SteveStreeting.com

I just saw that Valve are doing some fun merchandise for Left 4 Dead now. The ‘movie posters’ are nice if you’re still in that phase where you like to stick posters on the wall (I’m not), but the T-Shirts are of pretty universal appeal.

Francis seems to be pretty well represented here, or particularly his predeliction for saying how much he hates everything all the time (hospitals, airport terminals, woods, vans, you name it), so I’m guessing he’s turning into a fan favourite. He reminds me a little of Jayne from Firefly which is probably why I like him. There’s actually quite a lot of voice acting in L4D; it’s only delivered dynamically based on the events, rather than as a story mode, but still manages to give you a basic sense of each character and does add to the atmosphere. Well, except the ubiquitous ‘Reloading!’ call of course.

The Portal tees are fun too

Talking of Left 4 Dead, I’m ashamed to admit that I died twice on Blood Harvest last night, and just on Normal mode. The first time was when I bravely volunteered to go out front to see if there was enough space to sneak past the Witch (conclusion: there wasn’t, and the horde chose that time to strike so the others couldn’t rescue me from her in time), the second time was right at the end where we got separated while trying to make it to the rescue point, and I made the mistake of running back to try to rescue my wife from a Tank, despite only just having disentangled myself from the horde (I love/hate how the zombies hold on to you so you can’t run). I could see the rescue truck, but I could also see Marie on the ground just a little way in the opposite direction, incapacitated but still rescueable. I thought I could make it there and back - it would be heroic, right? Wrong. In the end we both ended up getting stomped to death within line of sight of salvation. We made it through on the second attempt though (just) - I’m not sure we’re ready for Advanced mode yet (Yeah I know, lightweights), but we’re going to try soon.

So, my back has been getting slowly better over the last month since my hospitalisation experience; I occasionally have a small relapse, like just after I picked up my new guitar - you wouldn’t think that shifting a small practice amp would be a big deal, but I certainly felt it for the next few days - but overall steady improvement. Part of my rehab is to take more regular gentle exercise, and to mix up my routine a bit so I’m not hunched at the desk in ‘work posture’ for such long periods of time, which means, among other things, daily walks of a few miles, daily guitar practice and plenty more gaming time (hence more game-related posts on this blog).

Often I don’t actually have anywhere in particular to go during my walks, but I need to do it anyway, so I tend to wander off in a direction and try to figure my way back. Despite living in this area for 6 years there are still lots of small country lanes in the vicinity that I’ve never been down before, so while it’s impossible to get properly lost (ie the ’stranded on the moors’ kind of lost), I nevertheless end up on unfamiliar territory a lot of the time.

Since I don’t have a lot to do except listen to my iPod and think, sometimes I’ll think about work, sometimes about new ideas I have for various things, but today as I walked past fields and picket fences, the defensibility of each location against zombie attack kept wandering into my mind. Last night we made our way through Riverside in Left 4 Dead, which is a small town with many rural sections, and the dynamics of the game are much different from the fairly claustrophobic sections of city streets and buildings in the previous ‘movie’. Not only can you be attacked from all sides, but the surrounding undergrowth is adept at hiding many a boss zombie, and it’s really easy to get separated from your teammates because of the open nature of the scenery. You may think you’re just quickly darting behind a shed to check for pickups, but when you come out again and see your friends are a few hundred yards away, it feels like miles. I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the landscape fairly near to my house is like that, making it less than optimal territory for zombie defense. The estate agent unfortunately did not point this out when we bought the place.

