Mount&Blade (PC, 2008)

“Here’s your lame horse, pair of worn pants, and a club. Welcome to Calradia! Enjoy your stay.”

Alright, that isn’t actually said anywhere, but it pretty much the standard start of a game of Mount&Blade. Mount&Blade is a game originally developed by a Turkish couple, although somewhere along the way the developing team expanded to few more people. It had been in development for several years, and boasted a unique financing system, where people could buy the game while it was still in development, for a reduced price, while their registration code would work for any future versions. Of course, the price went up the closer to finishing the game got. This worked surprisingly well, and when the game got picked up by Paradox Entertainment and was put up in Steam, everything started rolling. Mount&Blade is an indie success.

Now, many professional reviewers have given the game fairly average scores, but Mount&Blade is one of those games that boast the coveted “Civilization effect”, also known as “One More Turn Syndrome” or OMTS. It often occurs, that on a first try, the planned 30 min splurge into the game turns to realizing that it’s 4 in the morning. So, what is the game really about then?
Mount&Blade is something akin to a medieval version of Elite, where after character creation, you start off as a poor nobody in Calradia, which is a land with four warring kingdoms, populated with all sorts of scum and villainy. Your objective? Do whatever you want. You can start trading between the cities, you can become a hated rebel warlord, anything within the game’s capabilities, really. One thing is certain though; sooner or later you’ll encounter combat. And oh boy, if it isn’t fun.

Mount&Blade is THE game that got mounted combat right (should have seen that coming just from the name). Riding on the battlefield, with a couched lance which you handily land between a knight’s eyes at full gallop is satisfying, as well as riding past peasants and swinging them in the face with a battleaxe. If you’re bit of a Mongol, horse archery is brilliantly executed, and riding circles around your enemies while peppering them with arrows is great fun. You can also take the role of a commander, and let your troops do the fighting for you.

That’s right, you can also gather an army of your own, and fight massive battles, or siege and conquer castles and cities. All of this is horribly addicting, and the game manages to pull off something that many big titles fail at: It’s simple, good fun that you don’t really get sick of. Ever. I should have some idea, I’ve been playing the game on and off for years. The reason I’m reviewing it now, is due to buying the newest version on Steam.

“But it looks like shit!!1 Itt aint as purty as Haloz!11!” Yeah? Well, the game does have a… rustic appearance, but bear in mind that it was made by pretty much two people for most of the time. Besides, you won’t mind the graphics when you slam a guy off his horse in the heat of battle. Also, the game boasts an impressive amount of mods available, and it is fairly easy to mod, introducing anything from Lord of the Rings, Song of Ice and Fire, the 100 year war, flintlock guns etc. into the game, as well as graphical improvements.

The game is fairly easy to learn, and there are wikis online that have pretty much any information one might want relating to the game. There are problems, of course. The game feels slightly unfinished, and much of the diplomacy and quest system feels simplistic. The graphics might be off-putting to some, although I’ve never really been that big on graphics as long as they do their job. There is a feeling that more could have been implemented, and some other minor problems. There are no game-breaking discrepancies though, and you won’t mind these issues when cracking skulls for the fifth hour in a row.

It might also be of interest, that whispers in the ether suggest that there is an expansion on the way, boasting improvements to AI, graphical adjustments and… MULTIPLAYER! I can imagine the 32-player online death-match, and IT. IS. GLORIOUS.

Mount&Blade is a thoroughly enjoyable game, with plenty of replay value. We need more games like this.

If you can see yourself even possibly enjoying M&B, get the demo from their website. It’s the full game, although you’re restricted to a level 7 cap for your character.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10]

http://www.taleworlds.com/

Left 4 Dead (PC, 2008)

Even though I consider myself primarily a PC gamer, I have often visited Valve titles out of a sense of obligation more than genuine excitement. The science-laden world of Half Life never really did much for me beyond it's storytelling style and clever design. I primarily spent my time with modifications to Valve's games like Counterstrike, Team Fortress Classic, or more recently Team Fortress 2. Left 4 Dead, then, is the first Valve game that had me positively squirming in my seat with anticipation from the moment I heard about it. Zombies? Co-operative focus? Zombies?! Ravenholm was my favorite section of Half Life 2, and I knew that Valve could do the undead right. (Ew.)

