Sapkowski has written five novels and two books of short stories.  Of those, only the first novel (Blood of Elves) and the first book of short stories (The Last Wish) have been translated into English.  Polish friends tell me that the saga really has to be read as a whole to be enjoyed properly.  They also tell me that the English translation really plods, and it’s much better in the original Polish.  (Unlike most translations, Sapkowski’s novels weren’t translated by a native speaker of the language they were being translated into but by a native speaker of the language they were being translated out of.  It shows.) 

I bought The Last Wish when it came out and thought it was solid but not outstanding in any way.  I liked Blood of Elves a little bit better, but I still don’t quite see why so many people completely adore these books.  I think maybe it’s true that you need the whole series to appreciate them properly, and of course there’s the translation problem.

Usually, I like the book better than anything that’s made from the book — I’m one of those rare people who didn’t like the movie of Gone With the Wind that much because it didn’t get inside Scarlett’s head, the way the book did.  And while I loved the book of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I thought the movie was a shambles.  So I almost always like the book best, but in the case of The Witcher, I actually like the game better than I like the books that are available in English.  That may be because the makers of the game had all seven books available to them to draw upon, whereas the one novel and one story collection that have been translated into English is much thinner stuff.

Still, Sapkowski’s Blood of Elves did win the David Gemmell Legend Award (a British fantasy award), so maybe some people thought it was more wonderful than I did.

Traveller.  I won’t ever forget that little black box of goodness from GDW.

Asteroid Zero-Four.  This little pocket-game from Taskforce was well balanced and fun to play.  Getting those missles launched and fighters up before the bombs fell was critical.  Any game that involves the use of nukes is bound to be fun. 

BattleFleet Mars.  An SPI game?  SPI defined wargaming and BattleFleet Mars introduced some fantastic concepts including a neat movement system.  Nothing was more fun than firing tons of ore at a planet and waiting for the planet to come around to intersect the bomb-load. 

I did a short essay about it several months ago. http://bryantpauljohnson.com/2010/03/25/dropped-frames-3-battlezone/

I’d say you can’t really look at a modern history of fantasy/SF games without looking at Chainmail (Gary Gygax’s proto-Dungeons and Dragons miniatures game). It took the 100+ year history of war gaming, and made it fantasy. Without it, there probably wouldn’t have been a Dungeons and Dragons, a Warhammer, a Battletech, a Warcraft, Starcraft…

It looks like Amazon has at least two of his books in stock, The Last Wish (which The Witcher is based on) and The Blood Elves, which is apparently later in the chronology. Why Orbit chose to skip over books in the series is beyond me, but I’m just going by what the Internet has to say..

HALO: I just love the epic scope and story.  Plus it is just plain fun and the multiplayer isn’t too bad either.  The Halo novels/comic books aren’t too shabby as well.

GEARS OF WAR: a shooter where hulking armored super marines battle orc-ish underground aliens in ruined cityscapes, using for their primary weapon, a machine gun with a chainsaw bayonet… how can anyone not love that?

KILLZONE: has a really interesting premise, at least for a videogame. Basically, it is a military sci-fi game where it is human vs. human, and no aliens to be seen.  And it is hard to argue against the gritty atmosphere and stunning graphics.

ALIENS: there have been many over the years.  The arcade version, the Playstation Alien Trilogy, and the older PC and newer console Aliens vs. Predator games.  All great fun for a big Aliens fan like myself.

DEAD SPACE: balances the scares with action gameplay very nicely.  The mining tools that you use for weapons are really clever too.

LEFT 4 DEAD: I agree with John Scalzi on this one.  It’s a dirty job, but somebody has got to do it.

I do also really enjoy some of the more recent action/RPG science fiction games like MASS EFFECT and FALLOUT 3, and am really looking forward to DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION this winter. Then next March is CRYSIS 2, which I hear Altered Carbon author Richard Morgan did writing duties for.  That will be interesting to see and play.

Hopefully someday in the not too distant future I will be able to find the time and money to upgrade my computer so that I can play STARCRAFT 2.  That one looks cool, as does THE WITCHER.

They definitely belong in the “cult classics” category, as they have a small, dedicated following, while most people tend to be turned off by their niche-y nature.  The primary complaint from most sides is that it’s just too damned hard; developer From Software seems to enjoy killing your character early and often.  But for the most part all three games actually get easier as you move forward and attain decent equipment and spells.  If you can handle the crushing difficulty early on and don’t mind sub-par graphics, there’s a lot to enjoy: great gameplay, great exploration, fantastic atmosphere (especially the gloomy music).  I don’t play many PS1 games anymore, but I continue to play at least one King’s Field game every year… they just never get old for me.

Incidentally, I found it funny that although all the King’s Field games received a poor to ho-hum reaction from critics, their spiritual successor, Demon’s Souls (same developer) received huge praise all-around (and for much the same reasons that King’s Field was maligned).  Gamespot even gave it their 2009 Game of the Year Award over such games as Uncharted 2.  And while Demon’s Souls clearly made some improvements upon the original King’s Field games, they were cut very much from the same cloth.