We’re loving Left 4 Dead now the full version has come through. The ability for it to generate memorable situations from pseudo-random behaviour is masterful, such that you end up talking excitedly about the ’scene’ you just experienced afterwards as if someone had deliberately directed it. After L4D the reliance of many games on pre-scripted set-pieces looks a little boring and repetetive - repeat a section in L4D and it’s never quite the same, while still being memorable. Of course, the range of situations L4D can generate are, on a macro scale, fairly limited, since they are basically all about surviving zombie mayhem, but even so the combination of several factors does make each game feel unique within itself. Some people would say that multiplayer games have generated their own ’stories’ for years, but actually in most cases since it tends to be a PVP experience it’s less of a story and more of a sports commentary. L4D is, AFAIK, the first game where you get a really successful blend of the dynamism of multiplayer and the unpredictability of variable settings within a context of a traditional ‘human versus computer’ story play. Diablo was perhaps the closest I can think of, since that had randomly generated content and co-op multiplayer, but it never felt as refined as this. Perhaps that’s because the levels themselves and overall objective remain the same, and so tend to add a little more story structure, while still the actual detail of the action varies enough to keep you interested.

One of the memorable moments from last night:

The helicopter had just arrived on top of the medical building, but I’ve gone to help Louis up after he was flattened by a Tank. I fire him up with pain pills so he has enough strength to run, and he’s off towards the chopper where the other 2 are already jumping in, shouting wildly for us to follow. I turn and run after Louis when suddenly a Smoker hiding out on a nearby roof lashes me with his toungue, pulling me backwards off the landing pad and away from rescue, leaving me dangling and choking. Someone in the chopper shoots the toungue to release me, but that drops me down to a lower level, tantalisingly out of reach of the chopper. They’re still screaming at me to run for it.

I run madly for a ladder, catching out of the corner of my eye that the roof access doors are being smashed in and are disgorging hordes of zombies on to the roof, each with the express intention of feasting on me. A few make it to the ladder ahead of me, so I slam the rifle butt into them make some room - I know I don’t have time to try killing them, they’ll just be replaced by the dozens around them, I just need to make enough space to flee because I don’t have a chance down here on my own. I scramble frantically up the ladder and sprint across the roof, the snarling masses literally right over my shoulder. The guys in the chopper are shooting over my head to pick a few off, but there’s too many of them. I just about dodge a Hunter that leaps at me and pile into the chopper, and we lift off leaving a crowd of disappointed flesh eaters seconds behind.

The culmination of each movie has a frantic ending like this, but you never really know precisely what’s going to happen. It’s some of the best co-op fun you can get IMO, and since co-op is my preferred play style now, this is just what the doctor ordered. Highly, highly recommended.

Short answer: I really like the new dash for the 360.

The old ‘blades’ system was efficient (excluding Marketplace, which got hugely unwieldy due to the amount of content) but about as attractive as the back-end of a donkey, and pretty confusing for a newcomer. The new, clearly coverflow-inspired aproach is infinitely more attractive and welcoming. Navigation is in essence the same as the XMB on the PS3, only transposed - i.e. up/down switches categories and left/right selects things within a category. I do think the new look is even nicer than the PS3 though, since the amount of box art and themed sections really makes it attractive and varied to look at.

Those worried about speed navigation should like the ‘guide‘ - just pop it up and you basically have a new version of what you used to get from the blades before - only if anything it’s even quicker to use in my experience, since the interface is much cleaner and navigation is more direct now that there’s no need to have promotional material sandwiched in among regular options (since ‘new’ announcements etc now have their own section in the main interface, and also appear as extra pages within the various sections, nicely filtered based on what you’re looking at).

The avatars get most of the attention, which is understandable but really unwarranted, since it’s the main UI that deserves to be paid attention to. The avatars are of course just better quality Miis, and you use them probably about the same amount (ok, maybe slightly more if you use the Friends Channel rather than the guide). I found mine useful just from the standpoint of being able to generate my own unique(ish) gamertag picture at last. Those that think they’re a frivalous addition can just ignore them once they’ve picked a random one.

I take my hat off to Microsoft on this one. It’s clearly a product of the iPod generation and manages to pull off being approachable, highly polished and very functional at the same time. Good job.

