I do like Christmas. Lots of lovely holiday to catch up on games, punctuated at regular intervals by stuffing myself silly with food and booze, and meeting up with family. And the weather’s so bloody cold nobody thinks bad of you for staying inside all day. I’ve had a couple of weeks off so far, mostly dominated by Fallout 3 which I’m enjoying more now than when I started (due to the incredibly amateur way I have ordered things for publishing I think the post about that won’t have gone up yet. I am great at this, me), but still feels oddly hollow, like I’m just ticking off quests so that I can say that I’ve done them. Still, do them I will. And every now and then something happens that I enjoy a lot, such as killing everyone in the Republic of Dave for not letting me vote.

I have also managed to get a few hours on co-op Gears of War 2. I really enjoyed playing through the first one’s story campaign because I did the whole thing with a friend. So far (just on the second main level at the moment) it’s good, though doesn’t feel as focussed to me – each encounter feels engineered to provide a different combat experience, or introduce a new weapon or element. Which is an odd complaint, I know – they would have been mauled by critics if they’d just left it as 5 levels of the same run and gun action as the first. But nevertheless it feels slightly “bitty”.

While visiting family my Lego mad nephew found out that his uncle worked on a game based around Bionicle. At the time I hated the stuff, but looking at the sets he’s been given by Santa, it seems that they’ve started to make some real effort with them. Anyway, the bits and pieces of information I could remember from five years ago paid off, and I was able to wow him with my knowledge of Toa names and elements. Then I got told there is a Bionicle game on the Lego website which is much better than the one I worked on, which might have been an innocent but cutting remark, if I didn’t view our game as the worst thing I’ve ever done. So I just laughed along and later added another five seconds to my internal “how long have I spent feeling bitter about those six months” timer. Seven hours so far. You could play Bionicle from start to finish seven times in that!

Just before Christmas Free Radical Design went into administration, which must be a blow to their hard working staff. There are interesting stories coming out now, though, which often happens in these situations – people who kept quiet before for fear of losing their jobs are telling all now that they have nothing left. I’m sure the good guys will have no trouble finding new employment.

Right, I’m off to hunt through online sales and see if there are any bargains. I was expecting Left 4 Dead to be cheap by now, so I could add it to my pile of as-yet-unplayed stuff. But it doesn’t look like it.

PS – Game of the year (since every website and blog is contractually obliged to provide such a thing) was Fable 2. Everything I was expecting it to be and more.

PPS – The banner image is from Kristmas Kombat, which is about the true meaning of the holiday season. No idea if it’s any good, I just liked the picture.

Hello chums (the seven of you that StatCounter informs me reliably visit every day). I’ve been a bad blogger again. I know. I had the best intentions, but work and home life still conspired against me. Whatever time I got to jot down thoughts on games I had been playing and news I had been reading, resulted in bullet point lists. I put the lists into blogger for editing into proper posts at a later date, but I never really found that editing time, and when I did, the posts were so out of date it started to feel a little pointless. So, in the New Year I’m going to try again. Honestly. But before then (and probably during then, since there are a few of them) I’m going to do a quick editing job on the handful of posts I’d already written, and publish those (unless the editing job consists of “what the hell was I thinking?” and I delete it). Just keep in mind that some of these are quite old. And now on to your scheduled content…

Fable 2 is a wonderful game. Absolutely riddled with minor glitches & bugs*, but still everything I was expecting, and it is brilliant.

I will say at this point that I was a fan of the first Fable (possibly because I never listened to the hype before it came out, and then pushed through the fairly boring first chapter at the hero school). Fable 2 is a classic sequel – it includes everything from the original, and expands and improves on it in every way.

One of the main things that I love so much about the game is how focussed it is on leading the player by carrot instead of stick. It’s literally impossible to die in – the worst that happens is you get “knocked out”, respawn back on the spot, lose some experience, and any experience still lying around is lost too – so the consequences of getting in above your head are pretty much non-existant. Another great touch is that after spending experience to improve your character you have to option to sell the upgrades back, and reclaim some of the points. This gets around one thing I always hate with RPGs – that they expect you to pick skills and attributes for your character at the start of the game, when you don’t know what might be useful. To take Fallout 3 as a recent example, “Heavy Weapons” sounds like it could be a good skill, but before playing the game for some time you have no idea how prolific the ammunition you need to make use of it actually is.

But back to Fable 2 – it’s very charming, with interesting and funny characters throughout and a massive amount of great lines for the villagers and enemies. Hearing foes lament their comrade’s death because he owed them a pint, or walking past a house at night an overhearing a child’s nightmare really help to draw you in to the world and make you smile. The cutscene dialogue is also good, though often let down horribly by what I can only assume is a limitation of their scripting system that has resulted in some terrible pacing that leaves huge gaps between sentences.

The only bit that annoyed me was the obligatory arena quest, and that wasn’t hard, it was more of a “oh fuck’s sake, why does every fantasy game need some osrt of arena where you battle increasingly difficult waves of monsters for the entertainment of the general population?” frustration.