The gameplay of Left 4 Dead is divided into two modes, Campaign and Versus. Campaign pits you and three friends (or bots, you pathetic loser) against the hordes, while Versus puts you and up to 7 friends on teams of four, with one team playing the Survivors and the other playing the Infected, taking turns moving through the levels. Versus can't be played with bots, so if you want to play a zombie and gnosh some brains you'll have to get online and play with other people.

On that note, the singleplayer functions in Left 4 Dead aren't even worth discussing. If you're playing this game with bots, you're absolutely doing it wrong. Get at least three friends and a microphone, and before you know it you'll be yelling obscenities at the Infected and screaming for your buddies to remove the cranium of the Hunter on top of you.

It's in those types of moments that Left 4 Dead really distinguishes itself from the rest of the multiplayer world. There isn't a game on the market that can top L4D in terms of co-operative experience. Whether you're playing the Infected and trying to run the survivors into the ground or you're a Survivor just trying to make it to that next safe room, you simply won't succeed or have as much fun without your teammates.

L4D not only does a great job of pulling you into your role as a teammate, it boasts the strongest characterization I've seen in a multiplayer shooter yet. Louis, Bill, Zoey, and the almighty Francis are a lot more than just a randomly assigned skin. They have personality to spare, as do the boss Infected, which is pretty impressive considering they just gibber and scream now and then. (Metal trivia: Mike Patton did the voices for the regular Infected) In all my time spent with Left 4 Dead, I have found myself speaking “in character” on more than one occasion, which stands as an excellent testament to how deeply involved you can get in the characters. I find myself groaning when I have to go and pick up Louis, but rushing to Zoey's aide whenever she's in trouble. Bill, I figure, can take care of himself.

Developers of the world, take note. Good characters are important, even in multiplayer games. L4D really raises the bar here, and I would be shocked if we didn't see more attempts at creating more three-dimensional characters for multiplayer games in the future.

Multiplayer games are intense affairs, with moments of uneasy calm peaking into crescendos of chaos. The Infected will come at you like a swarm possessed, and then return to their ambling state as you move on, lulling you into a false sense of secutity before building to another vigorous, horriffic assault. L4D distinguishes itself here, as well; the other first person shooters of the world tend to be a mix of short, intense battles and the occasional drawn-out ordeal. L4D builds it's intensity in truly sublime fashion, allowing the players to control the pace to a certain extent, but more importantly making the pace a focus of the game. In Versus, you'll find that the team that controls the pace tends to win the game. In Campaign, these moments occur organically as the hordes and boss Infected throw themselves at your bullets.

I would be remiss not to mention the matchmaking interface, as it leads to my only real complaints about the game. There is no standard Source server browsing here, unless you use a console command and connect to a game in progress. Most times, you will start in a lobby with some friends, and the lobby will find a game (and subsequently a server) for you. This kind of system should be familiar with anyone who has a console that they play games online with. Much like on a console, you may find yourself wishing for more features in the matchmaking almost right away. You will end up on servers in foreign countries, servers with terrible connections, and servers that really have no business existing in the first place. Once you're in the game, you'll have to run a vote to return to the lobby if the server is less than great, and start the process over again. Valve, in their infinite wisdom, also decided not to let you see your ping while in game, instead displaying your connection with a color-coded series of bars. Valve, I'm a grown man. Let me choose my own server, and let me see my ping. Color code it if you must, but this is a PC game. I demand the ability to connect to a server of my own choosing.

As soon as you find a decent server, these complaints will retreat to the furthest corners of your mind. You will only be concerned with surviving an onslaught of the walking dead, or picking off the few who dare to resist your undead fury. L4D is immediate and visceral in ways that only the best multiplayer shooters can compete with. Apart from the matchmaking, it brings only good things to the genre, and to gaming in general.

Left 4 Dead could be a perfect 10/10. In fact, depending on the level of support it receives from Valve in the next few months, I may have to revisit the score. As it is, though, the server finding woes are worth a deduction of at least a point. It's hard to find fault with much else, though, and this is as Epic of a Win as you can get without channeling the divine.

Verdict: Epic Win [9/10] (Zombies Killed God)

Prince of Persia (PC, 2008)

The newest entry to the revived Prince of Persia franchise continues the adventures of our intrepid Prince. This time he’s walking in a desert, looking for his lost donkey, and gets swept into preventing an ancient god of evil trying to escape from his prison.

