{"id":107324,"date":"2020-01-14T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/news\/2020\/01\/feature_game_of_the_decade_staff_picks_-_the_witcher_3_wild_hunt"},"modified":"2020-01-14T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T20:00:00","slug":"feature-game-of-the-decade-staff-picks-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/01\/14\/feature-game-of-the-decade-staff-picks-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: Game Of The Decade Staff Picks – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n
\"Witcher\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

Following on from our reader-voted Top 50 Games of the Decade<\/a>, Nintendo Life staff members will be picking their personal favourite Nintendo games<\/a> between the years 2010-2019. Today, Liam reminds us that sometimes, you have to keep trying to really find a gem…<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Let\u2019s make this clear, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt<\/a><\/strong> is not only my game of the past decade, but it\u2019s also easily one of the best games I\u2019ve ever played in my life \u2013 dare I say the<\/em> best. I got this title about a year or so after its initial release in 2015. By then, the game had received \u201cover 200 awards\u201d (according to the box art), and word had well and truly spread throughout the lands about it being a proper<\/em> next-generation video game. In fact, my very own Xbox One copy featured a quote on the front of it from a certain outlet starting with \u2018I\u2019 and ending in \u2018N\u2019 saying how it \u201cdefines next-gen\u201d and while I don\u2019t always agree with the guys infamous for complaining about “too much water” in a Pok\u00e9mon<\/strong> game<\/a>, I couldn\u2019t agree more in this particular case.<\/p>\n

So, after reading many good things about it online and from a close friend of mine who had already completed this epic fantasy adventure on PC a few months beforehand, I booted up Witcher 3 and prepared myself for a \u201cmassive open-world adventure\u201d like never before. Although I owned the previous games in the series on the digital platform GOG.com<\/a>, I hadn\u2019t really played much of either one. I\u2019d also been reassured by this same friend that knowledge of the existing games or the original Polish novels by the author Andrzej Sapkowski<\/a> wasn\u2019t required, so I dived into CD Projekt Red\u2019s third major Witcher outing cold turkey \u2013 like many other bandwagoners at the time.<\/p>\n

Despite glowing reviews and a sense of excitement about experiencing something new beyond the usual land of Hyrule, I ended up losing interest in the game pretty quick. It was a combination of things, from memory. The confusing and overly-detailed menus, the sluggish movement of Geralt \u2013 including his horse Roach who would come to a complete halt at the mere sight of the slightest ledge \u2013 and even the story didn\u2019t come across as anything special at first.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/figure>\n

I ended up shelving the game, while at the same time promising myself I would one day return to it to experience this bleak but beautiful world everyone was raving about. I think it was about a month before I picked it back up and started a new save file. Again, I really tried to like it and had no luck. I made a little more progress this time around but had barely stepped foot in the first town before I dropped it again. Fast forward a few months and I decided to give it one final chance. It was at that point it all clicked<\/em> and I never looked back.<\/p>\n

For the remainder of the year, the majority of my spare time was spent playing The Witcher 3 and exploring the world as Geralt of Rivia. When I wasn\u2019t playing it, I was thinking about it, and when I was playing it I would become immersed in this large and detailed fantasy universe for hours on end. I became more invested in the characters over time and lapped up the lore to the point I didn\u2019t want Geralt\u2019s adventure to ever end.<\/p>\n

This truly was a \u201cmassive open-world adventure\u201d that defined next-generation gaming. At the time, I had personally never seen such a vast and open game world like it and to this day even, there are few others I feel that can compete with its level of detail (keeping in mind, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild<\/a><\/strong> didn’t exist at this point). Obviously, the characters played a big part in the adventure as well. Geralt, Yen, Triss, Ciri and even Dandelion all had such unique personalities and the more you got to know them, the more attached you grew to each one. The branching pathways only added to this, and the combat had some of the best sword-play I\u2019d ever experienced in a video game, despite the initially awkward controls.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/figure>\n

I think what is important to note here most of all is the fact I persevered and now I consider The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt to not only be one of the best releases of the past decade, but one of the greatest games of all time. I think if you\u2019ve played this title from start to finish, you\u2019ll understand why it\u2019s so special, but for anyone reading this who hasn\u2019t \u2013 it\u2019s a game that\u2019s done a beautiful job of adapting a series of books that were arguably underrepresented outside of their homeland in Poland. Heck, there\u2019s even a Hollywood Netflix series now starring Henry Cavill, and whether the showrunner wants to admit it or not \u2013 it\u2019s surely only been given the green light because of the incredible global success of the third game.<\/p>\n

Of course, since then, the game has arrived on Switch, allowing fans to play this incredible adventure anywhere they like. I have to admit, I’m actually stunned that a world as dense and detailed as this one can be carried around in your backpack, but it pleases me immensely that Witcher 3 is now being experienced by a much wider audience \u2013 an audience which may never have played any of the previous games. Sure, the Switch version isn’t quite as pretty as the Xbox One or PS4 offerings, but the main thing is that the core of the game remains totally and utterly intact.<\/p>\n

All I\u2019ll say at this point is that if you haven\u2019t played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, make it your top gaming priority right now<\/em> and most of all \u2013 see it through to the end. It might not grab your attention early on, but Geralt\u2019s third and final chapter will likely end up being one of your most memorable gaming experiences of all-time if you stay with it right up to the conclusion (the DLC is also incredible, it’s worth noting). There\u2019s probably a life lesson here as well; perhaps something about seeing things through to the end, because if you don\u2019t, you might miss out on something special. I almost<\/em> did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following on from our reader-voted Top 50 Games of the Decade, Nintendo Life staff members will be picking their personal favourite Nintendo games between the years 2010-2019. Today, Liam reminds us that sometimes, you have to keep trying to really find a gem… Let\u2019s make this clear, The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}