later I give up and fall back to system restore. Unfortunately, the only option is to go back to before Withcer installation. Which means another reinstallation, once the restore process is over. After two more hours of furious googling and one more restore, I finally find a way to install ATI drivers without bluescreen. Another hour goes by trying to find a combination of Witcher and Catalyst settings that would allow me to see dialogues and menu items - but to no effect.

Let's sum it up: half a day on Saturday plus one or two hours on Sunday, lots of nerves, lots of googling - and I still didn't get to play the game I paid for. It is not entirely CDProject Red fault, of course, ATI and Microsoft are also to blame for crappy drivers and hopeless operating system, but the outcome for me is that I have just wasted a chunk of my life.


Why I wrote "mainstream PC gaming" in the first sentence? Well, strangely enough, I rarely had this kind of problems with indie games or consoles. Some might say that it is due to their simplicity, but frankly, I don't care. What I know is that each time I want to play AAA title on a PC, I get into seventh circle of hell, full of drivers, reinstallation, patches, dlls and wasted hours.

As for Witcher 2, I still am very much rooting in favour of its authors and the game itself. I am glad I could give them my money, I would have done it even if I did not have a PC. But the fact that I can't really play it due to combination of bugs and drivers being shit is really sad.

The Fourth Film Music Festival in Krakow

Not only film music.

Contrary to its name, the fourth edition of Film Music Festival in Krakow was not only about movies. The first day opening concert featured Joe Hisaishi, the creator of music for Hayao Miyazaki anime films (all right, so these technically qualify as movies, but still), while the second day concert featured Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy and suite from Witcher 2. As you can surely understand, dear reader, I just had to be there!


Now, having participated in the grandiose event, I can safely say that it was absolutely brilliant. Joe Hisaishi was great - a small, smiling Japanese gentleman, whose music charmed the audience and smart remarks during interviews entertained everyone. We could hear scores from "Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind", "Laputa - Castle in the Sky", "Princess Mononoke", "Ponyo by the Sea", "My neighbour Totoro" as well as from Takeshi Kitano's films "Brother", "Hana-bi", "Kikujiro" and others. There was also silent movie (Buster Keaton's "The General") played that evening and a special musical thanks for help after tsunami and earthquake, something I found very touching. All in all, the music was beautiful and since there are so many emotions in it, I almost shed a tear. You can watch (and listen to!) an overview of the first day concert here:

The second day saw the presentation of suite from Witcher 2, appropriately epic, bombastic and heavy, as well as Distant Worlds concert, featuring music from almost all Final Fantasy parts. We've heard One Winged Angel, Bombing Mission and Main Theme from FF7, Vamo Alla Flamenco from FF9, Liberi Fatali, Love Grows, Fisherman's Horizon and Don't Be Afraid from FF8, as well as lots of other songs. A special treat for the audience was Opera Maria and Draco from FF6 performed with real opera singers, really classy addition to otherwise great music roster. Watch and hear the second day concert below:

Third day concert was also a little unusual: "Pirates of Caribbean: The Curse of Black Pearl" screening with live music rendition. It was extremely well pulled off (timings!) and sometimes one could forget that the music was being produced on the fly. The live version, however, was so much more powerful than the prerecorded one - even the main theme was richer and somehow more enticing than the regular version everyone heard in cinemas and from their TVs. Fourth day followed up with similar performance, this time including Polish series "Czas Honoru" ("Time of Honour"), but I skipped it, due to lack of time and energy.

All in all, the event was absolutely brilliant - the energy, the emotions, great music, it was all there. And as an additional bonus, I managed to get Hironobu Sakaguchi's autograph. Yes, the very same, father of all Final Fantasy games! As you can imagine, I am extremely happy that I could be there and I will surely join the fifth edition next year.

Status update - March & April

Just a short update to stay in touch with those of you that still haven't removed Barts News from their RSS readers.

PC gaming

Alphaland - played it after Gnome’s Lair review. Not as great as I expected, but interesting nevertheless and ending was somehow very uplifting.

Dragon Age: Origins - still hasn’t completed that one. Made a wrong choice, need to backtrack a fair amount and I can’t force myself to do that. Also, grinding is getting on my nerves.

PS3 gaming

Heavenly Sword - got bored by story and annoyed by gameplay, sold the game.

Valkyria Chronicles - same here. People that claim that this game is a misunderstood gem need to play more good games. Anime cliches, weird battle system, generic characters make for a disappointing game. Sold it too.

Castlevania - after great time initially, I realized it is a damn hard game if you are playing from time to time. I forget exquisite combos, rules to use for Light and Dark magic, and as a result I am getting my ass kicked. I would really like to finish it, though!

Portal 2 - extremely good game, but nowhere near the brilliance of its predecessor in terms of ambiance. Strong 9/10, but not 10. Completed the game in about 8 hours, won’t be going back in next 6 months or so. Perhaps I should sell it now?

PSP gaming

Persona 3 Portable - revisited this great game because my Collector’s Edition from Ghostlight arrived in mail. Played as a girl and had fun!

SEGA Megadrive Collection - also known as SEGA Genesis Collection. I reviewed it long time ago, now I am playing it from time to time just for a bit of retro fun. Bought it on the cheap, too. Interestingly, it got my non-gaming thirty-somthing buddy hooked - food for thought.

Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection - got a review copy, wrote a review, handed it bakc after a week. It is a fine game, but it feels very dated even despite the audiovisual rehash it received. I won’t be buying it, most probably.

Other than that, got hit by PSN outage but not too bad - I don’t play online much recently anyways. I couldn’t activate my Lara Croft and Guardian of Light (yup, bought it to play with a certain reader of this blog), but that’s all the inconvenience. I would love to play Outland, though, so I hope Sony restores PSN some time soon.

Additionally, a few of my texts got published on various portals (mostly Polygamia) and on a special occasion in a daily newspaper, too (FFIV review) - however, since it was all in Polish, I won’t be bothering you with them.

'till next time, folks!