For those unfamiliar with the series, the Prince of Persia games follow the Prince, a veritable master of swordplay, acrobatics and parkour, and an uncanny knack for disturbing gods, demons and messing up the timeline. The games consist mostly of puzzles, 3d-platforming and adventuring, relying on fairy-tale Arabia for the flavor of the story and the surroundings.

Like always, the series tries to re-invent itself in each of its iterations. There are some welcome additions, and some … less welcome. The game itself is very pretty. I mean it when I say pretty. This game is bloody gorgeous. The graphics have been cell-shaded, and combined with a bit of Final Fantasy-esque graphic design this leads to a result that could be straight out of a painting in a story-book. Not to mention very pretty. However, in my personal opinion, they may have gone a bit too far in the design department, when coming up with the designs for many of the buildings in the game. Suspension of disbelief is all well and good, but at least in the previous games the impossibly tall towers were usually based on a cliff or some relatively stable platform. This time, many of them are basically perched on top of stone matchsticks, couple hundred meters long. This is not a massive problem, as I didn’t exactly go into the game expecting superb realism and grittiness with brown and grey textures. In fact, POP takes exactly the opposite course, and this is refreshing. However, part of the charm of the previous games was that the Prince was a relatively normal(at least compared to all the others he met in the games) bloke, trying to survive in world-ending situations. He could do crazy acrobatics, but he was still relatively gravity-bound. This time any pretension of adhering to the laws of physics has been chucked out of the window. This leads to very pretty combos in combat, and makes scaling the impossible routes in the game possible. However, it’s just not as satisfying to scale insane obstacle courses with a guy who defies gravity, than it is to do the same with a very skilled, if fragile acrobat.

One major change in the game is the automation of the time-rewinding tactic present in the previous titles. It’s basically no longer possible to die, as Elika, your companion in the game, pulls your arse out of the fire the moment you would actually die. This helps with those people who aren’t very good at games, and removes much of the frustration of saving and loading present in many games. Still, the game as a whole is relatively easy, and at times it feels like it’s railroading the player. The possible routes to move around the environment are marked in various ways, be it scratches or vines, not to mention pressing a button shows you the way to the next chosen area. This takes much of the free-form puzzle platforming of the previous titles away, and feels less satisfying than finding your own way. It’s still bloody good fun to see the Prince run around the walls and whatnot. This same problem occurs in the combat. Instead of the free-form-use-the-environment-and-whatever-you-want combat of the previous titles, the Prince is now reduced to blocking and shuffling around, until you can pull off a pretty combo to damage your enemy. One issue I had with the combat was the prevalence of quick time events, at which I’m pretty terrible. Nothing is quite as annoying as spending a minute or two grinding down your enemy’s health, just to fail a quick time event and Elika saving you, just to see the enemy’s health bar recharge due to this.

The game has taken a step from being fully linear, to presenting you all the levels in the game, to do in whichever order you choose. This however, leads to many levels being very similar, and loses some of the charm of discovering new and radically different places. The story isn’t terribly complex, but it never was in the previous games either. The dialogue between Elika and the Prince is sometimes funny, sometimes cringe-inducing in all its wittiness, but nevertheless I did warm up to the characters over the course of the game. The meat of the game is in the platforming, as always. It’s just too bad that while it’s been expanded, the aspect of finding your own way has been neutered along the way.

Overall, the new Prince of Persia is a worthy addition to the series, and great fun to play. It’s just not as good in some aspects as its predecessors. It’s still very pretty.

Verdict: Win

http://prince-of-persia.us.ubi.com/index.php

Dead Space (PC, 2008)

Dead Space is the story of an engineer named Isaac Clarke. Isaac is a man with hideously bad luck. The story goes, that Isaac has a girlfriend, who is stationed on USG Ishimura, a planet-cracker ship. In the game’s world, the way to satisfy humanity’s need for resources requires entire planets to be broken apart and processed for raw materials. Now, contact with Ishimura has been lost, and Isaac and his crew has been sent to fix the issues they might have with communications, or some other minor problems.

