Juz Finished: Witcher III: Wild Hunt (240 hours played)

The sign of a great game is one that makes you want to have more after the credits roll. For some games, it is only the gameplay. In Witcher 3's case, it is the strong storyline that makes you yearn to know more about what happens next, how they get on...will Ciri stay on doing what she has chosen or will Geralt be content with his new way of life?

This game managed to reel us in and made us care about the characters. In fact, I find  Witcher 3 did a better job compared to Dragon Age Inquisition. I will need to have a long hard look to understand why. 

In my opinion, this game is one of the best PS4 game to date, standing proudly with The Last of Us Remastered, a must-play, as essential purchases for a PS4 owner. 

There will be DLC expansion to Witcher 3, I can't wait. But for now, the countdown starts for Sep 1, MGS V: The Phantom Pain.

E3 2015

The Giants Battle
A lot was said by many journalists about this E3 is like a fan fiction and I tend to agree. Many industry analysts also pointed out that while Sony's press conference was thrilling, Sony does not have any exclusives for this holiday 2015. I dunno about you, Holiday 2015 is looking really packed, and probably turned out to be a good idea for Sony make space for mega-releases such as, MGS V, Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront.

This year's E3 will go down in history that dropped the most bombs and generated the most buzz.
There was so many announcements that it becomes hard to keep up. Here, I will list down some of the highlights:

Bethesda : Fallout 4, Dishonored 2, Doom

Microsoft: recore, Beyond Eyes, Rise of the Tomb Raider

EA       : Mirror's Edge, Unravel, STAR WARS Battlefront

Ubisoft  : For Honor, The Division, Rainbow Six: Siege, Ghost Recon Wild Lands

Sony     : The Last Guardian, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Firewatch, No Man's Sky, Final Fantasy VII - Remake, Shenmue 3, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End

SquareEx : Just Cause 3, Hitman, Deus Ex : Humankind Divided

Microsoft and Sony
Just like last year, Nintendo skipped the pre-E3 conferences and opted for the much more 'intimate' E3 experience with their Nintendo Direct E3 conference. While they made some newsworthy announcements over the course of E3, I have decided not to do any write up on them. Nintendo will always have their fans. I am just not one of them. Anyway it wasn't one of their best showings as even their fans crucified their E3 2015 Nintendo Direct.

So here are some of my reflections of Microsoft and Sony at E3 2015.

Kudos to Microsoft, for coming out with the great double-punch at this year's E3, great exclusive line-up and backwards compatibility. The great line-up includes the fan favourites like HALO 5 Guardians, Forza 6 and further down the line Gears of War 4, while ponying the cash to make Rise of The Tomb Raider a holiday 2015 exclusive. Backwards compatibility while comes with strings attached, is such a great headline to either stem the 360-to-PS4 migration or to entice Xbox-leavers to purchase that second console. Slowly but surely, under Phil Spencer's stewardship, Xbox has managed to turned things around. Positivity starts to grow with gamers-first policies like automatic playable for 360 games fo that you owned on your Xbox One (no purchase/subscription required). ID@Xbox, continues to build an interesting lineup (eg. CupHead, Beyond Eyes).

Sony on the other hand continues to test their fans with a lean first party lineup, but thankfully, worked to ensure their leadership means that PS4 will be the best home for 3rd party games. Sony locked down DLC-first for Call of Duty Black Ops 3, Star Wars Battlefront, Disney 3.0 and exclusive content for Destiny expansions. That said, 2015 still remains a solid first party offering for non-PS3 owners as they get their hands on remastered offerings of :God of War 3, Uncharted 1-3 Collection, Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls. For long term Sony fans, for most of 2015 and maybe first half of 2016, they will need to look at 3rd party publishers for big AAA games and smaller studios for interesting indie gems. The future looks bright though, as Sony took to the E3 2015 stage to announce a new IP from Guerrilla Games, Horizon: Zero Dawn and the revival of The Last Guardian.

Last but not the least, is one of the unique things about E3, those weird uncomfortable moments of E3. For me, this year's moment goes to Square Enix conference...with one of the stage presenters with a weird mask. There you go, E3 2015 is a wrap.

I played: The Witcher 3

Well, I ditched the plan to hold out on Witcher 3 and played it last weekend. The best of all, I got this game as a gift for completing a garden quest. Thank you!

The Witcher 3 was originally planned for early 2015 early but was later delayed. The game is a one of the highly anticipated titles in 2015 and the hype has been building since its debut. The developers CD projekt RED shown great confidence with its early release of review copies to major gaming news outlet. Their confidence was vindicated with many great reviews it has received. For me, it is every bit like the game journalists made it out to be...a very top notch experience so far.

Although I am abit new to the Witcher series (based off a series by a Polish novelist), the story is easy enough to follow. The gameplay is satisfying...be able to launch a heavy blow after a perfectly timed dodge feels awesome. The world is huge and got plenty to do...sometimes the quests are not as straightforward as they may seem. In one of them, I was helping someone to retrieve a box from a group of monsters surrounding a broken cart with a dead men. Turns out, the person that I am helping was actually the raider that killed the men but couldn't loot them before the monsters started appearing. It is this level of attention given by the developers to little side quests like these, that bodes well for the game as a whole.

The game is not free of its shares of issues, it is a large open-world game after all. However, the developers have been working very hard to swat any bugs and delivering patches on a regular basis.

Still there are some downsides I can think of, especially with the user interface and inventory management. Often times, I find it difficult to decide what to buy whenever I am at a merchant store. It would have been nice if as I buy, I can see how many of an item I already own in my inventory.

Another small gripe, is that the game requires me to be at a fast travel point, in order to fast travel, unlike Far Cry or Watch Dogs. Nonetheless, The Witcher 3 is so far the best AAA game this year..I look forward to the remaining 100 hours that I will be playing. Look for my full review once I have completed my first playthrough.