The penultimate entry.

We are about to be drowned in retail merchandise, and so before that black night I want to hold these tiny missives above the waves:

I have played Dawn of War a fair bit in Skirmish mode, both before the recent single player demo and after, and it's nice to see the game tighten up so well in that span. As for the demo I just mentioned, I'm going to upgrade that to Immediate Download, authorization CG-4334HG87. The audio alone, filled with roaring voices and discharged ordnance is already the best use of the license on record. It was often the case that I would perch, as a crow might perch, upon news sites waiting to pick and peck at new Warhammer 40k information in a gaming context. Did it meet with my satisfaction? Does it accurately present the regulations set forth by the holy codices? My thinking on the topic of Warhammer licensing and videogames has progressed somewhat. As much as it pains me to admit it, there are simply people who do not want to stand around a table in a basement that smells like cat piss, rolling dice and moving figurines in tiny increments for twelve straight hours. Which is crazy. But I'm at the point now where I just want people to experience the rich fiction, cool armies, potent units, and painstaking character of that universe - which Relic has been extremely true to.

If you don't have time for the demo at the moment, at least get your hands on the intro video. If you can see that clip and then resist downloading the demo it introduces, then you are more man that I am.

The Tribes: Vengeance demo was also very much to my liking, if a bit short - but at this point nothing shorter than the full retail release would bring satisfaction. Still playing the online multiplayer demo, still enjoying it, and it's the last time I'll say it but I really do need a way to find my teammates. Okay, done. Now my mind has turned to the story they'll try to tell with it. I really want to see how different Tribes interact with one another. I had typed in a bunch of other things I was curious about, and then deleted them because it made me look like a complete retard. I don't know what to tell you guys. This is my series.

If you are curious about the history of the Tribes Universe, or if you are a dumb fucker from Firing Squad in need of rehabilitation, please make use of this excellent resource at Tribes Roleplayers. Beginning at 3350, you can see the events that underpin the franchise - you can click on any of the white text at the left to expand that period, which I desperately hope you will do, because then it won't just be me that does that.

I usually try to avoid linking these, as doing so implies that I am an optimist, which is desperately out of sync with my role as your hard-nosed intercessor to the gaming industry. However. I am also very selfish, and a full suite of Thief 3 editing tools is squarely in my best interests, so here it is: a letter writing campaign to Eidos, how quaint! If for no other reason, do it simply to delight in the anachronism!

You're quite aware that I have a great deal of affection for Prince of Persia, starting at the version I had on my Amiga, going forward, skipping over Prince of Persia 3D, and then liking it again with Sands of Time. With the next game, "Warrior Within," seeming to focus on a dark sensibility and new combat system, I was kind of afraid that it had adopted a genre switch away from Action/Adventure and excise the platforming and puzzle solving that I've enjoyed up to this point. The earlier videos they released seemed to verify my fears. They released a new movie yesterday though, I saw it over at 3D Gamers, which appears to depict a much more balanced experience. I'd imagine that since the combat was a source of so much complaint in Sands they felt they had to get that message out first, but it's nice to know the elements I liked didn't evaporate for whatever reason.

After playing a bit more Burnout online yesterday and not seeing any of the odd behaviors that enraged me so, I can now officially appreciate the fact that EA has put a game online for the Xbox. When their system was caddywompus, it made the fact that they persisted in using their own lobby system another offense in a long list. Now that it functions properly, I can see it as more of a doctrinal difference. We both agree that there is a God, for example, and we both believe that he embodies a certain suite of eternal characteristics - we're just trying agree on what he likes for breakfast.

(CW)TB out.

do you believe it in your head

You'd heard what I have, what everybody has - the first release candidate of Half-Life 2 has been sent to Vivendi Universal. At this point, they'll test the shit out of it and determine if it's ready for retail release. From what I've seen, any other company would have released it already. They're perfectionists is all. Locals have been playtesting it for months.

At this point, it's just a matter of whether you grab it at retail or grab it on Steam. I've gone through the pre-load process on two machines here, so you're welcome to guess which way I plan to get it. We do have to wait for it to hit stores before we can download it, which kind of defeats the purpose of electronic delivery to me, like waiting to plug in an appliance until a store gets a new shipment of batteries. It's nonsensical.

I'm sure this was all negotiated beforehand and what can you really do about it.

(CW)TB

I was worried that when Fable came out I’d get sucked in and I wouldn’t have time to play Burnout 3 and Phantom Brave. So I’m actually kind of glad that Fable was a huge disappointment.