In the beginning of the game Isaac and the rest of the crew, Kendra and Hammond and some bloke whose name I don’t remember arrive on Ishimura in the most time-honored tradition of crashing in a ball of fire and bits of metal. From here, they decide to proceed into the ship, to contact the crew and find out what’s going on. If only everything was this easy. First, they cannot find anyone. Then, they noticed blood on the floor, signs of battle, and other less than encouraging signs. Next thing we know, the quarantine comes on and everything goes down the toilet. From here begins Isaac’s journey of running around a ship full of monsters with a penchant for being creepy buggers and slicing people up. Of course, being an engineer, Isaac responds by using mining tools to slice the monsters back up. The only problem is, that ammo is usually very short, and the necromorphs (that’s what the monsters are called) are quite durable and fast. Isaac is very slow and kind of squishy (although he has an awesome suit).

The game is basically quite close to survival horror on hard difficulty. Hard difficulty is the way to play this game, let me tell you that right now. Dead Space is at its best on Hard. Easy is just stupid, and Normal is not very challenging by the end. Hard is the most difficult, and scariest way to play this game.

As is the way with many games nowadays, Dead Space is ridiculously pretty in some aspects, and boasts many innovative decisions, such as using planes of damage instead of points of damage with weapons (well, they are cutters, used for slicing things up), as well as having a unique menu system seen from Isaac’s point of view. Many of the weapons are quite interesting, with flying saw-blades, machine-guns with 360-degree firing arc and many more quirks. There’s always the basic flamer, but it sucks.

The game is exceedingly atmospheric, and the makers have obviously put a lot of effort into art direction and sound design. The game is at its best when played alone, in a dark apartment, with the sound cranked up. The atmosphere in the game is simply great, and many of the creature designs are genuinely quite disturbing. You never feel quite safe, and this combined with general lack of ammo and the necromorph penchant for jumping out of vents, holes in the ground has the player sitting on the edge of their seat. When the critters attack, the game turns quite frantic when the player tries to desperately survive the onslaught.

Dead Space basically screams quality, from beginning to end, and it saddens me that I wasn’t quite able to get into it. I could see many of the scares coming, and this takes out of the enjoyment. I was never quite scared either, although the game does manage to keep the player tense, waiting for the next attack when it might not come, then surprising the player when they don’t expect it. From the reactions of other people who have played Dead Space though, it seems to hit the mark with the majority. I just never managed to quite “get it”. It’s definitely worth giving a shot if you like sci-fi and horror. The story is alright, though much of it exists outside the game in comics and an animated movie.

I played the PC-version of the game, and some of the issues I had may only exist in that. The problems were mainly with the controls. The controls felt somewhat clunky, and controlling Isaac felt at times more like driving a truck than guiding a man. However, this may be due to my set-up, and I don’t know how prevalent the issue is. Disabling vertical sync seems to work on most people, but had no effect for me.

Overall, Dead Space is a great entry to the survival horror-genre, if played in a certain way. It may not work for everyone, but for the vast majority, it seems to be just the thing if you want something to freak you out. If highly atmospheric horror games are your thing, get Dead Space. You won’t regret it.

Verdict: Win

http://deadspace.ea.com/

Fallout 3 (PC, 2008)

Where do I begin? I could start with Ron Perlman saying his iconic line from the Fallout series like every other reviewer, or I could try to keep this short and simple without trying to sound profound (especially since I can’t pull it off). Fallout 3 is the newest installment to the Fallout franchise, which is no doubt familiar to most people who have grown up during the 90’s, and were exposed to computer gaming. The original two Fallout games were made by now defunct Black Isle Studios, and the rights ended up with Bethesda Softworks, known to most people from their Elder Scrolls series. Naturally, this made some fans uneasy, and has been the source of internet drama for a long time before the game was released. What now then? Well, let’s have a look at the game itself.

Fallout 3 is based, like the previous games, in a retro-future version of the United States. In this universe, the technology level peaked in a culture that resembles the 50’s of our world. Everything is nuclear powered, and the Cold War didn’t happen between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. , but U.S. and China instead. It also didn’t peter out over time, and eventually escalated to a full blown nuclear war. The Fallout series is set long after this war, and concentrates on adventures and survival in a post-apocalyptic world. Fallout 3 is based in an area outside and including parts of Washington D.C.. This area was hit quite badly in the war, and it shows in the environment. The landscape in Fallout 3 is mostly composed of varying shades of grey and brown, which seems to be a trend nowadays for “gritty realism” and whatnot, but it truly fits and, I dare say, is required for a proper post-apocalyptic vibe. Truly, the visuals of Fallout 3 are brilliant. From the retro design of cars to landscapes blasted by radioactive winds, to glowing dumps of nuclear waste, the world of Fallout 3 is quite beautiful in a weird way, and stepping out of the Vault for the first time is an eye-opening experience.

