Thrik

I've been playing it and really enjoying it so far. I'm just about to win the Bowerstone resistance's support, however far in that is. It's definitely only an iterative improvement over Fable 3 in most respects, being extremely familiar but new in a similar way to how things like the Call of Duty games evolve (ie: not that much). However what refinements are there are generally positive. Not having to constantly mash a button to collect orbs is very much appreciated, and the new way of upgrading weapons is good. I do think some things were unnecessarily simplified, which is a criticism I've seen widely. For example there's absolutely no reason to take away the ability to choose specific expressions towards villagers. Also the inability to switch spells on the fly is irritating, as is the apparent removal of advanced weapon techniques (eg: timing your hits perfectly to produce a combo) — unless I've just not gotten to that stage yet. But it is mostly good, and to be honest getting to have an entire new adventure in the Fable universe is in itself massively enjoyable for me because it is truly unique. I love how old locations from the preceding games continue to reappear, (d)evolved appropriately. Also the story so far has been most engrossing. I like the new 'menu' and map incidentally, especially after realising you can use the d-pad to shortcut into the various rooms. The map is a huge improvement over Fable 3's (which wasn't a map at all, just a list of quests), making many things like finding shops, buying places, etc a lot easier.

Eh, all sorts of lame things become well-known on the web for all sorts of lame reasons. You can't seriously have contempt for a guy who just happened to make something loads of people like. I'm sure loads of developers and have publishers have similar feelings towards someone like the now-a-millionaire Minecraft author! Incidentally this particular phenomenon completely passed me by and this is the first I've heard of it.

I think we understand what your problems are — we just don't agree with them. Us agreeing with you doesn't equate to you satisfactorily explaining your perspective. I can understand why you might expect more from a game that could be anything and still sell well, but I've not played Starcraft 2 yet because I knew it'd be a lot like Starcraft 1. And while I respect what SC1 achieved, it's just not my type of RTS. I prefer something more stategic, slower, and macro. That doesn't mean that SC2 is inferior to the type of RTS I'd prefer it to be, it's just I'm in a different market. It's important to remember that RTS games aren't just a single type of game where everyone plays every single one (although that wouldn't be too difficult nowadays) and judges them all as a single linear evolution. If you want something else than check out what Relic, Gas Powered Games, and even EA have been doing. Just like some people preferred Commandos to Command & Conquer back in the day (Me!), some prefer Starcraft 2's formula to whatever you wish it was. That fact it is just a refinement of SC1 is exactly what those people want. It's a bit like expecting the new Call of Duty: Black Ops to be anything but more of what CoD: Modern Warfare and CoD: Modern Warfare 2 offered. Sure it could be some insanely innovative first-person shooter that evolves the series and genre in all sorts of unexpected ways, but that's not really what Call of Duty is. CoD is actually archaic in its design and continues to massively resemble its 90s Medal of Honor roots, but people continue to love it because they know what they're getting and they're getting what they know.

I can see the argument for Blizzard being in a good position to experiment, but this is the first sequel to an exceedingly popular RTS that appealed to a certain type of player. And when those players have waited like a decade for that first sequel, you can bet your ass what they want is more Starcraft — not some crazily experimental thing that turns the industry on its head (although Blizzard is more in the business of taking what works and refining it, not innovating). Relic tried that with Dawn of War 2 and while it might have produced a decent game, it also alienated those who loved its predecessor and were expecting something of a similar formula. I'm all for innovation, but particular series have particular player expectations. Starcraft 2 had to be what it is in order to satisfy the legions of existing Starcraft fans, and as it turns out many who've not played the original like it too. If you're not that bothered about seeing more of the Starcraft formula, then hell don't go and buy its sequel. It's not like other studios haven't been mixing stuff up.

Do the pulsating circles stay there permanently? That does sound pretty lame and immersion-breaking. The way Telltale and LucasArts do it (ie: hotkey) is good, though.

Was there some kind of story with Yufster not posting here anymore? I'd forgotten all about that mental case.