Oh, and Fable 2 is definitely quieter and a little faster now I’ve installed it on the hard drive

I’ve said for a while that I don’t think individual game review scores are particularly useful, on account of the fact that an individual’s taste varies. It’s always important to read the detail of a review rather than to take the score on face value, where (hopefully) a decent reviewer will explain the reasoning behind the aspects he/she did and did not like, so you can judge how much they apply to you. Even this, however, is a hit-and-miss affair, because English being the rich and imprecise language it is, all sorts of emphasis creeps in based on the reviewer’s own opinions, which may or may not be your own - it’s easier to detect and cancel out when you read the text rather than just look at the score, but even so there’s no getting away from the fact that a review is far from an empirical measurement.

I do tend to find Metacritic useful - despite my mistrust of individual review scores, when taken in aggregate, the natural statistical process tends to smooth out the anomalies and result in a reasonably good guide. Again though, you have to take into account your genre preferences - Halo 3 and Oblivion scored persistently highly but personally I’m not keen on either of them, but that’s down to my preference rather than the quality of the games themselves. When restricted to a genre though (and often, restricting to subgenre is required, for example Halo 3, Gears of War and Bioshock should all be in separate subgenres IMO), Metacritic’s results do seem to align with my overall opinion; such as rating Rock Band 1/2 and Guitar Hero 2 as the leaders in the music performance/imitation genre, and Geometry Wars 2 and Rez HD in the arcade shooter genre. I don’t think the overall numerical rankings are at all useful, but within subgenres the relative ranking does seem pretty sound, meaning that while you might want to filter your non-preferred game types out, if you’re looking for a good game in subgenre X, Metacritic is quite a good way to find one - provided you can reliably identify those subgenres (again, reading the full review text should help here).

However, Metacritic scores can take a little time to settle down, and inevitably purchases are made based on the earliest 2-3 web reviews (or even previews sometimes). In these cases, you need to evaluate the reviewer as much as the game, IMO. While most sites do credit the author of the review, few of them make it easy to find what other games this reviewer did or did not like, which is vital information. Some people categorise individual sites as reliable for them or not, but I don’t buy that - you can’t say that you trust 1UP or Eurogamer universally, it’s all about the individual reviewers. I tend to read Eurogamer for the humour, but whether I agree with their reviewers varies wildly. I often agree with Kieron Gillen (a veteran of several PC games mags I used to read too) but have strongly disagreed with their Keza MacDonald, who for example said that Guitar Hero III was ‘in every conceivable way, a better product than its predecessors’, which is pure, unadulterated tosh. It’s partly his fault I bought GHIII, only to abandon it in disgust within 2 weeks, so I discount any opinion he has on music games now.

So ideally, in online game reviews I’d like to see a box-out summary of a few other games in the same genre that this reviewer has judged, in order to figure out how much weight I should give to their opinions. Any chance of that Eurogamer/1UP/IGN et al? I think games reviewers should put their own face / personality out there more so we can identify with those we do / do not tend to agree with - this is the kind of thing some 8-bit mags used to do in the 80’s, with several people pitching in and each identifying themselves with a little picture or something. Why is everything so impersonal on the web?

I finally got chance to play Left 4 Dead co-op with my wife rather than single player with all AI teammates, and it’s an entirely different experience. I’d heard this of course, but even so I found it surprising just how much difference it makes. Having a real person yelling for help as they get jumped by a hunter after hanging back behind the others, running scared from a marauding tank together, or frantically trying to help a team-mate up so you can get back up into a defensive choke point before the wall of dead flesh that’s charging down the abandoned subway track crashes over you, it’s simply enormous fun. We played through the demo an extra 2 times, cranking up the difficulty the second time, and really enjoyed it.

It certainly assuaged my concerns about replayability and how well the co-op mechanic would work - in short, bloody brilliantly. I was a little concerned that the setting might freak my wife out too much, since she’s not a big fan of ‘jumpy’ games and has previously passed on survival horror games on that basis. However, she said it’s different when playing co-op with a real person, so it was fine - although at one point she was left alone on the harder setting because I was kicked to death (they kick you when you’re down, the swines - don’t they teach Queensbury rules in zombie school?), and she said that was more unnerving. In fact, even when we lost an AI character it was pretty unnerving, since we know we have less chance of survival as our numbers dwindle.

