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I recently picked up Fable 2 used for pretty cheap and I am now probably at least 3 or 4 hours into the game so far.

One thing bugs me… a LOT

So you start the game poor, destitute, and living from the gutter. When a mysterious lady implies we should buy the music box, the sister remarks;

5 Gold? We could eat for a week on that!

Fair enough.

Next, the sister and brother decide, what the hey, its a magical music box, lets buy it anyway. OK, so with no money the game asks me to complete a few ‘odd-jobs’ for NPC’s around town. Fine I think. About 10 minutes later I’m rolling 5 gold coins around my pocket ready to buy the music box.

Go back a little, remember when the sister mentioned something about eating for a week for 5 gold? And I just earned 5 gold in about 10 minutes. To be generous I’ll use in-game time, so not even close to the time it took for night to cycle to day. I can work a minimal amount, for less than a full day, and eat for a week on the proceeds? You have to wonder, perhaps if you got off your arse and did two or three days work maybe, just maybe you wouldn’t be living in the effing gutter you idiots!

If the main character is sleeping in a no walled shed with only a blanket to his name, has no food, no money, no prospects in life.. how about making it a little harder to earn a weeks food money than putting in 5 minutes work?

Kinda ruins the effect of trying to build up sympathy for your main protagonist if it turns out the only reason he is destitute is simply because he can’t be arsed doing a days work!

I kinda like the game, but man it has some serious issues. Job’s are ridiculous. Gaming distilled into it’s most basic form. Hit that button when this bar reaches here. Again. Again. AGAIN! Going back to the main point of this post, my character came from a life in the gutter yet within 30 minutes of spamming the blacksmith job I had over 10 thousand gold. I went to the smith as the shops shut, by sunrise I had 10 thousand gold.

When in-game systems contradict the storyline, something is very wrong.

Completed Transformers: WFC late Saturday night.

Given that it only came out on the Friday, you could be forgiven for thinking perhaps the game is not that long. Well, much as I’d have loved it to be longer, the truth is, I hammered the single player a LOT on Friday night and Saturday day/night. Once I got started, it was very hard to stop to be honest. The full game weighs in at around 10+ hours depending how you get on with the bigger battles.

As I mentioned in my last TF post, the gameplay is solid doing everything you would expect from a third person controlled shooter. The transformations  add something a little new to the genre however with vehicle forms being just as useful in most situations as robot forms (In some cases vehicle forms are actually essential to avoid high levels of damage during some of the bigger fights). The system feels very balanced and I found myself constantly shifting in and out of vehicle forms enough that it felt like second nature… as it should in a Transformers game. Flip to jet mode, turbo across the room to grab some health, quickly fire a few missiles, flip back to robot form – use special abilities/gun, back to jet form for evasive actions. The system feels.. well, it just feels right.

The story was particularly interesting to me as a Transformers fan, and Hasbro obviously agrees as TF:WFC’s take on a prequel to the events of the original animated series (and the 1984 movie) is now officially declared cannon in the Transformers Universe. For good reason too.

SPOILER ALERT

The game takes place in the middle of a civil war between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Featuring two campaigns, played chronologically, the first features Megatron and his quest to obtain Dark Energon which he intends to use to control Cybertron. The second campaign deals with Optimus becoming ‘The Last Prime’ and his attempt to cleanse Cybertron of the corruption Megatron has unleashed.

It’s a basic plot, but along the way fans will find much to enjoy here. Omega Supreme’s involvement is nothing short of epic in my opinion. The fight goes on for a long time, and while not always in direct confrontation with Supreme, he affects every step of your journey through that level. Starscream’s defection to the Decepticons was of particular interest for me. I’ve long been a fan of Starscream and his treacherous ways so to finally see something of his origins was really great, plus all his trademark attempts to overthrow Megatron and assume control are all present and accounted for.

High Moon have really done a great job at accurately portraying the characters largely as you remember them from the 80′s. The opening Decepticon cutscene shows Megatron annihilating one of his own underlings after being questioned on the logic of crashing his spaceship directly into Starscreams orbital station. If that doesn’t say ‘Megatron’ then I don’t know what does.

