The Witcher Pokémon Go-like game is out, but is it any good?
I had a fight with a hag in a park yesterday afternoon and no one seemed to notice. I had a fight with a griffin the size of a bus stop too, coincidentally right next to a bus stop. Did the people on the bus care? No they didn’t. I fought ghouls and wyverns and there was even a horse’s head on the pavement for a while. Somewhat amusingly, none of this looked particularly out of place in Brighton.
The Witcher – Monster Slayer
- Developer: Spokko (part of CDPR)
- Publisher: CD Projekt
- Platform: Played on Pixel 1, Android
- Availability: Released 21st July on Google Play and App Store
I’m playing the brand new Witcher mobile game, The Witcher – Monster Slayer. It’s the game that’s a bit like Pokémon Go and uses real-world map data to populate your local area with monsters for you to fight. You are a witcher after all (I’m actually a trained witcher but that’s another story entirely).
It’s not bad. A lot of effort has clearly gone in. Characters are voiced and there are illustrated cut-scenes. There are a few dialogue choices, there’s limited character creation and customisation through skill trees. There’s crafting and equipment to upgrade. The hallmarks of a witcher RPG are here. And seeing the monsters of that universe standing right in front of you, using the game’s augmented reality mode, is endlessly cool. You get a real sense of their size.
It’s not the most comfortable way to fight them, though, because you have to hold your phone up towards where they would be stood in real-life, and sometimes they’re so big they obscure their own health bar, which signals when they’re about to attack – something you have to pay close attention to in order to parry perfectly and negate their damage. You also look a bit stupid holding your phone up when people walk by.