The fact that Amazon were doing a pre-order special deal on PC for £17 sealed the deal, so we have 2 copies with our names on them now. We’re not the Counter Strike type players who make complex team strategies of the like I’ve been seeing cropping up on some forums, but I’m sure we’ll get plenty of enjoyment out of this. It’s just fun to share that co-op experience - still my preferred multiplayer mode, especially with people you know. Of course, explaining to ‘normal’ people that you and your spouse’s quality time together sometimes involves attempting to survive metropolitan zombie infestation might raise a few eyebrows, but hey, this is the modern world

I read today that it’s estimated 90% of people playing the full PC version of World Of Goo have a pirated copy (note: the authors 2Dboy chose not to include any copy protection). Edit: For those being pedantic about this figure, here’s how it was estimated; but arguing the exact number is chronically missing the point.

You see, this is why PC gamers can’t have nice things anymore. It’s why desperate publishers reach for horrible, broken DRM measures to try to stamp out piracy, universally failing of course and often upsetting the small minority of paying customers they have left into the bargain. This is why games companies like closed, proprietary boxes which are harder to crack (without resorting to often detectable hardware modification). It’s sad, because it’s these jerks which are increasingly making the PC primarily ‘the WOW platform’.

People who rip off the good work of hard-working small developers like this are, without exception, reprehensible, despicable little sods. No excuses - don’t give me that crap that you pirated it because you didn’t know if you’d like it; play the damn demo instead. And if you couldn’t afford it - well, if you can’t afford something you don’t get to have it, you whining, self-righteous little crybaby.

Everyone who complains about copy protection on Steam, and DRM in general should stop and do something practical instead. Ask PC gamers you know or encounter about how many pirated games they have in their collection. Then, kick them in the nuts (because let’s face it, most of them are going to be male) precisely that number of times. Steel toe-caps are an optional but recommended accessory. Make a note to do this every week until they buy real copies.

I can understand (but not condone) poor students dabbling in pirated super-expensive pro software that they couldn’t possibly afford, in order to expand their education (luckily, most companies do educational or cut-down versions these says of course). But for frivalous entertainment, when the price isn’t high, and especially when this is a small company who happens to have come up with something great and needs a revenue stream to do more great things, it’s just unforgiveable.

But, no doubt the little buggers will continue to get away with it, and turn the PC into a place where only subscription-based products will turn a reasonable profit for their creators, and self-contained product won’t sell well enough whether they’re crippled with DRM or not. No doubt the pirates will be justifying their actions with stupid excuses while they ride the platform into the grave. Well done, gitbags.

Serious games are big these days. Whether it’s training firefighters, soldiers, plant operators or surgeons, the benefits of a simulated environment in which people can hone their real-world skills is widely recognised. Now, with the impending release of Left 4 Dead, we have the necessary training environment to prepare ourselves for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You’ll be thanking those foresighted chaps at Valve in due time, mark my words.

I just picked up the demo today - on PC, because if there’s one thing that’s going to increase the likelihood of the recently dead opening your skull and spreading your grey matter on water biscuits, it’s being limited to a fixed turning speed. Somehow being able to flail wildly and spray bullets in a 360 degree arc while squealing like a girl makes me feel more in control of those high-pressure situations.

So, it was pretty much what I expected, only more so in some areas and less so in others. I expect I should probably get slightly more specific if I’m to maintain this tenuous ruse of being some kind of reviewer, so here we go.

If you’ve seen Dawn of the Dead, you pretty much know what to expect in terms of the rank-and-file zombie experience; ie zombies that do the traditional zombie shamble when they’re unaware of you, but when they are alerted to you they begin to sprint like Ben Johnson, also climbing over fences, up to higher floors, leaping over cars etc - it’s very difficult to feel safe anywhere (except for a particularly comforting broom cupboard I found on the first level). I’m actually really impressed at the number of zombies they managed to get running at you at once - you think it’s getting crowded and then another 10 sprint round the corner. Certain events also trigger what is best described as a ‘zombie rush’ - this can be setting off a car alarm (which infuriates and attracts more zombies), but also getting covered in the bile from an exploding ‘boomer’ (basically a fat inflatable zombie), which attracts the little blighters like moths to a flame. Also, your view is distorted while this happens, looking convincingly like you’re peering through thick liquid, which is horrific as you see the shapes of many zombies homing in on you.

