Controller1.com is not a news site, its a blog so rather than being your one stop shop for E3 news, we’ll just have some opinion. The show hasn’t opened yet but half the big publishers have already had conferences and briefings so I’m going to change my pants, recap my reactions to the news from MS, Activision, EA Ubisoft and others.
EA
Lego Rock Band and The Beatles Rock Band shows that EA and Harmonix can do the exact thing as Activision/ Neversoft- that is make a game once and then reskin 15 times. Brutal Legend was demoed and I still don’t know what the hell the game is about- apart from Jack Black being involved somehow. Is it a driving game? An action game? Saboteur from Pandemic has been on my radar for a while and hopefully its not just Mercenaries 2.5. Mass Effect 2 looks to have more awesome than an awesome star going supernova. Crysis 2 is coming and its on consoles as well. APB (from the makers of Crackdown) coming early in 2010 should be fun. I might need to get a gaming PC this year.
Dante’s Inferno seems to be another hellish God of War game but Bioware made a splash with the Old Republic trailer that made people who want Ewok porn care for Star Wars again.
Left 4 Dead 2!!! A Valve game where there’s been a yearly update. And it looks like it does everything Dead Rising didn’t do. I am looking forward to this in a way most Valve MP-focused games don’t ‘click’ for me.
Ubisoft
Red Steel 2 looks like Motion plus might actually be a worthwhile pickup for the Wii. But while Assassin’s Creed 2, if it fixes the flaws of the first game might be a great game, its Splinter Cell Conviction that looks to be THE Ubisoft game you buy at full price. The rest, you just wait for a few months to get it for a third of the launch price.
Activision
Wow, another Guitar Hero game. I could pass this year and just stick with Beatles Rock Band. Tony Hawk Ride, with its fancy controller, doesn’t appeal at all. But Modern Warfare 2 looks just as good as anything Infinity Ward have done to date. It will be a HUUUUGE game in 2009. Wolfenstein looks great, despite the fact the trailer tries to hide the fact its a WWII game.
Microsoft
Halo 3: ODST came and went which should be fun, but then Bungie and MS are doing Halo: Reach.
Buy ODST and you get a MP beta invite for Halo: Reach so things look interesting. Forza 3 for you hardcore racing fans will make the 360-owning revheads reaching for the tissues. Considering its likelihood to go up against GT5, it has better be impressive.
MS also showed off their new camera based controller. The thing is, it doesn’t use an actual controller. Natal looks to be goofy, Eyetoy-esque and fun for all the family. There needs to be more info. Peter Molyneux was there to talk about his new project with a boy called Milo. Its a virtual prisoner in a pit so the sadists should be satisfied. I’m still wondering why you would want to with Twitter and Facebook with your 360 but if it lets you do screenshots for sites like this, I’ll be interested. Alan Wake is coming early next year, and I continue to be intrigued but there’s Crackdown 2 from Ruffian games. Not only am I interested, but Cameron won’t be shutting the fuck up about this for the next year.
Oh and there’s a Metal Gear game on 360 featuring Raiden. To me, it sounds like a Ninja Gaiden style game but that’s just pure speculation.
And the show hasn’t even started yet.
Developed by Lionhead. Published by Microsoft.
Controller1.com presents a review of Fable II, the highly hyped sequel to one of the most hyped games ever to not suck.
Yes, Fable part 1 had a lot of hype, a lot of promises that didn’t make the final game and a lot of people annoyed at Peter Molyneux. Fable 1 (if you avoided the hyperbole before its release) was actually a pretty good game. My only criticism was that by the end you were overpowered by the time you reached the final battle. Fable II fixes a lot of minor irritations with the first game.
You start off as a young boy or a girl (you choose), who eventually grows up to be a hero in the world of Albion, the same world as the first game but hundreds of years later- a place where belief in magic has disappeared. Your family has been shattered by a villain up to no good for reasons best understood by himself and the people at Lionhead. So, just like any RPG, you play a character and level them up the Lionhead way. You have a main story whereby you become a hero and have to search for a number of other heroes to help you defeat the Big Bad at the heart of the main quest. Along the way you have many, many side quests and have all of the distractions Fable was so good at. I.e- trading, buying property and becoming a landlord, having relationships and families. Most of which doesn’t impact too much on the main quest. Its really a game where the Main Quest can be a very small part of your play experience. Just like going to school. You don’t have to study, you just get through it faster if you do.
