Zafo - Lonely Princess

Zafo returns with a new set to destroy your childhood. While her street-urchin boyfriend is off playing with half-naked male genies, a lonely Princess Jasmine borrows Abu the monkey for a bit revenge sex playtime. But then her pet tiger Rajah decides he wants in on the action too! It's 43 pics of the way the movie should have been at mongo-bongo-art.com. And remember all sales go directly to the artist! And aardvarks. Also Zafo has moved some of his older sets into a $10 package deal, so grab it if you don't already have them!



And of course there's also that other thing that everybody is busy doing - Witcher III. So after my review of W2:AoK figured I'd give my opinion on the new game. Cuz I know that your life revolves around my opinion on various random things (that's sarcasm for those that need to be told). Anyway, I must say I am rather impressed with the game. Almost everything I bitched about in the last game they fixed for this one. Combat is much much MUCH more fluid and responsive. Though it was possibly made a little too easy. Even on Hard you can mow shit down fairly easily. But better that than retardedly sluggish controls and shitty fight set-ups. The fast travel fixes alot of the pointless walking, and plenty of dungeons/quests tend to loop so you end up back where you started. There is still a bit of tedious walking/riding around just to get places. But that is a necessary evil of having an "open world".

Goes without saying that the graphics are incredible, and they fortunately toned down the bloom this time. But they are kinda infatuated with the idea of camera lens effects - water drops on a camera lens, dirt and dust on a camera lens, etc. Maybe I'm weird (maybe? lol), but I just don't see the point in the constant effort to make CG mimic film. They are different genres/methods. It's like trying to mimic oil painting with water colours. Why? But I digress (shocker!).

So the story is once again solid and in-depth. But the presentation does still seem to be lacking at times. Not that it's bad, it just seems like it could be done better. Even knowing the game backstory and history, things can get kinda foggy and weird with all the who? what? where? why? And all the necessary side-quests tend to detract from the sense of urgency and drama. Which can occasionally make the enforced drama-moments fall somewhat flat. But again, necessary evil of open game worlds I guess. And on another story note - there is some silly immersion breaking bullshit. Chaining from "gotta get the super rare trading card", to "Zed's dead, baby", to "Snow White and the 7 Dwarves", did start to head into shark-jumping territory.

Characterizations were pretty fantastic. For me Cerys completely stole the show. And Yen was pretty awesome as well. The other Witchers were great, though Vesemir was a bit over-done in the whole father-figure role. The random accents were a bit weird though. Like where does Ciri's english accent come from? Or Triss's perky upbeat all-American-girl accent? And speaking of Triss she did kinda come across as a complete ditz in this game. Which was a bit of a letdown after being such a stellar character in the previous game. So yeah.

Regardless, overall it's a pretty great game. Enjoyable and highly recommend it. So much so, that I of course had to do some fan art.