Other ’special’ zombies seem to be mainly designed to bring the co-op elements into sharper focus, since all of them have a special attack which renders the victim helpless and in need of rescuing by comrades - the ‘hunters’ are very fast and have a tendency to leap onto you, pinning you to the ground, the ’smokers’ (recognisable by the hacking cough and the fact that they disintegrate into a cloud of noxious gas) fire out some kind of ‘toungue’ which reels you in if hit, much like a mobile version of the barnacles in Half Life. The ‘witch’ seems to be an extra-tough zombie that you’re supposed to sneak past but goes nuts for the first person to disturb her, again needing rescuing.

Overall, the feeling of being trapped in a zombie-infested city with 3 other companions is pulled off extremely well. The zombie hordes are highly convincing, the music is dynamic and always puts you on edge, and the co-op element works well, you really do feel that you need to stick together. I played single player with AI comrades - I tried briefly with other random people but succumbed to the usual annoyances of kids who won’t shut the hell up on voice chat, or who generally behave irritatingly (yes, you’re teabagging a zombie, how very droll and original). The ongoing problem with multiplayer of course is that it involves other people. But if you have a group of reasonable people (ie actual friends) I think it would be huge fun.

The action is allegedly controlled by AI which balances the experience dynamically, meaning that you don’t get the same experience twice. I can’t really comment on that yet, only having gone through the demo once, but it does seem to flow pretty well. In the full game, a person can take control of that, directing zombies and changing music, apparently. That sounds interesting.

There are some downsides though. Despite it being very creepy, and the variety of the different types of zombies throwing a few curve balls in there, and the exquisite moments of panic that can be created by a car alarm going off or a boomer covering you in goo, it does often feel a bit like a shooting gallery, just in slightly different surroundings each time. I wasn’t bored in the demo, but I wonder if after a few more levels I might start to be. You start to get a sense that after it’s been quiet for a while, there’s going to be another ‘zombie rush’ soon, so you start scoping out the potential entry points. Sometimes it surprises, with zombies bursting through walls, windows and doors, over railings and up through ruined floors, but I wonder whether it might get a bit predictable. I also wonder if that would matter so much; maybe the appeal of co-op zombie massacre in different surroundings doesn’t get old that fast. Difficult to say.

I’m also not sure about the decision of giving the pistols infinite ammo. Sure, the other weapons are far better and you really like to conserve ammo on those, but I quickly settled on a strategy of using the pistols for distant enemies and moments of reduced peril, and flip to the bigger firepower when things got hairy. I never felt in danger of running out of ammo - the main peril really came from just large zombie rushes, not from any individual ones. I think there’s less tension this way, knowing you’ll never really be out of ammo so it takes a big wave of undead to really put you in danger (or a special attack). One of the terrifying things in the Resident Evils and System Shocks was the thought of having to face horrific creatures armed with only your travel toothbrush, and that made you treasure each bullet and watch that depleting ammo gauge with beads of sweat forming at your temples.

So, it’s good fun, but I’m not sure if I’ll buy it as a full retail game. I’d be quite happy for this to be in something like the Orange Box, but on it’s own? I’m not sure. I think I’ll wait for the reviews of the full game.

Based on the demo, Mirror’s Edge is one of those games that I really want to love, but in the end just end up respecting from a discrete distance.

As a milestone in the game industry’s development, it’s a great game. The visuals are refreshing, and the premise of a first-person game where the aim is not to have to shoot people is a welcome change. Technically, the impression of embodying a character who leaps and jumps and rebounds from every feasible urban surface is well realised, to the extent that when you’re hanging from a ledge and want to look around, you can see yourself let go with one hand in order to do so.