Finally, the online implementation of seeing “orbs” that show where your friends (or any number of other players, if you want) are in game is cooler than I thought it would be. Someone gave me a huge warhammer, which was nice, and to “pass it on” I gave a friend a very good sword that I had no need for. You could probably break the game’s balancing very easily in this way, but it really doesn’t seem to care since it gives you enough other ways that you could break it yourself if you wanted to (the economy and sales seem almost deliberately designed for this). As I said before, I’ve never seen an RPG be this free and easy with its boundaries, and carrot not stick before.

The worst thing about Fable 2 by far has been that I have Fallout 3 to play, and it feels so stuck in its RPG ways, and so dour, and brown, and humourless, that I’ve been put off playing much of it at all.

* I know there are a lot of people out there who had much more than minor bugs, and with the game’s limited save files I can see that being deeply annoying. But I never experienced anything outside of the minor visual category in over 30 hours of play. I guess Fable loves me too.

My replacement Xbox turned up a week ago. Thankfully this time I’ve been sent an entirely new one, rather than a refurbished one. It’s much quieter than any of the Xboxes I’ve owned or borrowed from work, and hopefully that’s a good sign.

So, after two weeks of being Xbox deprived (so deprived in fact, that I even resorted to playing Haze on the PS3) I have finally been able to dive into Fable 2, which is amazing (but more on that later).

I just need to get the time to crack on with Fallout 3 now. And Gears of War 2. And Saints Row 2. And Little Big Planet. And FarCry 2. And Midnight Club. And finish off Lego Batman.

Really, Free Radical? From Timesplitters and Second Sight to this?

Well, it’s happened. My second Xbox 360 has died. Something in the end of level sequence for Lego Batman stressed it an inch too far, and it gave up (though if it took my 60% complete save file with it I won’t be happy). Just in time for the game release silly season. What a pain in the arse.

This one has lasted pretty much a month shy of two years, having been delivered as a replacement for the actual 360 I bought, which lasted around six months. So, their lifetimes are improving.

Also improved is Microsoft’s support phone line. Whereas two years ago I had to jump through a few hoops before they would take in my console, now they are very quick to believe your tale and get the relacement process started.

The plus side of having been through this before is that I had a perfect cardboard box ready for shipping the dead console off in – the one it arrived in.

Oh well, time to give the PS3 a bit more attention. It’s a shame Little Big Planet has just been delayed though.

Being able to admit when I’m wrong is one of my many virtues. And since it’s one that people don’t often get to see in action, this is a great opportunity.

Lego Batman is, contrary to my previous worries, the best Lego game Traveller’s Tales have made.

Unconstrained by following the plot of a movie series, they have really let themselves go, and have come up with some brilliant and inventive level design. Playing as Batman is good, but when you get the the villain versions of the stages, the game really shines.

Fans of slapstick and visual gags will also be very happy about the cutscenes – again, a world away from Indy’s relatively straight interpretations. The scene at the start of the Joker strand in particular is a treat, as Batman and Robin prepare to patrol, while Mr J sets out his plan to his fellow supervillains.

Still the same crappy front end menu though, how long has that work experience guy been on his probation? At least he changed the font this time.

It is WipEout Pulse. In HD. Half arsed photo mode.

So, I’ve been going back over some notes for things that I had played over the last few months. I found some stuff about Lego Indiana Jones, which is interesting again, since Lego Batman comes out in the UK at the end of the week.

The bullet pointed list, then…

• Feels like it’s had a lot less love & effort put into it than the Lego Star Wars games. In particular there are things that were added to the Complete Saga that are missing here (such as online co-op, surely it’s in their game engine now?)
• Not helped by having a lot fewer cool characters than Star Wars. For most of the game I didn’t want to be anyone but Indy.
• Looks nice, but when you turn on vsync the framerate goes to shit. How unoptimsed is their engine? I realise “the kids” don’t care about this sort of thing, but it’s something else that makes it feel a bit half-hearted.
• They’ve worked out how to make good achievement lists. (Since writing this note I’ve also played Complete Saga, and that has good achievements too.)
• The front end looks and feels like it took someone 5 minutes. What’s up with this rubbish flashing text in a debug-looking font? And why is “new game” always the default selected option? How many times do I want to start a new game?
• Has quite a lot of annoying instant deaths for a kids’ game. And in partcular some enemies with one-hit-kill rocket launchers.

I seem to be unable to stop myself buying Travellers Tales’ Lego games, so my copy of Batman will be on its way soon enough. I wonder if they will have returned to the series’ high water mark of Complete Saga? I doubt it.

If anyone who reads this is in need of a professional writer, I would recommend James Parker. I’ve worked with this guy in the past, and his writing is top notch.

He also has a blog about writing in games, here, which is interesting reading. It’s good to find something to read about the writing in games that isn’t just trying to push the “we should be art” or “we should be films” angles constantly.