Witcher 3 is one of the best games of all time. That’s kind of the only reason I find this poll not totally absurd.
Yeah, kinda simultaneously, actually. Or blended together enough to effectively be so. What you said about taking a few hours to get familiar with a control scheme, though? That actually gets to part of the problem. I don’t get a few hours straight to play any game (especially one I don’t want the kids watching over my shoulder). So a lot of the grander AAA games usually get played like this:
Session 1: Play about 45 minutes, half of which is cutscenes. Probably don’t make it out of the tutorial stuff.
Session 2 (two days later): Start over because I’m not sure I remember the controls or what I was supposed to do next. Play for an hour and a half. Maybe get just past the tutorial. Spend a lot of time in the first level trying to find all the collectibles and secrets. Eventually move on. Get into some “real” combat that I’m only barely prepared for. Try it a few times and then call it a night because I don’t want to stay up later than I should just to fail repeatedly.
Session 3 (two days later): Contemplate picking up the game again so I can see where it’s going to go. Remember the combat. Don’t feel like dealing with something that intense tonight, so I play something more calm and familiar.
Session 4 (five days later): Starting to feel a little guilty that I never gave that game enough time. Pick it up and put a couple hours into it. That combat wasn’t so bad; I just needed to slow down and concentrate. Get to the part where I have some skill points and I can level up. Stare at all the options for awhile and ask the game designers why they think every game has to have stupid leveling up (RPGs are excepted here). Stop playing when I get into a combat seems unfair, wondering whether I suck, whether I’m progressing too far too fast, or if I made the wrong level-up choice. Alternately, I get to a part where the game opens up with a ton of options and I have no idea which way to go, and worry when I choose one that it’s the wrong choice.
Session 5: Doesn’t happen.
That pretty closely describes my attempts to play The Witcher 1, Arkham Asylum, and Tomb Raider. The games are pretty to look at, impressive in scope, riveting at times. It just requires too much effort for me to pick them up and play them again. Just thinking about it makes me feel bored and stressed.
I’ve finished both and voted Witcher 3.
However both games are not just going to be GotY contenders, they are going to end up in Best Game Ever lists for a lot of people in the future. Most years don’t have a single game as good as either of them, let alone two. They’re both probably the best games I’ve played in at least 5 or 6 years. Probably longer in the case of Witcher 3.
I’m in chapter 2 in MGS5 (around 35 hours played) so I will allow myself to vote already. The vote was for W3.
MGS5? Great wealth of tactical options, good AI, good length, and good performance. Systems wise it’s close to the perfect action-stealth game.
But it really can’t be a classic. The game lacks in the story for a good part, just giving you the mission of taking one more prisoner, one more commander, or a scientist, which they just serve to give you a clue to the next intermediate goal. Then when finally there is actual story, it’s a mix of being baaad and being forgettable. From what I read of the fan’s feedback, the “bad” and “stupid” is normal from MGS but even them were surprised of how “ehh” and forgettable is the story, all things told, usually there is more good with the bad in MGS.
The tapes are a crutch from the narrative standpoint, I’m sick of audiologs in games; and in any case they served more for filling up the gaps, to expand in the lore, the backstory, or sometimes to justify the Kojima-isms. I don’t see how the tapes qualitatively improve the storytelling.
Then we have the structure of Chapter 2 with repeated content. Ugh. And at the same time isn’t optional because there are new story parts in there.
In the gameplay, I would liked more options for difficulty setting, as the game is too lenient, too forgiving most of the times. And at the same time (even if it seems a contradiction), more checkpoints or a real save system.
Thematically, I think the game should have done more with the MB, as it seems it wants to make the brotherhood of the group of soldiers of Mother Base like, really important, as in they are your family, that’s your home, your nation, but it doesn’t feel that way. There should been missions in the MB where you talk to soldiers while drinking, training, or something like that.
I forgot about this thread, but now that I completed both games I voted for The Witcher 3. While the missions in MGSV were very good, other aspects of it were below the standards The Witcher 3 set. MGSV got the sneaking right and while it was sometimes too lenient as far as when they noticed you, enemies reacted in a believable way when you were noticed. Some missions were tough to remain completely stealthy and when things went south it could get frantic. I was happy I could pretty much ignore the base building and ‘the box’. I just felt ‘the box’ made things too silly. It probably would have saved me from my screw ups if I used it, but that is what my assault rifle and rocket launcher were for.
The Witcher 3 had a world I loved to explore and pick up interesting stories as I traveled. The combat was decent. W3 wasn’t perfect - the gear was relatively uninteresting, at release at least the inventory system was a bit of a chore. The story, characters, and landscape were so good that I didn’t get tired of being in that world my entire time with the game.
Any more opinions on this now that it’s been two more years and more people have played both games?
And what happened to the original poll? Did non-discourse polls not cross over into discourse?
I’m pretty sure polls were a casualty of the move.
Too late to vote then? :)
I got both at launch and played them about the same number of hours, yet to complete either…
I’d say Witcher 3 as MGS5 has way too many popups and loading screens.
Re: Quiet is on-par for MGS titles, no problem with it, just another quest.
Turin’s post above is still accurate. I finished both games, but whereas I spent some 450 hours in TW3 and still look forward to future playthroughs, one 70 hour playthrough of MGS5 was enough for me. I liked it a lot, both story and gameplay, but I hated all the busywork filler with the base and all the timewasting the game has. It didn’t quite had a lasting impact on me. Although that ending cutscene with Venom and mirror was cool.
Witcher 3, no contest.
I probably replied already, but this is a necro and i loved these games, so…
Witcher 3 without any doubt. It was a near perfect game and the developer gave it amazing support.
MGS5 was not a finished game. It was great, but there were clearly parts cut from it. The publisher also forced really dumb microtransactions on the game. This was especially apparent in a lot of decisions regarding base management. Realistically i have to blame Kojima for some of this. He can’t just expect unlimited money and development time.
There were some really strong parts in MGS5, but there was also a lot of open world grinding which was pretty so-so.
Also, while i know feelings about the ending of MGS5 were… mixed, i personally liked it.
I really didn’t enjoy Witcher 3 (though I put in 40 hours trying to) so for me it’s easily MGS 5. I loved how the bonkers story-telling (including the intro that I’m surprised to see so hated here) mixed with more standard combat. I felt like the game was constantly surprising me even when I was sure it was out of new ideas. This happened both in its surreal story-telling as well as its gameplay systems.
For Witcher 3, I found the combat system so infuriating that it definitely negatively affected my impressions of the other parts of the game. But I also found the quest to feel formulaic after the first 10 hours (They had their own formula that felt pretty new, but they stuck to that formula too closely in each of the quests). Mostly I think that game just had too much content and largely overstayed my interest in it.