Oh yes, the Vaults. When the nuclear war happened, some people hid in underground Vaults, allegedly designed to keep them safe from the bombs and radiation. The player starts in one of these Vaults, and goes through a quick process of growing up, before having to leave. I quite liked the way the character creation was handled in this game, giving you a sense that your character has a history, instead of being just created on the spot. Even if on consequent characters it might be a bit irritating to go through the same process, the first time is delightful. Did I mention that your father is voiced by Liam Neeson?

Many people were worried that Fallout 3 might play like Oblivion, Bethesda’s previous game. In some ways it does, but in a good way. The combat is generally fun, and gets better the more creative you get. V.A.T.S. system developed by Bethesda for Fallout 3 replaces the old turn-based combat option from the previous games. It pauses the game, and you can select the enemy, and the body part to target. The game then uses your character’s attributes to calculate the likelihood of a hit, and plays it out. This can help those who are not used to FPS games, but it is just bloody good fun to watch your character blowing off limbs in slow motion. It has yet to get old, and I’ve been playing this game since the launch.

The game world is quite vast, full of hidden surprises, and things to explore. Unfortunately Bethesda has relatively few voice actors to voice all their characters, which occasionally leads to a feeling of déjà-vu, but this is nowhere near the levels encountered in Oblivion. The in-game radio channels are great as well, especially Galaxy News Radio, which plays old songs that are surprisingly good. It is also a surreal experience to waltz along in a wasteland, listening to Danny Kaye and the Andrew Sisters.

For the most part, the game-play is either fine or excellent, the visuals are beautiful, there’s plenty to do, and overall the game is well worth the money. It feels like some small part of the feel of the original Fallout games is missing, and there’s a pervading sense of Oblivion all over the game, but this still feels like a true Fallout game, albeit quite different to the previous ones. Definitely a GOTY contender.

Verdict: Epic Win

http://fallout.bethsoft.com/index.html

Call of Duty: World at War (Xbox 360, 2008)

Having never played much Call of Duty 4, I am likely exactly the kind of reviewer that Treyarch wants for their latest foray into WW2 shooters, Call of Duty: World at War. Someone who is fresh to the experience and won't see everything through Modern Warfare-tinted lenses is a rather unique thing, as the previous game from Infinity Ward was tremendously popular, and likely lead to a lot of the interest in World at War. In a rather amusing twist, World at War is so good that it's made me want to play Modern Warfare next.

I have never been much of a console shooter player. I was a semi-competitive Quake player back in the day, and played in Cal leagues for Counterstrike in my post-high school years. Firmly entrenched in my PC roots, I saw no reason to move to inferior control schemes, bad multiplayer matchmaking, and an insurmountable lack of mods for the likes of Halo. Call of Duty: World at War is the first real console FPS that I've enjoyed in a very, very long time.

The singleplayer campaign isn't fantastic, but it does have it's moments. Slinging lead in the Pacific theater as Private Miller, you'll be treated to Japanese Banzai attacks, hopelessly doomed beach assaults, and the iconic voice of Kiefer Sutherland as Corporal Roebuck guiding you through it all. The Soviet missions have you taking on the role of Private Dimitri Petrenko, whose superpower is apparently immortality coupled with an amazing ability to never get promoted despite accomplishing feats of warfare that would make the great generals of history weep. The Soviet missions tend to be a bit more urban-oriented, and I challenge you to recognize Gary Oldman as the voice of your snipin' Sergeant Reznov.