Yeah Broken Sword 2 is absolutely superb, and best of all it doesn't rest on it's laurels in the slightest — the gameplay is mixed up nicely and the story has nothing to do with the Templars. I think my memories of BS2 are actually even better than my memories of the first. It's Broken Sword 3+ where things got bland, repetitive, and generally a huge step down in quality and innovation.

To be honest neither console has that many exclusive games I'd consider truly excellent — that's pretty much why I ended up getting both. This generation has been completely dominated by multi-platform releases, diluting the whole console-vs-console concept to the point where it hardly even matters which you get. For the 360 I'd say Alan Wake, Fable, Gears of War, and Halo are the only ones I'd call system sellers. For the PS3 it'd be LittleBigPlanet, God of War, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear Solid, and Uncharted.

Haha. I wouldn't say it's jumping the shark. I think this kind of madness is quite typical of Treyarch after they stuck the zombies in their last Call of Duty game. I'm guessing the characters feature in the single-player game in a more serious way. That'd be quite cool and potentially controversial — a nice middle-ground of the total historical accuracy of the WW2 games and the total fiction of the modern warfare games.

I genuinely can't find any appeal in the Kinect at all, mostly because the vast majority of games I play simply could not work without buttons. I mean, who wants to be leaping all over their living room while playing something like Castlevania or Fable 3? I can barely imagine how you'd even do something as basic as control your own movement and direction in a Kinect game. I think I'll be foregoing it and grabbing a Move instead as I truly believe the kind of approach the Wii took will become the industry standard and what gamers appreciate most. It's the perfect balance because you've still got your vital buttons and sticks — which aren't going to go away until the fuckers can read our thoughts — but there's also a layer of motion control and a mouse-accurate pointer which makes shooters more fun, real-time strategy on a console feasible, etc. Also in theory the Move could be updated to do similar things to Kinect due to Kinect pretty much just being software (the 360 does all the actual processing) and a camera, albeit one with infared. Nintendo got it right this generation (just like they have in the past with d-pads, analogue sticks, trigger buttons, etc), and Sony's realised that and basically just copied and improved what they did. Microsoft has obviously tried to differentiate itself and has too much pride to just do the sensible thing and copy Nintendo, but I'm putting my money on Kinect flopping — or at most performing like the original EyeToy.

I really like the combat myself. It's not as sophisticated as that in the laboriously combo-driven Castlevania (which is also superb imo) but it's very satisfying and has enough depth to be taxing — and after the exhausting complexity of Castlevania it's refreshingly straightforward. Bit like Fable.

Sounds like the kind of thing that happens if you try to run a 16-bit program on 64-bit Windows. No workaround AFAIK because Windows handles 32-bit software via emulation but not 16-bit.

Man, impressive casting for Marty for sure. The lack of experience doesn't bother me in the slightest as who knows how much non-professional work he's done — I can think of many people who were already awesome at their jobs before they started getting paid for it. Plus wasn't Michael J Fox himself fairly inexperienced back when he did Back to the Future?

I think the on-rails feel was kind of necessary to produce such an impactful intro and to teach you the controls. I suspect it'll open up a bit more later on, as the videos certainly seem to suggest that.

I think this thread has nicely highlighted that this isn't really a problem that can be solved with any one setting as many people use difficulty settings for many different things. I use it for replayability, some use it so they can breeze through a game because they don't want a real challenge, some use it to get better at a certain genre, etc. The only real approach is to have different modes available to satisfy different needs. Perhaps those settings could be better described (once again MGS excels here, using labels like 'if you've played an MGS game before', 'if you've played an action game before', etc), and perhaps lazy design sometimes results in lameness, but it's generally a solid system. I think you'd be better served by using 'normal' if improvement is your goal, though. 'Easy' really is designed to always be easy, not to start off easy and get harder — just like 'hard' starts off hard and gets even harder. 'Normal' is almost always a well-engineered gradient from easy to hard if the developers have done their job properly.

