FURTHER READING / 07.23.09

Today was a busy day around the office... well, my office... my very small office of one person. Today I finished and reviewed Fable II. What should I review next? A couple of interesting bits of tid today for FURTHER READING and I hope you'll find them of interest to you too.

• Eurogamer posted a very snarky interview with Marky R,
• Realtime Worlds announced that APB would make its way to gamers in March,
• and this Borderlands gameplay trailer continues to build excitement from this blogger.
  

REVIEW: Fable II for the Xbox 360

Fable II is the sequel to an Xbox game I never played. It centers around... well, you, whatever you choose to be, whoever you choose to be, and really whatever path you choose to walk. The way the game presents these choices, and their effects, is remarkably effective. Fable II is really a very personal experience in that it asks you to decide exactly how you want to shape yourself and how that will in turn shape the world. The main campaign shows little effect of this, but the people in the shops and towns do.

Fable II starts out strong, introducing your character and the villain early in the tale, along with morality choices and economics. Don't forget, things cost gold, and gold doesn't come without some work. Soon after the tale gets under way, I found myself working obsessively for the blacksmith. Jobs are small minigames that require you to make timed button and I was hooked on making as much money as I could by getting a long string of successful hits in. I'm not one for this sort of thing but I was having a good time and wanted to get a healthy start on buying decent equipment for my character.

The next quests were fun and had me straying from the main story line repeatedly. The characters in the game have lots of personality, mostly due to the terrific British voice acting cast, so their problems are either hilarious or heartfelt. It was almost like a world full of living breathing distractions. I wanted to dance for everyone that would applaud and fart for anyone in the town square that would have it (and a lot of people liked it when I farted). In a way Fable II truly allowed me to be myself in a video game world.

The combat also varies itself enough to have depth and nuance so that you'll never bore of feeling like a powerful combatant. Some of the less powerful enemies never fail to entertain either. Whenever I came across a battle with Hollow Men I rejoiced. They're probably the easiest enemies to dominate, but when Fable II throws tens of them at me at once it was always fun to swing my sword and crack their bodies apart three at a time.

I continued down the campaign trail and each area it opened was new and varied, as were the enemies. The final battle culminated in a big challenge, but overall I felt like it was appropriate for the level of experience I had reached. There was one climactic disappointment though.

[SPOILERS] After the end of this final battle, you travel to the top of what's basically your batcave. Lucien, your villain kills your dog and puts you to sleep. You enter a dream world, shoot some bottles, kick some chickens, and boom your back to the spire. Essentially, Lucien was trying to control you through a dream world. You are face to face with Lucien in the spire. After this, you pull your gun out and immediately shoot him. He's dead. The end. [END SPOILERS].

I know I'm pretty late to the party here, but Fable II is/was great. I'm even going to play it through again as an evil character, and I usually can't do second playthroughs in quick sucession. As a game world Fable II succeeds in so many ways, and on so many levels. It has a cast of characters that exude personality (so much so that they repeated character models are easily overlooked). It has a reactive community (to the point that you're own desires will come out in your character). Most importantly, it's fun.

PLAY READ WRITE / REVIEW SCORE: 4 OUT OF 5

Business cards need a house too...

I picked up some business cards before I made my way to E3, and now after seeing this Famicom business card case, I've realized that they are incredibly naked.

At about $30 (and an import at that), I'd have to come into some pretty expendable cash to make this purchase.

Imagine: "Oh hi, [insert game journalism professional here]. You do great work! Maybe we could talk sometime. You can check out my writing at playreadwrite.blogspot.com. Let me give you my business card.... What's that? Oh yeah, petty cool case huh?"

I'm sure I'll be able to keep that at the back of my head until I run into that extra cash down the line. In the mean time you can check out the product page at Geek Stuff 4 U: http://www.geekstuff4u.com/nes-controller-type-card-case.html.

FURTHER READING / 07.22.09

Another late edition of FURTHER READING means I've been out having fun again. Man I sure do wish I was going to Comic Con though. Seems like there's so much to see and do down there, but could I possibly wade through the rising levels of comic books nerds to see all of the great video game stuff going on in San Diego?