There’s never any sense that you aren’t levelled up enough to face any challenge, though the more money you earn, the better weapons you will be able to afford. For an RPG, armour is strangely absent so you can have your character run around in their underwear and not incur any extra damage. You can hold a lot of stuff in your inventory but can only have one ranged and one melee weapon assigned at anyone time. Melee is on one button, ranged is on another, Magic (called Will) on another. So while you have flourishes and can charge up your Will attacks, its not overly complex. Its not bad, its just not that deep. Combat is button mashing but generally enjoyable because when you die you just get knocked out for a but and if you don’t have a revive potion, you just lose XP when you run out of health. You are instantly revived with a lower XP rating but otherwise you can just continue.
The main quest itself is interesting but what sets Fable apart from most RPG’s is the depth of is normally the other bullshit RPG makers throw in to make it longer. You can do odd jobs which are mostly repetitive timing-based minigames such as pulling pints or chopping wood, you can go looking for the various methods to opening demon doors, hunt gargoyles, go on bounty hunter missions, save slave, etc. Mostly for gold (and of course gathering XP along the way), but also for Reknown.
Reknown is Fable’s currency for making sure you do side missions before continuing on the main quest. Which means side quests are partly integrated into the main quest, which is nice. And of course, you have choices whether you behave or act like an asshole (as in Mass Effect and KotOR). Your character’s body will evolve as you play the game. If you get stronger, your character gets bigger. If you eat junk food and drink beer, your character gets fat. If you are pure and eat well, you can lose weight. I chose to eat celery and my character still ended yo looking like a candidate for the Biggest Loser.
You can make people like you by expressions that you find and earn throughout the game. You can scowl, fart, flirt, seduce, scare, offer gifts, dance etc in order to intimidate people, make them like you, etc. A far more evolved version of that in GTA IV, though really in the end they don’t influence the main quest all that much. I got married in Fable I just to see what it was like. I have since gotten married in real life so the attraction to do it in game just wasn’t there but I did manage to have lesbian sex with Carol the Whore and then when I wouldn’t marry her, she started shooting a gun at me and following me wherever I went. I killed her because she was annoying me and felt utterly horrible. So I reloaded my last save. She may have been a Whore (She was Carol the Whore), but she was a human whore.
And then there’s the dog. The Dog is your companion and you can have specific expressions for your dog such as heal, play with, punish, etc. Your dog will bark when treasure is nearby or growl when enemies are around. If you’re a cat person, then you’re shit out of luck.
So how about those more technical aspects of the game. There are some basic online co-op options but I didn’t test any of them since they didn’t add much. If any one from your friends list is playing the same location as you, you will see their avatar and you can join the other’s game (but not as your character). Overall, the game’s presentation is mostly good with a few rough edges at transitions (ie when you beat a mission and the next bit loads or saves, people you were talking with will suddenly disappear).
Graphics are nice and the game manages to keep a decent frame rate though particle effects tend to make the game chug somewhat. Sounds is vbery good and while many American players find the rural English accents forced, they are better than every village hag sounding like Dame Judi Wench. Sound Effects are nice, and musically the game hits the right notes.
Fable II is a very good game and its initial sales success are definitely well deserved. This is a good Zelda style adventure for those not into the grit of Oblivion, Fallout or Mass Effect (or MMO’s). Its got so much that if you didn’t want to play the main quest you’d easily get your money’s worth with the reast of the package. The story is definitely worth playing. It goes into some very dark places later in the game, much darker than the rest of the package and you have to do some heartbreaking things in order to progress.
Controller1.com rating 3/3. This game does so much right, and unique that you really should find the 15 or so hours you need to play through it. The only downside is I now have to go into Fallout 3 having just played a longish game.
Focus Test is Fable II. Watch Clint ridicule, George admire and Cam in the middle.
So… playing Fable II.