To be honest the 'easy' difficulty is fairly self-explanatory: you're playing a watered-down version of how challenging the game is meant to be. If you play it on that difficulty you have to expect the game to bow down and let you walk all over it — you can't blame the developers for you choosing the easy road every time. If you don't choose to promote yourself to 'normal' after conquering a few games on 'easy' that's down to you. I personally think the way difficulty is approached in games is good and solves multiple problems, and if you choose 'normal' you almost always get a challenging but bearable game. It means people who're more or less skilled can choose a more suitable level of challenge from the outset, and it also means those who've finished a game can enjoy it in a different way — particularly when the difficulty levels are masterfully crafted like in Metal Gear solid, which remains many people's example of choice and is a great benchmark for how to do it right. Some games are lazily designed when it comes to balancing difficulties, but then those same games are often lazily designed in many other ways too.

It'd be nice if you could make Super Mario Bros more difficult though because I've played it so much I could go through it in my sleep. More enemies being added to make certain sequences more difficult, more poison mushrooms like from The Lost Levels, etc would spice things up nicely.

It's funny how taking away fundamental comforts can make a game so much harder. Metal Gear Solid 3 pulls a similar trick in that on 'normal' you have a sonar which reveals positions of living things in a reasonably-sized radius around you, but it has very limited battery life and is nowhere near as generous as the radar in the earlier games. But stick it on hard and even that is gone, literally leaving you with nothing except a heartbeat sensor which has a fairly shit range. Makes the game so much harder as you have to intensively scan the jungle ahead before making a move and pretty much always have to creep/crawl. And that's just one of many variables cruelly changed on harder difficulties which completely transform the way you have to play the game.

I primarily see difficulty levels as a way of enhancing replayability of a game and quite like the typical approach. I'll generally play every game on 'normal' initially as I believe it's usually the experience the developers intended, and on subsequent replays I'll pump it up. I see 'easy' as for more casual/new gamers, and it's good harder difficulties are available for the freakishly good gamers out there (read: not me). This has made my replays of the Metal Gear Solid games much better as all sorts of things are tweaked, such as more enemies being added; enemies having more life-like reactions, vision, and hearing; bullets doing more damage; searches being more sustained and exhaustive; whole sections being added; etc. It goes well beyond the 'pump up the stats' approach of lazily-designed games. In MGS's case adaptive difficulty would be difficult to adjust due to the nature if the game (ie: avoidance of exposure to enemies). Also I kind of like knowing the game is going to challenge me and isn't going to back down if I'm playing a bit shit, just like a puzzle doesn't solve itself if you can't work it out. I'm a stickler for overcoming odds, as long as the game is designed well.

The biggest problem with most games that have a good/evil mechanic is simply the inclusion of a way of tracking it visually. In real life you don't really change appearance or have some metre telling you how evil you are — it's just the way you are, and people who know about you will act accordingly. I don't mind the appearance changing a bit as Fable is a fantasy story and such universes often have characters that look distinctly good or evil (ala Lord of the Rings), but it shouldn't be too extreme and the metre is definitely a step too far. Such a feature should be subtly woven throughout the game rather than being treated as a gimmick. As a side-note I think the approach to good/evil in Black & White 2 was probably the best balance I've seen, with no ostentatious tracking and more focus on the world and people changing around you. It felt more like something that was simply one part of the game rather than something they were saying "Look at this!" about.

Yeah the controls in the MI1 Special Edition are bizarre, it's the same on the iPhone (which I fortunately only got the demo of). In the MI2 Special Edition it's proper point-and-click which is excellent.

The whole intro sequence is quite mindblowing if you're not really sure what the game is about exactly, especially when . You can now get the demo off PSN/LIVE which includes the whole thing — you will most likely be sold immediately unless you're broken.

I had a look at this at Eurogamer yesterday too (OMG Denial, we could have met!) and it seemed fairly hot. From what I gather it's based on the old Chinese legend with the Monkey King and all that but reimagined in a futuristic setting. I saw an entertaining film once with Jet Li as the Monkey King so my interest is piqued enough to buy it I reckon, especially with the good reviews.

Yeah it is irritating, although in BG&E's case I can see why the decision to not do a PC port would be fairly quick seeing as the original PC version probably sold incredibly badly and it adds dozens upon dozens of hours to the development and R&D when a PC version is needed — not to mention years of post-release patching as new hardware comes along and wanks everything up.

Surely as a PC gamer you've become completely accustomed to this by now? Thanks brkl, you've made me not want to replay it now.