However, the choice of view also has some problems. Since in terms of mechanics this is mainly a platform game concentrating on finding and exploiting escape routes, I found the first-person view very restricting, because it cuts out all peripheral vision, when in practice being able to see what’s to either side of you, and above and below you quickly is absolutely paramount. I think if I was on a PC I might have found it less restricting, because I could use a mouse flick to quickly cast a glance around without materially affecting my runner’s trajectory, but with 2-stick control you can’t really do that, meaning the restrictions on the view meant it felt very much like I was occupying a small metal cockpit with a small front windscreen on top of a robot body, piloting it with a slightly clunky interface, rather than truly embodying an athlete. On relatively straight runs it’s ok, but as soon as you need to look around, it gets awkward and it’s all too easy to miss things in the rush, and have to fall back on repeat plays - you really need to know the level before you can leap around the more complex parts of it. I can’t help but feel that a third person view would have made the whole process of navigating through the world much smoother because it would naturally give you back that  all-important peripheral vision, but of course that would have eliminated the major selling point of the game. Tough one.

Secondly, it makes me want to barf. All that bobbing around and (worse) forward rolling certainly does add to the atmosphere, but if you get motion sickness like I do, it isn’t pleasant. After playing through the demo in 30 minutes I had a raging headache and felt slightly ill - not quite the Penny Arcade result, but I can see where their inspiration came from.

Lastly, the platforming is pretty annoying at times. The game is highly unforgiving about grabbing on to drainpipes for example; if you miss it by 30cm or so you’ll be plummetting to your death pretty quickly. The restricted peripheral vision doesn’t help in this regard, timing jumps can be difficult when you can’t see your feet (of course, you can look down to see them, but then you can’t see where you’re going). Again a mouse would help here for quick glances, and perhaps with time this would become more natural, but I can’t help thinking that being a little more lenient with the jumping mechanic would make the whole experience a little smoother.I also have no idea why they chose to use the 2 shoulder buttons for jump / crouch, it feels seriously unnatural when you’ve been programmed to use the primary face button for jumping for years. Maybe they thought that it would feel more intuitive (top shoulder button = jump, below shoulder trigger = crouch) but in practice I found it hugely awkward and often ended up using the wrong one in pressured moments - a simple A to jump and B to crouch would have been much more natural and more consistent with other games. Not the control system I would have picked.

So, a very interesting game, but not one I’ll be buying, mostly because of the motion sickness aspect. If it wasn’t for that I’d consider getting it just because I like to support new ideas, but I would stick to the PC version so looking around to search for routes is snappier, and would alleviate the ‘boxed in’ feeling a little.

User generated content is currently something of a media darling in the game industry. Of course, it’s actually nothing new - gamers on open platforms like PC and the home computers before it have been creating mods and new content for their games for a couple of decades now. What’s different now with the advent of yet another acronym to remember (UGC) is that the concept has finally come to the home consoles, those friendly ‘turn on and play’ devices.

On paper, it sounds great - finally, people using consumer-friendly boxes can be creative without having to hunt down FAQs on the internet and learn how to tame often esoteric toolsets (although many people, me included, find this part of the fun of course). All the tools you need are presented in the box, together with a way to distribute them to your friends and the wider internet. But, as ever, the downside is related to the fiefdoms of control the consoles always operate within.

Guitar Hero : World Tour and Little Big Planet are the two most recognised sources of console UGC right now, and both are subject to many media reports of users’ carefully crafted content being deleted by moderators, due to copyright concerns. Any cover of a commercial song, or even a game tune, is summarily removed from GH:WT (as was widely predicted), and now levels which are in homage of titles like Mario are getting removed from Little Big Planet too. It’s perfectly understandable of course; the companies running the servers on which the content sits cannot afford to be sued over it, so are taking the cautious route and pre-empting any problems. But it also shows that centrally controlling content is capable of stunting the otherwise grand promise of user generated content.

