Quick list of the top 10 games I missed the boat on that I need to finish...or start to play (no order in terms of importance)


1. Half- Life
2. God of War
3. Dragon Age: Origins
4. Shadow of the Colossus
5. Earthbound
6. Devil May Cry
7. Fallout
8. Persona
9. Panzer Dragoon
10. Shadow Hearts

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I promised I was going to play Fable 3 upon my completion of Halo: Reach. So really me talking about this damn game has been a long time coming. I finished it something like a month ago, I don't know. I mean I could go check, but that would require me turning on the Xbox, which shall not be done as House is on right now, and nothing interrupts my viewing of that show...nothing. So anyhow, let's talk about Fable 3 and what a piece of crap it was. Well...gave away my opinion right there didn't I? I should really talk more about this I guess, so here it goes. Click on to see the rest of the article.

So I decided to give the Fable series another chance after Halo: Reach decided to show me that a series as bland as wall Spackle can eventually churn out something worth being played. I played the first Fable game way back when before the 360 came out, and it was impossible to hate anymore. It was boring beyond reproach, bland and did not feature one original idea. While the moral choice system of gaming was still in its infancy, you had games like Knights of the Old Republic doing it infinitely better. Fable just had you kicking puppies, where as Revan could tear shit up if you decided to. It had a leveling system that left nothing to the imagination, and the world itself was so cookie-cutter, I'm still surprised everything wasn't shaped like a Christmas tree, a five pointed star, and a gingerbread man.

So fast-forward to the tail end of 2010, and we're up to the third Fable game. I skipped Fable 2, because really, after disliking the first one so much and seeing that about fuck-all changed while watching my friends play it, why would I bother with the second one? So back to the original point. I took the plunge and bought the third game, trying to push aside any prejudice I had about the series in order to give the game a blank slate, make sure it was judged by its own merits. In the end though, this was a complete waste of time and effort, as I could have honestly taken any thoughts I had about Fable 1, apply them to this supposedly new game and almost nothing would have been off the mark.

Albion is still a world full of things you do not need to do, and if you do happen to do them, there is really no tangible reward. Any reward you would also get, even if it were an actual help, would not be needed anyway, as all you need to beat the game is two thumbs and half of a working eye. Playing on the normal setting was such an absolute joke that I only died in the game once, and that was only because I was not paying the slightest bit of attention to the game at that moment. Regardless of this though, there is no such thing as an armor stat, so your frilly pirate prince shirt apparently affords all the same protection of that suit of armor you bought.

The story to this game, while keeping a sense of flow, is completely stupid. By the by, I am going to spoil the whole plot here, because it's fucking March, the game came out in November and a Paddington Bear book reads better. You're the prince...your brother, the king sucks. He's a dick, and he hadda break a few eggs in front of you to make his royal omelet. So you get mad, run away like a sissy, and get people to follow you by hugging them, or playing patty-cake, or fighting some easy undead a paraplegic 4 year old can fend off. Then you go yell at him, he gives you the kingdom, then you have to fight off the BP oil spill with the help of a man with a hookah, and a bald woman Lion Head had the common sense to leave out a romance subplot for, because bald women are gross. I am guessing there is a message there somewhere. Oh and you also have the help of a gruff, old British man who suffers a series of personal trials that makes you care infinitely more about him than any of the faceless whores you can marry and knock up in the game.

Speaking of those...things, like in any Fable game you can marry almost any NPC you meet in the course of the game. However, each city only has about a grand total of oh...I dunno, 4 face models, maybe. Or maybe it's only 4 face models stretched out over the course of the game with differing clothing, who knows. Point is, like I said, you can marry any of these people, and have children, assuming it is a heterosexual relationship (I guess, I wouldn't know if Albion has Butt-babies). However, the problem is with this game, and the games before this is that if you are a remotely normal person, you will not give a crap about any of the semi-faceless, one word-track set of people you can become betrothed to. If you can somehow find yourself giving half a crap about the NPCs you can do anything with in this game, then that simply means you are the type of person that goes into a department store and names all the mannequins, and remembers those names on each subsequent visit.

Lastly combat is the same as it has been in Fable previous; if you use melee, you're an idiot. Dump everything into AoE magic and go nuts. You can target spells, but why would you? You have near infinite health and eventually you can cover the screen in pretty much everything you want. I happened to choose lake of fire+ raining ice shards. However, I am sure that like the rest of this pointless game, the magic combos you use are totally up to you.

I normally find myself responding to the release of a new Halo game in the same fashion, with a resounding "Ughhhhhhh...", then remembering that I should not be surprised at the fact that people who like their games as bland and unoriginal as a cinder block exist, and exist in force. Since 2001, we have all been drowned in the mediocrity of Halo and it's crowd of middle schoolers corpse-humping people between shots of Ritalin pills administered by parents too lazy to notice that their son, whose balls have not dropped yet is thoroughly telling a grown man off who just wanted to unwind after a day of work, and instead has to listen to some little pissant go on about fucking his mom in all the octaves that Justin Beiber will no longer be able to reach once the hormones for his gender reassignment surgery take over and he will finally be a real boy. Ten fucking years and that boy still has somehow not grown up, or he has cloned himself ad nauseum into some sort of barely pubescent army that has infected the world of online gameplay. Honestly this type has been around since before Halo. But somehow the union of console online gameplay and the console first person shooter have made some sort of scary singularity that pulls in all the dickheads with a headset and brings them directly into the realm where a normal sane person just wants some time to face other players in a competitive game. Fuck, nowadays it is a risk playing Uno on XBL. Uno...really?

