As a rule, I’ve never been one for fantasy games. I’m not enchanted by Mages. Dwarfs hold little stature with me. I’ve never rolled with a Dungeons and Dragons crew and, until I Googled it five minutes ago, I thought Game of Thrones was something Prince Charles played when the Queen was out walking the Corgis.
Last weekend though, I was strolling through the woods when I came across a woman. She’d been attacked. Her wounds appeared untreatable, but there was a chance I could save her by administering a medicine that can ward off death but might leave her living in agony. The choice was mine.
As the great Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, I’m pretty sure I’ve got this one covered. I’m the White Wolf, the Butcher of Blaviken, silver of barnet and blade and able to produce fire from my fingertips. I’m like the perfect merger between International Rescue and Npower. Yep, she’s in good hands. No, she’s in the best hands!
It’s at this point, however, I’m reminded that, no matter how wonderful Geralt may be, within his character there lies one potentially fatal flaw: me. What would this poor lady think if she knew I’d resorted to a strategy guide for Skyrim? That I quit on Dark Souls, (and Dark Souls 2). Should her fate really be placed in the hands of a man who finished with the ‘Earth Destroyed’ ending in Mass Effect 3?
This is exactly the kind of thing The Witcher 3 excels at, using the player to power its story. With a distinct emphasis on the word ‘using’.
Of course, this is a grand fantasy adventure – the Iliad with over-encumbrance – anything less and its creators, CD Projekt RED, would be drummed out of the RPG Guild of Master Craftsmen. But such an XXL approach to epicness can also prove impersonal.
No matter how wonderful Geralt may be, within his character there lies one potentially fatal flaw: me.
Upholding the traditional contradiction at the centre of almost every RPG, Geralt’s main mission, a supposed race-against-time to save missing surrogate daughter from pursuing spectral army, isn’t one you’re meant to passionately prioritise but creatively circumnavigate. You’re here to take in the death, fear and bucolic landscape, and it’s one hell of a scenic route. Like putting on The Archers for 100 hours straight and watching as everything descends into anarchy.
Along the way, it’s the incidental, often optional, little morality plays you encounter that provide the game’s defining moments. Self-contained stories of common folk trying to scratch out an existence in the cinders and scorched earth left by a great war. They resonate not because they’re based on magic or mighty warriors but relatable human emotions.
Regularly, the choices you’re forced to make are both impossibly simple and simply impossible. Murky decisions that bubble up like swamp gas – whichever way you approach them the outcome stinks. On more than one occasion, I found myself letting out a bitter cackle of recognition at the brilliant unfairness of it all. The way the game had so blatantly used my heroic vanity and preconceptions against me, deftly drawing me into the ethical quick sand, once again.
The Witcher 3 is a game you have to play and allow to play you in order to make it a truly memorable journey. It’s also a game where the greatest quest is clearly the one undertaken by CD Projekt RED to use every conceivable regional British accent. I understand completely that British is the de facto language of fantasy. But it also raises the question: Am I getting so much satisfaction from punching this Baron in the face because he’s an abusive husband, or because I can’t stand another second listening to what sounds like a feudal Ozzy Osbourne?
Unlike fantasy, golf will probably never be cool, as it will never have it’s Game of Thrones moment. Whatever you say, I just can’t see Sir Nick Faldo dressed in a wolfskin beheading Ian Woosnam in the members’ bar at Royal Troon. It would at least have to be a Pringle wolfskin.
Unfortunately, someone at EA Sports seems to have gotten themselves stuck in a lift with someone from EA’s marketing think tank and decided that the thing that’s really holding golf games back, is the golfing part.
So, with the sport’s old polyamorous apex predator now hunted into virtual extinction, EA have decided this is the perfect opportunity to revamp golf for a new generation, led by current world number one Rory McIlroy. You might remember his dim-witted, android twin brother in those god awful Santander adverts.
What you get then with Rory McIlroy’s PGA Tour is the old stick and ball game broaden out to appeal to the first-person shooter crowd. It’s less Royal and Ancient, more Modern War-fairway.
The game is automatically set to Quick Rounds, eliminating all but a handful of the full 18 holes, while alternative match options, like Skins, and the Country Club multiplayer hub are missing entirely. The career mode seems more afterthought than essential feature, there are barely enough PGA professional to make up a Ryder Cup team and the create your own golfer feature produces nothing but the lobotomised lovechildren of Sergio Garcia.
Courses are now treated as the golfing equivalent of multiplayer maps. A selection included on the disk, more to follow via DLC. There’s no Augusta, although to compensate EA have including one based on Battlefield 4’s Paracel Storm map. Gee, thanks. It’s all burning battleships and shrapnel-filled sand dunes. It stops just short of giving your golfer post-traumatic stress disorder every time you miss a putt, but it does make you wonder, what’s next? Kill streaks? Capture the flag at St Andrews could prove a very confusing affair. Oh, and look, in that bunker over there, it’s Duffy Waldorf teabagging Colin Montgomerie.
There are some positives. Horrendous pop-in aside, the game looks nice, load times have been shortened and subtly hidden, different shot types and swing options are all catered for and commentary is less mechanical although still repetitive. There’s a decent golf game in here, albeit one you have to dig through the options to create it yourself.
That shouldn’t be how this works. People who pay £50 for a proper round of golf want a proper round of golf. And it’s sad that, aside from HB Studios’ quirky, homebrew The Golf Club and the free-to-play WGT Golf on iPad, there aren’t a lot of other options. Even so, you should still think hard before parting with your money for this. Oh, and if you do, ignore the putting line, use it and you’ll be left more confused than after a night out with Robert Allanby.
Rocket League was one of the free PlayStation Plus titles for July. It’s exactly the kind of game the service was designed for. If it had quietly slipped onto virtual shelves at full price, Psyonix’s cyber-future, car football effort probably wouldn’t have made much of a ripple. Now, it’s a burgeoning eSport.
Basically, Rocket League is FIFA’s Be a Pro mode meets The Crew, or Disney’s Cars, with eye-catching cosmetic upgrades for your automobiles. Mine now sports a sombrero and neon confetti comet tail. He’s more George Best than Roy Keane.
It’s the kind of game you’d invent your mates round to play if you were all billionaires, and the fun, strangely, comes from your lack of co-ordination and manoeuvrability. Even small successes like a tyre-squealing tackle or goal line tap-in elicit a huge sense of achievement.
The developers have already promised DLC on the way. If they can somehow shoehorn physical assaults and casual racism into a sequel, it’s sure to get picked up by Amazon Prime.
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