Having not played the Multiplayer much I can’t comment more than I did on the demo just yet, but the single player experience is everything and more any Transformers fan could ask for. I was happier with WFC than I was with the recent perversions to the franchise made by Michael Bay, as was a fellow Transformers fan who played the last 3 Decepticon levels with me. 3 Levels out of 10 convinced him it was better than Bay’s Transformers. Not only in terms of story, but also visually.

5/5 – I’d highly recommend this to any TF fan. Up there with Batman Arkham Asylum in terms of setting the bar for quality in licensed games.

Transformers: War for Cybertron (Xbox 360)
Price: —

9 used & new available from GBP 34.00

Wow!

Kinda blown away by this! I had already come to terms with the fact the series was moving to the Wii, and after playing the Wii version I have been suitably impressed enough to not worry too much about it and just appreciate that we are getting the third game over here after all.

For years though, Monster Hunter Frontier has been a thorn in my side. Due to lack of access I largely put up with other subscription titles, all the while commenting how great this or that MMO would be with Rath’s flying around, how amazing MH would be in an MMO setting… all the while watching enviously as new monster after new monster was added to MH: Frontier, the Monster Hunter MMO of choice if you live in Japan or Korea.

Finally, FINALLY I can let go of the jealousy (that’s assuming this thing gets a western release – PLEEEASE let this get a western release!) and look forward to hunting Rathalos online over Xbox live!

According to the article the subscription fee for playing will be around $15 for 30 days access… and that includes the Gold Live subscription! Not a bad deal really and should help bring in gamers that would normally stay away from subscription games.

Expect to hear a lot about this as I do… either here or over at our Monster Hunter fan site www.wyvernhunt.info

Of course, if for some reason Monster Hunter items became available to buy,Mishkii would have to cut up our credit/debit cards to stop me

Mishkii and I unlocked our first avatar awards last night by completing all 5 campaigns of L4D2 granting us a mini medi-kit prop each. I must admit, for such a tiny thing I was quite impressed.

I’ve seen the props on marketplace before but never bought anything due to the fact that paying money to dress up a doll ranks pretty low on my, “things I like to spend my money on” list, as opposed to say, banana Frijj which ranks considerably higher… and that only costs me 75p.

Anyway I digress. My point was, it’s about time games included unlockable doodads as something to work towards. Gamerscore does motivate me to go back and replay older games to try and tick off achievements, but its not the shiny toy it once was. After ‘x’ points the unlocks become meaningless and only major gamerpoint milestones mean anything now.

Enter avatar awards…

Finally, not only a new shiny for us all to chase, but something tangible you can use. For the longest time I’ve been of the opinion you should be able to use gamerscore for something more meaningful than bragging rights and now we have it. Not only that, but now I have incentive to grab some achievement points I maybe wouldn’t have bothered with. For example, the ‘Guardin’ Gnome’ achievement on Left4Dead2 involves carrying a garden gnome through the entire Dark Carnival campaign from start to finish. Normally I wouldn’t bother with something like this. Or at the least I’d wait till I got all the other achievements before attempting something that has the potential to make me throw a controller through my TV. But this particular achievement has an avatar award tied to it. A Depeche Mode T-shirt.

Now, I’ve been thinking about this all day and I just cant explain why I want to unlock it. I don’t even really like Depeche Mode that much but it is there, free, and waiting for me to unlock, so part of my brain automatically wants it and does not care about a rational reason. I guess you could say that about gamerscore in general, ultimately it means nothing. Not even as a judge of player skill as players can artificially inflate scores by playing a bunch of easy point games like King Kong or some other crap.

So why is it a source of motivation to me? Who knows. What I do know is that as long as there are people around who think the same way I do, Microsoft may be on to a winner here. People obsess over gamerscore and I can see the same thing with avatar unlocks. We may start seeing people renting/buying games purely because of avatar unlocks. It’s not beyond belief, I know people who rented bad games purely for the points.

I guess the big question is, will avatar unlocks convince gamers to drop a few quid on marketplace exclusive avatar items here or there? I certainly don’t feel any more likely to buy avatar items as long as I can unlock them free via games but I’d guess for plenty of others this is just the thing to bring them round to the idea.

Of course, if for some reason Monster Hunter items became available to buy Mishkii would have to cut up our credit/debit cards to stop me