• X-play previews Muramasa: The Demon Blade (which looked great at E3),
• Borderlands will drop on October 20th,
• and the next GTA IV DLC, The Ballad of Gay Tony, will drop on October 29th.

Playing TF2 for Hats

I want so desperately to get a hat drop. These random unlocks in Team Fortress 2 are so infuriating at times. I've been playing quite a bit lately hoping that I'll somehow stumble across any hat for any class.

Valve recently added the cosmetic unlockables to drive TF2 players like me crazy. They don't really do anything other than show off what a fancy-pants player you are, but that doesn't mean I don't want one so bad I can taste it. My main classes are Soldier and Medic so obviously it would be great to receive a hat for either of those two classes, but even if I got a hat for a different class, I'm sure that one would surge to the top of my "hours played" list.

Have you unlocked a hat? What's your story? If you haven't unlocked a hat yet, which one are you hoping to find?

Personally, Valve has almost broken my spirit, but I'll continue logging hours in the game until I find that hat. Even if I don't, I'm still having fun with the game and the community surrounding it, especially due to my buddy p90 and what a good heavy he is to partner up with.

FURTHER READING / 07.21.09

I wrote a lot today and there's still more than three links in FURTHER READING! What a day!

• Kotaku gets ahold of a Gears of War movie script (spoilers abound!),
• Activision head hunts a pair of EA developers,
• someone no one will care about in a few years bitches about his Madden player rating,
• and the much anticipated South Park game is not a remake of the FPS.
  

The Crab is a Spy!

Observe here the rare and endangered spycrab. You may have seen the spycrab in your favorite Team Fortress 2 server. They are elusive creatures, but from time to time they will appear in packs.

Of course the spycrab isn't your average TF2 player; there's something special about someone who goes into a server and dedicates most of their play time to crab walking among their team mates, much like people who play Rose Ball in their time off.

Spycrabbing is really just a delightful offshoot of TF2 for players who have too much time on their hands or want to spend their round in a whimsical manner, oftentimes to the chagrin of their fellow team mates, and the delight of the opposing players. A spycrab can be a free kill, a wasted player slot, and so much more.

Like many things in life, there's a specific etiquette to crab walking. First, select the spy class, they don't call them spy crabs for nothing. Second, select your cigarette case, but do not select a class to disguise as, merely hold it in front of you. Third, crouch down and look directly upwards. Fourth, move back and forth slowly, walking side to side. Make sure you prepare yourself and then begin crab walking in a highly populated area.

The idea here to be seen by as many people as possible. Are you playing Goldrush or another payload style map? See if the other team will let you live as a spycrab in their area after the cart has moved forward enough to leave a distance between their spawn and the action around the cart. Are you playing on a control point map? Do the same, but stick to a specific point. If you're near the action, the other teams soldiers, demo men, and heavies will be firing in your general direction and probably won't concern themselves with the loss of a spycrab.

In a way, crab walking is like taking a survey. How many players will take your actions in a light hearted manner? How many will walk past you, maybe laugh, watch for a while, and continue about their game? How many players will take your actions derisively and decree you a wasted member of the team? How many will kill you everytime you make it all the way over to your spawn for fear that you'll come after them and backstab them?

Hopefully you'll be able to find other spy crabs and continue the species long into the life span of Team Fortress 2.

I'm including this video, but I warn you to turn the volume off before you watch:

A Star Commentor

I received a star from Mike Fahey on Kotaku today.  Their new commenting system has greatly improved the quality of conversation and reduced a lot of the noise that has kept me from reading any of the comments section in the past year or so.

When I first started reading Kotaku, commenting privileges were scarce and thus many of the comments were insightful, easy to read, and added volumes to the conversation.  Since then however, the multitude of new readers has amplified the usual internet noise/banter that makes the whole world sound like 13 year-olds.

Now that I've got this star, I think I might actually spend some time looking at comments and even making my own.  To anyone that stumbles across this blog from my name over at Kotaku, please make comments as you see fit and hopefully you'll find enough items of interest on this blog to return on a semi-frequent basis.

FURTHER READING / 07.20.09

Late edition of FURTHER READING for Monday.  Its been a long weekend, but it seems like its going to be an even longer week.  I'll be plugging away at Fable II in hopes that I can get the review out the door by this weekend, and even then I'll have a lot to explore in Albion.  Here's what you should check out today.

• NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat, two great tastes that go great together,
• this Nintendo 64 case mod has me eyeing my 64 and thinking of creative things,
• and I would have paid a lot of money for this portable SNES.

FURTHER READING / 07.19.09

FURTHER READING is brought to you by Kotaku today. I read a lot of Kotaku and I read a lot of Joystiq, but I'm wondering what are some other good gaming blogs that create a lot of content. Bonus points for blogs or websites that even update on the weekends. Here's what you should read this weekend:

• the Mario genealogy keeps it in the family,
• when gamers work together, we get things done,
• and Totilo lets us see into his notebook.
  

Evo 2009 Championship

I've been watching the EVO 2009 stream over at http://evo2k9.com/live/ all morning, and I'll probably keep watching through the rest of today as I mill about online and on Fable II.

As a sports event it works, especially if you have any clue as to what's going on in the game.

One match in Street Fighter IV, for example, had a fighter focus dash canceling to an ultra combo.  Knowing what that means, knowing the level of play that those moves come out makes watching it that much more entertaining.

Watching the Guilty Gear finals this morning though has been much less entertaining, especially when the commentators don't even have the base knowledge of the game and fighting system to let the viewers in on the technical aspects of the fighting.

Granted they have to fill a lot of space, and they have to do a lot of talking for a lot of time, but I wish the announcers could have been slightly better prepared.  They get off topic pretty often, which is understandable, but they should be commenting to the people watching online, and not to each other.  Until I step into their shoes however, I really can't complain that much.

The stream will still be up so long as there is EVO action going on, so hop on over to http://evo2k.com/live and see some of the finals action for yourself.

Cracked explains World of Warcraft

Cracked.com is usually pretty hit or miss with their content in my mind, but this explication on what playing World of Warcraft was definitely a hit.

In the past few weeks my counter strike community has closed its server and most of the players have migrated to World of Warcraft.

The pressure is mounting, but I'm doing my best to remain steadfast against playing the game. I've never been one for MMO's, mostly due to the monthly fee I'd have to pay to play. Besides that, there's always the amount of time it would take to get up to speed. Maybe you can call me lazy, but there's a lot of effort I'd have to put in to play WoW with my friends that have already been playing for the past couple of weeks.

Anyways, please check out Cracked's feature on learning World of Warcraft with Super Mario Bros. at http://www.cracked.com/blog/understanding-the-world-of-warcraft-using-super-mario-brothers/

FURTHER READING / 07.17.09

Seems like there have been some mysterious goings-on in the gaming industry today. A trio of accidental slips today have revealed or broken the release date of some big names in gaming. Sometimes I think the video game industry has the sloppiest companies out there....

• Gears of War 2's latest DLC gets out early but is quickly pulled back,
• Atlus's teaser site gives up the goods rather quickly and ahead of schedule,
• and a Swedish metal band announces Saints Row for the PSP.
  

FURTHER READING / 07.16.09

There was plenty to read and write about to today, most exciting of all for me was the possibility of a soldier update. What did you find most interesting today? Hopefully one of these will start a conversation among you and your gaming friends:

• someone made a stop motion Lego animation of a game of Donkey Kong,
• Joystiq interviews Alan Wake designer Oskari Hakkinen, and
  
• the Kotaku community uploads their gaming rooms.

I started playing Fable II today so my goal right now is to get through it and get a review up. Hopefully I won't get too distracted by blacksmithing....

Will the Soldier be updated next?

Is the Soldier the next Team Fortress 2 class to be given the update treatment?

I certainly hope so. The Soldier is my favorite class and I've been trying to play it a little less until the update comes out. I'm excited to see what kind of unlockables come along with the update too, maybe the Shovel-stinguisher?

What I'm not looking forward to is grinding to unlock or waiting for a random drop. I still have yet to unlock the Jarate for the Sniper class.

The post also alludes to a possible new game mode in King of the Hill. The soldier references painting and defending a hill twice in his blog post, while also deriding all of the time us "women" spend on the internet instead of more manly pursuits. We'll have to wait and see exactly what the next update holds, but until that time, you can read the full blog post by the soldier at the Team Fortress 2 blog.