So in Fable you have a very small world divided up into dozens of tiny zones. Each of these zones sufferers from the “you can go anywhere you want…as long as you stay on the fucking path” school of game design. A winding path will take you through each one of these zones and you don’t need to worry about accidentally wandering off the path and getting lost. You’ll quickly notice that someone has placed sturdy impenetrable bushes, broken fences, rocks, and impassable pools of shallow water all along the road. The entire game may as well be played on rails as your options for exploration are essentially zilch. The really awesome thing about these tiny, linear zones is that they require an insane load time. Traveling from one side of the map to the other will require you to spend nearly as much time loading as playing. Thankfully at some point the designers realized that traversing their bullshit world was a real pain in the ass and so they decided to let you teleport wherever you want. I imagine this conversation went something like this:

Girl: “Wow, running around in our game fucking sucks.”

Guy: “What if you could just teleport wherever you wanted to go?”

Girl: “That doesn’t solve the underlying problem. Shouldn’t we instead address the fact that navigating our game world is a bitch?”

Guy: “We should have sex.”

Whoa, that certainly got hot! In my imagination all work place encounters between men and woman result in clandestine sex.

Not only do these tiny zones require loading but you also have to load every time you want to use a shovel or a fishing pole. The idea is that there is treasure buried all over the world just waiting to be dug up. However each time you want to dig you need to select the spade from your menu and then wait as the game loads the digging animation, at this point you will either get some treasure or you’ll see your character sigh. Then you get to wait again as it takes you back to the regular game. I dug twice before I was totally fucking sick of it.

So what’s going on in-between all this loading? Well you’re playing an extremely linear and limited hack and slash adventure game combined with a shitty version of the Sims mixed with animal crossing only minus all of animal crossings charm and inspiration. If you want to just play through Fable as fast as you can, it’s a boring but passable action RPG. The combat is awkward at first and the camera is frustrating but you can have some fun with it for a couple of hours. Thankfully that’s all the time you’ll need to invest if that’s how you decide to play the game. If you decide you want to buy a house or flirt with a girl you certainly can. You can also spend an insane amount of time dressing and building up your character. In fact a huge part of the game revolves around making your character look awesome. I can see how this might be cool in an MMO where you could show him off to other players but in Fable no one else will ever see your character. You can’t even take screen shots and upload them via live into some kind of online Fable hero’s picture album to share with your friends. You spend so much time in this game working on a character that you can never share with anyone else. I actually saw forum threads in which people were trying to describe how cool their characters looked to each other. They would try and explain how their particular hair cut really accentuated a certain tattoo. These people are so desperate to share their characters that they were trying to take photos of their TV screens.

In my opinion, none of Fable’s “open ended” game play works in the context of a single player game. Things like owning shops, becoming renowned and impressing people with your sharp dressing just aren’t cool when the world is populated by pre-programmed puppets rather than living people.

Also if you can’t understand why it looks like ass on your HD television here’s a little trick. Fable will sometimes refuse to run in 480p, but you can force it to by going into your dashboard. Open the tray with Fable in the drive and then go into your video settings in your dashboard. Turn off 480p and then turn in back on. Now hold both triggers and click both thumb sticks. This will force your Xbox into 480p mode and you can just close the drive and start Fable. Now if there was a series of buttons you could press in order to make it worth 50 bucks.

-Gabe out

I’m getting lots of mail from people about my Fable post. I’d say it is split right down the middle between people who agree the game is a waste of time and people who really enjoy it. Someone mentioned in an email to me that Fable is the sort of game you either love or hate and I think that’s true.

Many of you who like the game have suggested that I had fallen victim to the hype surrounding Fable. People are trying to tell me that had I not been expecting the turkey dinner with all the trimmings we were promised, I’d be satisfied with the microwave burrito we all received.

Tycho can back me up on this, I don’t read hype anymore. I quit reading previews more than a year ago. I honest to God knew next to nothing about Fable until I saw it at PAX. I had heard from Tycho that you could make choices and become good or evil but that was all the information I had. I realized a long time ago that the hype machine was ruining video games for me. I wanted to go back to the days when I was actually surprised by a game. I made a decision to stop reading previews and I’ve stuck with it. Sometimes it frustrates the hell out of Tycho as he’ll want to discuss a game with me and I’ll have no fucking idea what he’s talking about. The end result of all this is that I played Fable with zero expectations about what sort of game it should be or what features it should have. I discovered after playing it that it was originally supposed to have an online component and things made a lot more sense. It seems to me like many of the mechanics in the game were designed for online play and when that was removed they just don’t seem to work as well.

I sat down and Played Fable and I felt like it was a proof of concept rather than a game. People seem to want to compare it to a Zelda style action RPG and I don’t think it even comes close. There is no sense of exploration in Fable. You spend the entire game running back and forth along the same narrow paths through the same tiny zones. I never felt the same sense of awe that I got from Zelda when I discovered a new island or explored a dungeon. None of that matters though. The fact is that some people are going to like Fable and some people aren’t. I certainly think you should rent it and try it for yourself. Mailing me and calling me a “cockmunch” isn’t going to change my opinion of the game and it just takes time away from you that you could spend farting or trying to have sex in Fable.

-Gabe out