If you feel yourself swaying more towards the "buy it" side of the fence, allow me to give you a short exercise that will increase your survivability a thousandfold in World at War. Pick up a 360 controller and hold it as you would while playing any FPS game. Now, hit the right bumper button. A lot. Keep going. Yep, keep going. Do this for a few solid minutes, until your finger is about ready to rebel and attack your soft, fleshy parts with a vicious mutiny of nail-scratching fury. The cause of all this bodily strain? Grenades. Call of Duty: World at War requires that you can hit the RB within milliseconds of an on-screen indicator showing up in order to stay alive. It's a great idea in theory; you can throw grenades back at your enemy and stay alive in the meantime. However, the system relies on a grenade detection warning flashing up on your screen that simply does not always work. Equally annoying are the number of times in the singleplayer campaigns where you turn a corner into a grenade that the seemingly clairvoyant AI threw at you just long enough ago to make it explode the moment you try to pick it up.

World at War is an extremely unforgiving singleplayer experience on it's harder difficulty settings. Priding myself on my background with shooters, I decided to at least jump in at the Harder (though not quite Veteran) level. Though easy enough at first, some levels had me throwing the controller around the room and pulling out what little is left of my hair in frustration. I wasn't dying because I was playing badly, I was dying because there simply was no chance to live amongst the torrential hail of grenades the enemy kept throwing my way. If I knew now what I knew then, I would simply skip the singleplayer campaign and go right to the excellent multiplayer offering, but I was lured in by the fact that almost all of the achievements are for singleplayer. Yes, you read that right. Call of Duty: World at War has very few multiplayer achievements of any kind. There are a few co-op ones and a couple of multiplayer ones scattered about, but the bulk of the achievements are for the singleplayer campaign, and a rather large portion of THOSE are for playing on Veteran difficulty. Not my cup of tea, thanks, but it does speak to how highly Treyarch thinks of their own singleplayer experience, I suppose.

The bulk of my time with World at War has been spent in the multiplayer. I haven't had this much fun (or frustration) with a multiplayer console shooter since the original Gears of War, and certainly not with any other FPS. Perhaps it's because this is the first time I've been introduced to the enthralling levelling/class/perk system, which allows the player to gain experience points by killing enemies or completing challenges in multiplayer matches in order to customize their loadouts and abilities. Perhaps it's because I love World War 2 weapons and using them on the virtual battlefield. Perhaps it's because every time I hear the cheesy ass announcer screech "VICTORY FOR GERMANYYYY" when my team steamrolls some Cossaks I get a chill up my spine. (Side note - do the Japanese really always have to talk about shame and dishonor? Come on guys, you can do better than that.) Perhaps it's a combination of all of those things and more, but the point is that World at War does console multiplayer right.

There are some nicks on the surface, though. At the start, you're going to feel dramatically underpowered compared to everyone else. They all have better weapons than you, better perks than you, and they're going to be running circles around you on the maps that you don't know yet. It can be a little intimidating, but a few games in and you'll be hooked, trying to unlock the damned STG 44 that's killed you a dozen times in the past three minutes. The maps, while fantastic setpieces for a firefight, have some problems. Since they have multiple pathways which allow for deep flanking maneuvers, you're either going to be giddy as a schoolboy to sneak up on your enemy snipers unawares, or about to burst at the seams with rage because you just spawned right on top of three flanking enemy soldiers and didn't even have a chance to fire your weapon before they blew you away. Just when you think it can't get any worse, you'll respawn just close enough for their movement to catch you a second time, or for their grenade to land right at your feet as you come to life, eager for revenge. This happens a little too often for my tastes, and means that sometimes you're going to lose, and you're going to lose hard. The attack dogs that you or your opponent can call in after a seven-kill streak seem to be capable of Matrix-style bullet dodging, and your connection most definitely will affect how well you will play more than I like in any game that doesn't let me pick my own damned server.

No matter the problems, though, World at War accomplishes something that I, the great game cynic, never thought possible. It sucked me into a really fun console shooter with multiplayer, and impressed the living hell out of me. In spite of my gripes and preconceived notions about console shooters, I've played it almost every day for the past couple of weeks, and I have no intention of stopping any time soon. Treyarch have produced the pinnacle of modern (ha!) WW2 shooters here, and it's not to be missed.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] (Seriously, fuck the STG)

Fable 2 (2008)

There's a lot to be said about Peter Molyneux's latest baby, Fable 2. I'll start with the good things.