In any case, if you like atmospheric dungeon crawlers, you owe it to yourself to check out King’s Field.  All three games are fantastic.

I’ll point towards the current episode of The SF Signal Podcast where (cough cough) there are a number of recommendations (cough cough) for some current board game releases from one of the (cough cough) SF Signal Irregulars.

Though the game is set in a medieval-looking fantasy world,  it revolves around genetic experiments carried out by a combination of science and magic. Our protagonist himself is a mutant trying to stop the secrets of mutation from falling into the hands of an organization that plans to create an army of genetically enhanced thralls.

The system of alchemy in the game is innovative. Instead of formulae involving ingredients, you now have formulae involving elements. Each ingredient has primary and secondary elements associated with it, and the trick is to choose ingredients with the required primary elements, while the secondary elements also interact with each other to give dominances, or secondary effects to your potions.

The story is not generic, but based on a saga. As such, it is rich in details and captivating. There are numerous sidequests, but the main plot always looms in the horizon, and gives a sense of direction and purpose to the whole game.

For people who do not care much for the story, the game offers excellent combat, both physical and magical. There are a series of lightning-fast combos,a host of criticals you can inflict, and some truly spectacular finishers.

Graphically, too, this game hits a home-run. The original game had amazing graphics, and after the Enhanced Edition of the game, it becomes  even better. Whether its a rundown slum, a spooky marsh, o a beautiful lakeshore with naiads bathing, the game has some locales with perfect ambience, and rich in details.

The game offers excellent value-for-money, and is quite inexpensive compared to most other games of the same calibre. The Enhanced Edition, with better graphics, and several hours of gameplay with additional adventures, was made available to all “basic game” owners for FREE!!

The Witcher was a magical experience, and I believe it should be in any list of top fantasy game complied anywhere, anytime.

Rivets: 2 fairly dumb AI factories are all that’s left after WWIII and each wants the other for raw resources.

OGRE and it’s sequel GEV: 1 giant cybertank vs. power armor infantry and tanks, and everybody is using nukes.

Chitin 1: Telepathically controlled giant insects battle over the harvest, food includes your own dead, and those of enemies.

For computers, not one mention of Master of Orion I & II, or Master of Magic? Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri? Arguably the best turn based Civ style game ever?

After having lived under the Soviet thumb for so long, Poles are very proud of having a modern democracy and proud of many things that most Americans take for granted. They’re very proud of Andrzej Sapkowski, for instance. And that means that the people who made the game made it mostly for love, not for money. There are things you can’t get for money, only for love, and what you can get for love in this case is a game that the makers have slaved over, paying incredible attention to detail.

Being grounded in Sapkowski’s world means that the game has depth that most RPG’s don’t have, but the makers have been very good about making it accessible to people who’ve never read Sapkowski and who don’t want to.

The game is a lot more adult than most games, and I don’t use “adult” to mean “sex and violence.” There’s a lot more nuance, and things are colored in shades of grey, rather than black and white. You will eventually have to pick a group of people to side with — or decide to side with no one — and the choice isn’t between clear, obvious, 100% good and clear, obvious, 100% evil. The choice is between 1) a group of people who are trying to bring order to their chaotic world, though the price for that is that some people are oppressed, and 2) a group of people who are struggling to right the wrongs of the oppressed, though the price for that is that they use the tactics of terrorists.

But that makes the game sound grim, and it isn’t; it’s lots of fun. It’s just that it’s fun that doesn’t require you to turn your brain and emotions off, the way many games do — it’s an RPG for people who think and especially for those who think moral choices are interesting.

I almost didn’t play the game because the player character is a man, and I didn’t want to be a guy. But he’s a very specific man, and that means that the writers can make the dialogue less generic and more tailored to your being a specific person, which is great. Plus, being this guy is pretty cool, since he’s the 14th-Century equivalent of a superhero: he has special powers. I have always, ALWAYS played a female character (usually a half-elf), but after playing The Witcher, I’m having trouble getting into the usual Generic Fantasy Character.

The folks who made The Witcher don’t have the huge team and deep pockets of a developer like Bioware — they’re a small Polish company, and The Witcher is the first game they ever made — but they do match Bioware in the things that Bioware is known for:  compelling characters and great stories.  These guys are people to watch.

And, since the game came out in 2007, the price has dropped to less than $20, making it a real bargain.  (The Witcher 2 is due out in May.)

Since it was open-sourced as the Ur-Quan Masters and is well-supported on essentially all modern operating systems… it’s not too late to give it a shot without having to do anything drastic like ebay and emulate.

Also, loved the Mechwarrior series, so if anyone from with the rights to FASA properties is reading this you have at least one buyer for an updated Mechwarrior.