Over the past couple of weeks I've probably spent more time on the Xbox than ever, due to Fable and Second Sight managing to grab hold of me. Here's a quick write up on those, and some of the other things I've been playing lately. Yes I copied the images from Amazon, and no I can't be bothered snipping the "25% off" bits out of the images!
I started off hating Fable, but have grown to enjoy it a hell of a lot. I'm almost finished it playing as a 'good' fella, and will probably go back and finish it again playing evil.
Fable is one of those games which would probably have been ruined for you if you followed industry hype. Fortunately I don't. It lost a lot of it's features along the way, and the delivered product is not quite what was originally intended. No matter, as the final product is still a lot of fun.
The basic plot of Fable is that your parents + sister are killed by some raiding bandits, and as you're inspecting the carnage some hero fella turns up and whisks you away to join the heroes guild, where you train and learn for a bit. At this point, the real game begins, and you can run about doing quests, killing things, gaining skills, etc etc. The thing about Fable is that you can customise your character in many ways - acts of good or evil modify your alignment (and earn you a halo or set of horns accordingly), tattoos add to your scariness and can modify other attributes, and there are plenty of weapons and items (ITEAMZ!!!1oneone) which can be collected along the way. A lot of things in Fable can be accomplished in many ways, such examples are opening the 'Demon Doors' and finishing certain quests.
The combat system is fun to play, and is based around melee, ranged, and magic fighting. The one let down is that there are certain skills which are slightly overpowered. Combat in Fable is very easy with the right skills. Those skills being maxed out Enflame... and well, actually, that's it. Enflame being a basic PBAE attack which increases in damage + range as you level it, but it has the added bonus of making your character invunerable to everything while casting, which is very handy for many of the boss mobs which have their one 'big' attack. Get enflame, work out the pattern of their attacks, and you pretty much can't lose. There are certain areas where you can go early on to get some skills before starting out with some of the larger quests (The Hobbe caves being repeatable many times until you get + finish that mission, and the area in Lychfield graveyard filled with undead which are owned by Enflame with one shot), this is optional, and if you want to make the game a lot harder you could forgo this.
The thing about Fable, is that it was sold as one of those 'go anywhere you want, do anything you want' type things, but the game really doesn't feel like that when you're playing it. The paths are very defined, and you can really only follow the paths in any of the zones. There is also a voiceover that occurs everytime there is a quest you're supposed to do, and the quests move in pretty much a linear fashion to advance the storyline. Sure, there are heaps of little side quests and things you can do (Marry Lady Gray, obsess about trying to find a way to kill Lady Gray, marry other people, kill your wife, kill you wife's father + inherit his money, open all the demon doors, collect keys for chests, etc etc etc) but the very core of the game has a very linear feel about it. The main reason I hated it at first was because the linear nature made me feel like I should run off and do XYZ quest instantly, but at that point I had no skills. Once I took some time out to get some skills (well, one in particular), I jumped back into the Storyline and enjoyed it. I wonder if theres something in the manual encouraging you to explore (my copy was an advance copy, and didn't come with a manual) a bit, but even if there was I probably wouldn't have read it anyway.
The game has all the other elements of an RPG game - items, potions, armor, clothes, character customisations, etc etc. The customisations has led to a lot of people having put a lot of time and effort into their avatars and wanting a place to share them.. again, this was probably originally planned, but hasn't made it's way into the final version. There are reports of threads existing on various forums where people desperately try to describe their character to other users, or take photos of the TV screen to upload them..
Overall, Fable is well worth a look. Even more so if you go into it with no real expectations. It's currently not available in NZ, but you can pre-order it if you.re so inclined.
First off, a bit of blurb from the Codemasters online store:
Redefining the standards for stealth action gameplay, Second Sight which combines a psychological thriller with paranormal psychic abilities, stealthy exploration and intense shooter action, is due later this year for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo GameCube.
Take control of John Vattic, as he awakens from a coma in a US medical facility where he has been subjected to traumatic surgery and experimentation. With the ability to psychically influence characters and remotely manipulate objects and individuals, John Vattic must try to escape and unravel the mystery that has led to his imprisonment.
When you first play Second Sight it doesn't seem like anything new or groundbreaking, but for some reason it managed to hold my attention for a lot longer than I expected. The psychic power are done quite well, and they're a lot of fun to use - it's incredibly satisfying using your telekinesis to pull someone towards you from the other end of a corridor, and then slam them into a wall, don't ask me why, it just is. The powers are revealed to you throughout the game through a sequence of cut scenes, which make the first part of the game a little boring, as all you need to do is sit back, watch the scenes, and find out what you're capable of. As well as your powers, you can also obtain and use various weapons, including pistols, machine guns, and sniper rifles.
The way the game jumps about it's timelines seems like it has potential to be incredibly annoying, but again, it just kind of works from a storytelling and gameplay perspective. The whole element of sneaking about and trying not to be detected is quite a lot of fun, but if you're discovered you have the option of slaughtering guards while trying to find a hiding place (or just leaving a zone) and letting the security reset itself. One of your powers is the ability to heal yourself, which means you don't spend the entire game worried about your health - if you can find a quiet corner for 20 seconds you can heal yourself and let your psychic power recharge. It might not seem like a big deal, but it makes the game a lot easier to play when you're not constantly obsessed with healing yourself (although when the timeline jumps back, the NPCs seem to have a love for eating lead, which means that healing them becomes an issue in a few places).
Overall, it's a lot of fun - nothing amazingly new, but worth a play if these style of games are your thing. Again, currently available on pre-order.
Second Sight Downloads page (Codemasters site)
I'm not playing much, but I guess I'm still playing. After unlocking my Jedi 2 weeks before Publish 10, I'm now too paranoid to play him much. While I completely agree that there should be some risks for a jedi player, I think the penalties combined with the thought of -10million experience is a bit of a deterrent at the moment - even with capped melee def, TKM, feign death, and 2040 medic. Anyhow I'm hoping that eventually they'll make some changes. The problem is that all the recent publishes and fixes are perceived at being aimed at Jedi players, so there's a lot of pressure on to provide content for everyone else.
In my opinion, they need to add a couple of things to make the Jedi profession slightly more viable:
- Quests - along the same lines as the Padawan trials, with some experience reward and possibly a consumable item or two (like a couple of holocrons). Put the quests on a phase system so they can only be done once every couple of weeks, and you have something to break up the monotony of Quenkers.
- A method to actively clear visibility - again, maybe it needs a timer, maybe it needs player interaction (the smuggler / jedi ideas that have been floating around for a while are all good), but the Jedi need a method of clearing their visibility - even if it's something which is tough to do.
- Rewards for killing Bounty Hunters. A lot of the dramas between Jedi and BH at the moment comes from the fact that there is no incentive for the Jedi to fight, when they have an escape route available. Clearly the main issue with any reward system is designing it so that it's not exploitable, but I'm sure something could be thought of. The fact is that Jedi VS BH has the potential to be some of the best PvP in the game, but with the way it is at the moment, the Jedi have so much to lose, and the Bounty Hunter nothing, so the incentive to fight just isn't there.
I really do want to play my Jedi at some point, rather than treat it like a trophy, but I'm not sure when that's going to be too possible.
I can't really say much about this due to the NDA, but I'm quite pleased to be in the JTL Beta, Mainly so I can see how my ickle connection handles the 'twitch' style gameplay of JTL before I need to pay $$$ for it. So far, it seems to be handling it pretty well, which I'm quite surprised about. I won't be able to stick with my main server, but I have a couple of other chars around the place on servers which have better pings to choose from if the need arises.