So I got a PS3 for Christmas. And since I got a PS3, this opened me to a whole world of exclusive games that I have always wanted to play, but haven't had the chance to. My current plan is to still use the Xbox for games that go on all platforms, for a very petty reason. I am invested in achievements as opposed to trophies. Switching now would be like switching my main in WoW. All that work down the toilet, no thank you. So yes, my PS3 will be seeing a lot of play, just not exactly as much as my Xbox. But anyway, I have started a few games on the new system, most notably God of War. The first one, yes I have dabbled in the game, but never really plowed through it, so I am hoping to change that, and when I do, I will review the trilogy as a whole. For right now however, I am going to talk about one of the games I was most excited for, one of the reasons I really wanted this system. Hit the jump to see me babble about Katamari Forever.

My friend Steve made a short Facebook (It's a little weird that word is still considered misspelled.) post the other day about the games he has played, rating them and then saying what his favorite game of the year is. I meant to copy him, doing the same thing with the games I have played this year, but then I realized why don't I just take this chance and return to my blog with some game of the year talk. So I am gonna do something I am not always fond of doing. I am going to apply number grades to the games I talk about. Everything will also get a brief review, colored through the lenses of hindsight, as I am not gonna sit down and play these games again simply for this article. Alright, let's get started, well we'll get started after the break.

Last week I broke my hand and I have a hard time typing quickly.  I wanted to write a long blog post about the new Assassin's Creed, but really, while I can type with my left hand, it is only one finger at a time, and the way I have to hold my arm weighs on me, on account of the cast. And well I still plan on talking about Assassin's Creed tomorrow, because well I was gonna do it tonight, but I ended up getting my Kingslayer title instead. That's right mutha fucker! Turthias the Kingslayer, woooooo. Anyhoo, see ya tomorrow.

Been a few weeks, yes I noticed. I do actually have something of an excuse though, in that I have been working at a new job, with hours completely different from that I was used to. To that end my body has been in something of a weird  shut down mode lately. I barely go out, all I really do lately is work, come home, then play WoW. Ill pop off for dinner somewhere in there, but that is the basic itinerary lately. As a result of this, I really haven't had much to write about lately. Sure I have been playing tons of Warcraft, but really it's more of the same for now until Cataclysm. Luckily it seems like I am getting some spring in my step back, and just in time for the new Assassin's Creed game, for which I am very excited. I guess I can talk briefly about what I have been doing, and maybe write something more substantial tomorrow, get back into the groove of things.

WoW- Well at least one good thing has happened lately to me in the Warcraft universe. I found a guild that I seem to gel with a bit. The last two were not good for me at all, and I was starting to get worried I wouldn't be able to find people I liked playing with again. I had a good, tight group once upon a time, but they have, for the most part decided to stop playing WoW, or they moved servers. The guild is ran by the boyfriend of a WoW buddy I lost contact with for a while, and it seems they have a good group of people around them. Went raiding on Thursday and for the first time in my WoW-ing, got up to Sindragosa in 10 man ICC. We're going again on Sunday it seems, and I am looking forward to the chance of maybe, just maybe getting my Kingslayer title on Turthias. Other than that, not much has been going on my WoW world, got swift flying on my priest, and been leveling a human Warlock somewhat quickly. He is level 42 now. With WoW I am really just waiting for the expansion to come, so I can have an experience bar back on my Paladin and eventually throw him headlong into some new content. Till then though, I have been actually having a good time with this new bunch of people, let's just hope this one sticks.

I have been playing other games too, just not as much. Oddly enough these games are for the most part, throwback games I have not touched in a long time. Beautiful Katamari is one such game. I haven't touched it in a long long time, but lately I find myself picking it up every other day or so. Actually got a bunch of achievements I was missing too, which is really a good thing. It's been a while since I hit the 10k Gamerscore mark, but since then I have remained stagnant it seems. Mainly due to the lack of new games I guess.

Soul Calibur 4 is another game that is worming its way back into my life. I had the game, but I had to re-download it since my physical copy of the game was stolen a long time ago. I am terribly out of practice with this game though, and it shows. Floor 17 of the Tower of Souls is kicking my ass like no other, and it is at best, frustrating. At worst, I may throw my controller at my TV, but usually I am able to recognize such rage coming, and turn off the game before it actually happens.

With my new job, it seems my appetite for hand-held gaming has fallen to the wayside, though that is not surprising, don't have the dick-around time I used to. Alrighty, time to go about my day, expect something tomorrow about the new WoW book, which I read, and shall subsequently speak of.

-Kesith