I have a tendency not to read previews very often. For someone who loves games, it seems weird that i cut out 50% of the content on Game Websites and zines. But it also means I don’t always buy into the hype. I never thought about buying Bioshock until about a week before it came out. Same with the Xbox 360. And 4 years ago, I bought and played Fable on the Xbox and enjoyed it since I didn’t hang on every word coming uot of peter Molyneux’s mouth.
So when Fable II was approaching release, I was cognoscente of the fact the sequel to a game I quite enjoyed was due. Even though I was more pumped for Fallout 3, a game series I had never previously played from a developer whose only game I had played couldn’t hold me for more than 10 hours; and I really don’t like traditional medieval era, Tolkienesque RPG’s- I am so glad I got this. I might even put off playing Fallout 3 for a few months just so the Fable II experience I’m having has some room to breathe.
There will be a review on controller1.com in a week or two (probably two) but for now, suffice it to say, this game really builds upon the successes (rather than the perceived failures) of the first game.
Why you should go out and play this?
Its fun to play. Its funny. It looks pretty good. The story is usual ‘chosen one’ are but it is done very well. And the presentation and amount of stuff to do is phenomenal. Its like a single player MMO. Oblivion, but done better and less po faced without the crash zoom cutscenes.
Why might you want to skip this game?
You think Peter Molyneux is a hack who makes shitty games and steals cabs.
We recorded a focus test where this game has much manure heaped upon it, although it received an equal amount of sweet smelling praise. So if you own a 360 and have any inclination to play western style RPG’s, go and get this. Now.
You still here?
Well the storm begins this week with Little Big Planet and Fable II and next week, Fallout 3. Its not possible to play all of the big games coming out at once. So far this month I have already cut out of my ‘To Do’ list, the following big titles: Dead Space, Far Cry 2, Mercenaries 2, Fracture, Wii Music and Saint’s Row 2.
Why?
Dead Space: Because its a horror game and I can live without horror. Yes I’m a big scaredy cat.
Far Cry 2: I played a bit of the PC original and about 99.9% of Far Cry Instincts on the original Xbox. I though the PC one played a bit ‘meh’ but the console version (a completely different game) was really quite nice. Apart from that cheating bitch of a final boss who never ever died. I liked the game a lot and all I can remember is trying to beat that final boss over and over until he got stuck in the mesh and I stopped caring.
Mercenaries 2: More sandbox and no compelling reason to play. The demo promised much and delivered little. I wasn’t a huge fan of the original.
Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway: I did beat the first game in the series but never played the second, despite my professed love of WWII shooters. Its not really a shooter and its not Full Spectrum Warrior either. I played the demo and was unimpressed. I was unmoved.
Fracture: Another demo that showed off all you need to know in 5 minutes. Generic story and gameplay built around an overused gimmick.
Wii Music: If I wanted to play a music game where all the songs sounded like a Casiotone, I would have bought Casiotone Hero.
Saint’s Row 2: I played the first one even though I wasn’t impressed by that demo. I think I’m just not that keen on sandbox games per se and having played GTA IV, I think I’m done with the genre. SR1 did do some stuff that GTA IV either stole (or should have stolen) but it’s not so great and I’m not that keen to pop caps in people’s asses anymore. I was keen once, but they say you can never go back.
So what do I want to play?
Little Big Planet. One of its major selling points is completely lost on me. I was quite happy to leave all of my spore creations untextured. I do not wish to gain employment as a level designer. I do not wish to make maps for TF2. I just want a platformer. And really, there’s this and Banjo and that’s really it for this year.
Fable II. I must one of the few people who doesn’t hang on Peter Molyneaux’s every word. And hence I wasn’t disappointed in Fable- I was able to ignore the hyperbole and just enjoy what was a very finely crafted game. I only had two minor complaints against Fable 1- you could beat enemies by running circles around them, and you were likley overpowered by the time you reached the final boss. The rest of that game was so much fun I am very much looking forward to number II.
Fallout 3. I have never, ever played a Fallout game. Somehow, this looks like I might enjoy it.
So I’ll get it.
So it looks life Fable II and Fallout 3 on Xbox 360, and Little Big Planet for PS3. Wii and PC go home empty handed.