The Internet is as successful as it is because control is distributed. For better or worse, you can find publish pretty much anything, and that makes it what it is - a sea of dubious quality data from which search indexes, linking and recommendations turn into a usable, ever mutating wonderland. UGC has this potential in the gaming space, but it can never fully realise it while content is regulated at a central source. It’s similar to the way fanfic and fanart are always popular, but organised publishers of it get sued these days, so the place to really find it is on smaller, distributed fan sites, not central corporate ones. Console UGC is certainly good fun, and better than no UGC at all, but the fact that it may only be published in one place means Big Brother is always controlling what can and cannot be published, and that is the antithesis of the principle of personal creativity. Creativity wants to be free, not penned in by what a central source says it can and cannot express; if I want to create a LBP level where Link and Mario belch a cover version of Bohemian Rhapsody, I damn well should be able to. But, that won’t happen in the control-obsessed world of the console any time soon I’m sure.

I’m about 8 hours into Fable 2 now, and I feel I have at least some ability to give an impression of the game, although due to it’s nature, I do have to put a big warning sticker on this saying ‘work in progress’ - because one of the main things about Fable 2 is that it’s a slow burner. You really, really need to spend a number of hours with it before you really start to settle in.

The Bad

Let’s get the negative things out the way, because I do actually want to finish on an overall positive here. My first impressions were a bit disappointing to be honest. The ‘child’ sequence was a little dull, filled with very simple fetch quests and dialogue that was far too slow paced, despite being well acted. In particular there’s an odd pause between almost all the sentences that really has you tapping your foot at times waiting for them to get the hell on with it.

The next disappointing thing was that local co-op really doesn’t work very well. The second player is limited to a predefined henchman (or henchwoman in our case), who in essence gets very little out of the play experience beyond tagging along and being there for fights (since they can’t interact with objects or people) and the fact that the camera has to accommodate two players becomes quickly unwieldy. After a few hours of playing it together we gave up and are now playing solo, and are enjoying it much more. It’s a shame, because co-op play was one of the things we were looking forward to.

Lastly, the main quest is (so far) a fairly typical hackneyed fantasy story - you are born ’special’ and must fulfil your destiny to defeat the evil villain who would destroy the world, yadda yadda. It really doesn’t do the rest of the game justice. I’ve played enough RPGs (and read enough fantasy books) by now that I wince visibly whenever someone uses this old crutch as a storyline, there’s really no excuse for it. Go read some Guy Gavriel Kay or Neil Gaiman and get some new ideas for goodness sakes. Whether Fable 2 is actually just setting this up for a bit of genre parody that’ll all twist into something original later I’m not sure, because the rest of the game certainly shows far more imagination, but so far the main quest is very straight-laced and really not the most inspired of plotlines.

The Good

Ok, so that’s all the weaker bits out of the way. Despite these issues, Fable 2 is actually a hell of a lot of fun.

Firstly, it looks lovely. The world is fun to explore because it’s fairly densely populated with interesting landmarks and vistas, in contrast to something like Oblivion which had a huge area to explore but which consisted of far too much identical looking forest. Someone’s been reading GPU Gems 3, because they have a lovely crepuscular rays implementation (translation: god rays) that I can watch all day. I like the setting too - it’s not typical fantasy (despite the cliches in the main quest), it’s more like a fantastical twist on a Victorian world, kind of like Van Helsing or the Brothers Grimm (in atmosphere, not quality). In short, the world is sumptously realised in almost every way and is a joy to just wander around. There’s a very occasional graphical glitch where if a new area comes quickly into view (say seeing into another street through the gap between two houses), it appears to pop in a frame too late - I’m guessing this is either down to an occlusion culling lag, or asset streaming - but it’s really only noticeable to graphics geeks like me who use it to try to figure out what they’re doing behind the scenes.