The meat of the Fable 2 is combat, plain and simple. Fortunately, combat in Fable 2 is actually quite fun. It almost feels like a Devil May Cry-lite, with surprisingly tight controls and highly enjoyable thwacks and bangs. To get the most out of the experience, you'll want to play a balanced character, which is good, because the game basically forces you down this path anyway. Headshotting Hollow Men with a flintlock pistol is a glorious thing, and combat is really the saving grace of the entire experience.

For all the speculation and pre-release hatred that the Dog was given, your Dog is fucking cool. It's great to put on an eyepatch and see your little pup grow a black patch of fur over their eye. It's even cooler when your pup limps around after taking some hits in battle and you feel a twang of pain in your heart, cursing the shitty "expression wheel" control scheme as you try and dig out your magical "heals all dog wounds forever" potion. You really and truly grow to love the dog in Fable 2, Molyneux wasn't blowing smoke on this at all. While I would've liked to see the dog morph a bit more, like your character, and maybe even adapt it's breed to match your ethos, it's a bit like asking for gold-flaked sprinkles on your already delicious sundae.

On the more average tilt, the "social" aspects of Fable 2 are pretty much as uninteresting as they were in the first game. Yes, having a wife that you can fuck and produce offspring with is fairly amusing for a few moments, but that's really all there is to it. Villagers crowd around to watch you fart, or dance, or whatever, and you can choose to invest in property or businesses to produce some income every few minutes. I'm not really sure what the supposed point is of all this, because I never found one in all my time with this game. I suppose it makes for some good forum posts and it's a novel way to expand upon gameplay options, but it's just not nearly as interesting or rewarding as the combat.

Being a Lionhead game, Fable 2 has it's share of bugs ranging from the eyebrow-raising to the controller-tossing. Reports of broken quests, broken saves, and all manner of progress-blocking interface weirdness flood the internet, and although I didn't personally experience anything game breaking, I did cock my head a bit every time my wife would look at me with her big, whore eyes and say "Oh, I love you so much" and follow it up with an immediate declaration of "You murderer! I'll never forgive you!"

Though it will definitely have it's supporters, I found the story of Fable 2 to be abominable. It's a generic revenge tale with some highly predictable elements and some less-than-stellar delivery and pacing. The truly odd thing about the story is that Fable 2 will definitely make you feel emotion in ways that other games with far better story and delivery can't. It's almost like reading a children's book that you've read a dozen times already. You know where it's been and where it's going, but there are still some great moments buried in there. Unfortunately, there are also still plenty of moments that fall flat on their faces. Some, like the ending(s), are too significant to be forgiven.

Also on the list of detriments, the art style is still mostly uninspired and bland, and there just aren't enough cool hats or other clothing for your character. The co-op is so feature-starved - lacking even independent camera control and the ability to play your own hero for the second player - that I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone. Ignore the pre-release claims of Fable 2 being accessible to non-gamers; it's not, at all. The combat can be very frustrating to beginners, and the interface is so obtuse and flat out crappy that only a console RPG player could use it. Even then, those of us raised on the NES-era menus will stumble from time to time.

There isn't a whole lot to say from a metal standpoint about Fable, unfortunately. I played through the first time as evil as I possibly could, sacrificing peasants and even a few spouses to the Temple of Darkness, or whatever it is. The unfortunate thing is that the "evil" elements, at least for the player, are played off as laughably silly. "Friday is poker night" you hear on your first visit inside the Temple. You gain entrance by eating crispy chicks, fried chicken nuggets. You sacrifice your victims with a giant spinning wheel that determines their method of death. You get the idea. Lionhead never really seems to nail "evil" in this game except for the portrayal of some of the villains. Note: some. Despite playing through the entire game as a murdering, thieving shitbag, I never really felt like a villain. I would love to see future installments get downright satanic, but I doubt it will ever happen.

Fable 2 is a conundrum. This review has turned up far more criticism than praise, and yet I really liked it. Each and every time I played it, I was having so much fun that I could easily ignore it's flaws, and yet when I wasn't playing, the flaws were all I could think of. Fortunately for me, I kept coming back for more and rarely stopped to reflect on the holes in the experience. I would be remiss not to deduct some points, though, for the awful co-op implementation and the miserable story. All in all, Fable 2 is a good game with hints of both greatness and mediocrity, and so I do bestow a "win" upon it.

Verdict: Win (7/10)

http://www.lionhead.com/fable2/Default.aspx