Witcher2AssassinsOfKings
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Mac Game of the Week: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Most of the games I've covered for this feature so far have come down on the casual side of things, mostly iOS titles that have made their way over to the Mac App Store. But not so with this pick -- The Witcher 2 is a great game, but it is definitely not for the faint of heart (or GPU power). CD Projekt's epic RPG famously made its way to the Mac a few weeks ago, and we're definitely glad to have the game (and the company) on our platform. But this is a high-end game that comes from a genre background that doesn't just enjoy complexity, it revels in it. The Witcher 2 is part of the tradition of European PC RPGs, which offer up hundreds of hours of notoriously twisty quests and story lines, and lots of combat and crafting mechanics. The game definitely follows in this tradition, telling the continued story of Geralt, a "Witcher" who's been trained and conditioned to fight monsters in all of their forms. The plot starts with Geralt being accused of the assassination of a king, and then winds out from there, with multiple branching paths and options to take. Combat is open -- Geralt can cast spells or slash away with a sword as he sees fit, and as with a lot of these RPGs, there are multiple schools of magic and lots of different specializations to choose from. The Witcher 2 is as far from a small, casual undertaking as it gets. It offers up a huge experience, and will likely demand that you're running a very fast Mac to play it on. If you're interested in a vast, sprawling story with the gameplay chops to keep it interesting all the way through, definitely give it a look. You can buy it from Steam or directly from CD Projekt's GOG.com site for US$29.99.