Secondly, the world is full of fascinating and original things that put the main story to shame. The incidental encounters & side quests are very entertaining; the world is awash with NPCs going about their business, and they all behave rather realistically, whether you’re trying to charm the pants off them, or putting the willies up them by summoning undead in the market (hey, who else is going to carry my shopping?). Side quests are abound, and humour is a very common theme - such as being asked to retrieve the Normanomicon (the Book of the Extremely Dead) in an obvious parody of Evil Dead III. The characters are often very amusing, and the outcomes sometimes surprising. Like the best of western RPGs, you have a lot of flexibility in what you do with your time - I’m personally playing an evil character because the lure was just too tempting, and so many of the ‘underside’ characters are more fun to be around, in a comically nefarious way. As soon as I realised I could boost my advancement in the ‘Temple of Shadows Reward Points Scheme’ by sacrificing my spouse (rather than random strangers) on the Wheel of Misfortune, I was running back to the marital home with an evil chuckle. She was getting a bit annoying anyway  It was pretty much a downward spiral into villainy from there on, and I’m loving it.

My wife and I are taking different paths through the game - I’m ripping off my customers (I own a humble meat stall right now, plans to expand later), doing the odd bit of stealing, extortion, and of course the regular sacrifices probably count against me (although not as much as you might think - you appear to need to try quite hard to attain the pinnacle of dastardly evil), while she is pursuing a far more honourable path, and we’re already getting treated quite differently. Children run away from me in the street and people mutter about what happened to my innocent victims when I pass, and I’m currently sporting a small pair of horns and a dog which now has disconcertingly red eyes I get store discounts by making people afraid of me, rather than buttering them up like my wife is doing.

At the end of the day it’s these little things that make Fable 2 fun. You can spend entire days ignoring the main quest and finding things to mess about with. I’m getting a bit fat thanks to scoffing (cheaper) food for healing; my character did indeed eat all the pies. I amused the townfolk by sporting a fabulous mullet for a short period. I tricked the monks at the temple of light into following me into the temple of shadows to be sacrificed, by swaying them with charitable donations. I’ve been pursued halfway across town by a gay weapons merchant who wouldn’t take no for an answer. While the side quests in Oblivion ultimately put me off, since they were as boring as they were crushingly numerous, the ancilliary distractions in Fable 2 are what keep me coming back. From the numerous silly achievements (like bygamy and chicken punting), to the bonus gargoyles that you have to hunt out and shoot, a bit like Zelda secrets, that taunt you incessantly in a Scottish accent to give you a clue that they’re around, it’s all a bit daft but a lot of fun to boot. Oh, and you absolutely have to read all the descriptions of all the items, there are some hidden gems of comedy writing in there that are among the most entertaining elements.

On the core gameplay experience, the fighting is quite fun once you get a few skill enhancements, allowing you to aim your ranged weapons more specifically and perform special attacks. The spell system is simple but workable, and the spells that are provided are entertaining. Exploration is very solid, the world is not large compared to some games, but it’s certainly large enough for me and is dense; seeking out hidden secrets is entertaining and again very Zelda-like. The dog is done very well indeed, he’s a genuinely useful companion, alerting you to danger and finding hidden treasure, as well as savaging your enemies when they’re knocked down. He’s very convincingly animated meaning it’s very easy to get attached to him - even if you do end up turning him into something from the Omen through your own misdeeds like I have.

Conclusion

I think if you’re the kind of person that likes linear, heavily story-driven RPGs (like JRPGs), or wants hundreds of hours of gameplay to discover (like Oblivion), Fable 2 might be disappointing for you, because there are games out there already that have done these aspects better.  However, if you like your games to be compact and perfectly formed,  infused with a sense of humour, a lot of character, and like to spend time messing about with things seeing what’s possible, Fable 2 delivers that humour, quality and flexibility in spades; you just need to give it a bit of time.

In terms of the core gameplay experience I would definitely say it feels more like a weird mixture of Zelda and GTA, rather than a ‘traditional’ RPG. It’s kind of like Zelda with a wicked sense of humour, an evolving character & world, bucketloads more freedom, and random sex & violence. Put it this way, if Navi were in Fable 2, you’d have the option of spit-roasting her, marrying her, or selling her to a travelling freak show. And who wouldn’t want that?

Overall then, recommended.