Games review: The Witcher 3

A scene from the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Think of the most expansive game you've ever played. Times it by three. Add a resurrected foetus demon. There, you're getting to grips with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This title is the Bohemian Rhapsody of open world games. It's over-the-top. Humungous. Behemothic. Elephantine. Hundreds of quests are strewn across cities, mountain ranges, charred battlegrounds and dense forests.

And it looks . . . pretty good. Wild Hunt's graphics aren't anything to write home about. Its real aim is to impress you with almost-unprecedented scope. But that breadth comes at a cost. The game is like a mansion built under New Zealand's 90s building code. It's beautiful, but the construction is suspect.

A scene from the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

You play as Geralt of Rivia: a spry 100-year-old with flowing silver hair and a voice like Bob Dylan coming off a three-day bender. Geralt is a Witcher - a genetically-engineered monster killer for hire. He'll get rid of your weird demon infestation, so long as you cough up a decent fee.

The aim of Wild Hunt is to keep Geralt's bloody day job ticking over while carrying out a continent-spanning quest to find his adopted daughter Ciri, who it turns out it quite crucial to the continued existence of the world.

The storyline will lead you into countless life-or-death situations. But it's the extra stuff that makes Wild Hunt so addictive. You can spend literally hundreds of hours contract-killing monsters with the impressive in-game fight system, seducing beautiful sorceresses, galloping aimlessly across near-infinite wilderness or mastering the card game Gwent. You'll sit down a normal person looking to check out the latest Witcher. You'll stand up a smelly mess who hasn't spoken to your loved ones in three days.

The game falls down in ways that speak of its developers' exhaustion. First, the bugs. Be ready to levitate, groin first, on to your trusty horse, Roach, and you may see a corpse float by, its decapitated head bobbing behind.

A scene from the video game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Then there's the occasional annoying gameplay feature. Why does Geralt have to meander to the nearest signpost to "fast travel"? Why is he always getting stuck behind fences, rocks and doors? Why is crafting weapons and armour so slow, clunky and confusing?

You can forgive the game its flaws, because its successes are so mind-boggling. Wild Hunt wants to create a huge experience - a whole painstakingly-detailed world - and it achieves that goal. It's at once its greatest strength and its biggest flaw.

Quantity can rule over quality. But what incredible quantity.

The Witcher 3
Platforms: Playstation 4, XBox One
Rating:R18

- Timeout