Fable III

My current options for 360 and PS3 games are playing via an old PC with an old capture card (low quality image), or playing on the TV in the lounge (noisy for Tim, and no contact with my friends who are on the PC).

I’d been trying to resist starting on Fable III until I had a HDMI capture card in my PC.. however, the lure was too strong..  I absolutely loved Fable II, as I had the Black & White games, also from Lionhead Studios, so I knew I would love playing this one too.. even if it meant taking over the lounge!

As with the other games, you are given a choice when responding to quests.. allowing you to become good or evil as you wish.  Your morality affects your appearance, with NPCs you come across reacting to you with either greetings or.. well, I’ve not played an evil character long enough to see them yet 😉

Abilities are upgraded through Guild Seals, which you earn for completing quests, defeating enemies and interacting with NPCs.  The seals can be then used to purchase the abilities you want in the “The Road to Rule”; a ghostly path where we meet the awesomely voiced Blind Seer from Fable II.

So.. I start off as a princess, wandering around the castle gardens, grabbing people by the hand and making them run along with me, just because it’s funny to see.. then I find out that my older brother, Logan, is up to no good.

People across Albion are starving, and some of them have decided to protest.. Logan has decided that this will be solved by killing some of the protestors.  I’m supposed to try to convince him to play nice, but Logan forces me to choose between my childhood sweetheart, Elliot, and the protesting villagers.  I save the villagers (Sorry Elliot, but it was never going to work..), then flee the castle with the assistance of my loyal friends; Sir Walter, and the butler, Jasper.

We need to take Logan out, but first we need support, and we start off in a freezing camp in the mountains, where we’re tasked with finding an artifact to prove my Hero status, getting rid of Saker, the leader of a band of mercenaries, and getting neighbouring Brightwall to send food.

In addition to completing quests, support can be gained by making the people in each area like you.. if you were evil, I suppose this would require people to fear you.  Unlike in Fable II, you can only impress one person at a time, by interacting with them and choosing the relevant action.. after a while they will ask you to run an errand for them; if you do it, they will then be your friend.

Once you have made friends with an NPC, you can also take it a bit further.. I appear to have attracted the attentions of Alice the Housewife, who wants me to take her on a date..
As you have to build up your relationship with an NPC before further options appear, I think this means there will be no repeat of my accidental cheating on one of my Fable II husbands, which happened when I clicked on the wrong NPC to follow me to bed.. my Fable II character was a bigamist slut! 😉

Although running errands takes up time running to one location only to run back again, it does provide you with Guild Seals and presents from those NPCs you have made friends with.  To save time, you can always teleport into the Sanctuary to use the map for fast travel.  You’ll also want to visit the Sanctuary to open your presents, or to mess around with your clothing and such, although Jasper will nudge you towards the DLC from time to time.  Some of the DLC is free, which would gain Lionhead some brownie points if not for the fact that some of the paid DLC was on the disk at launch.. that’s a topic for another time, though.

Shops close at night, and tonight this got me into trouble while befriending a shopkeeper at closing-time.. a guard came in, demanding that I leave.. by the time my rather long interaction finished, he had run out of patience and charged me with trespassing 🙁

When convicted of a crime you have two options: community service or resisting arrest.
As I’m a good girl, I chose to do community service and ended up making pies.. one of the various little mini-game jobs you can do around most towns.  Making pies consists of hitting A and X when prompted, while your character rolls out pastry and sticks it on the top of a pie.. the other jobs are blacksmithing and lute playing, which also attracts a crowd of people who cheer along while you play, but boo if you mis-click.

Screenshots will be added once I have my HDMI capture card 😉

Minecraft – Wolves

After playing Darkspore this evening, I joined a friend on our Minecraft server to see if we could find some wolves, which were added in the recent update.  To get wolves to follow you around as pets, you need to tame them by feeding them bones until little hearts appear above their heads..:)

I love the sound they make as they shake the water from their fur.. 🙂

Wolves only spawn in forests or on snowy ground, so while we were in the forest, we grabbed all the wolves we saw.
Normally it takes just a few bones to tame a wolf.. but one wanted eight bones before he would come with me!

Wolves are liable to fall off ledges if mountaineering.. but they come to your assistance when fighting mobs: they will fight anything that attacks their owner, as well as protecting them.

I got myself killed when I accidentally hit my friend’s wolf.. then a little later we ended up with two wolves fighting to the death..
My friend tried to remove a sand block trapping my wolf, but this counted as a hit on the wolf.  When he then tried to attack, my friend’s wolf defended him, resulting in the wolf-fight.

We now have the beginnings of a nice, safe path between our spawn area and the forest where we found the wolves.. aptly named “The Breeding Ground” 🙂

Darkspore

Darkspore is a sci-fi Action-RPG by Maxis Software, published by EA.  The player takes charge of squads of genetically mutated heroes which come in five types: Plasma, Bio, Necro, Cyber and Quantum, and fights to save the galaxy from the nightmarish Darkspore.. a hive mind of mutated creatures which are a result of genetic alteration gone mad.

Tim pointed Darkspore out to me a while ago, after seeing a rather nice trailer.. I signed up for the closed beta and had some fun with the first levels, using a couple of the heroes and messing around with the character editor a little.. though not creating any phallic creatures for which the original Spore was known 😉

I’ve been waiting for this to enter open beta so I could play with friends too, and so I was pleased to see it arrive on Steam this week.  Last night we got together to play the first two levels.. and for once it was me who was running off, using Blitz’s rather cool teleport ability to get right into the fight.

Of all the heroes I’ve tried so far, Blitz is my favourite.. look at those claws!  His teleport ability, ‘Ride the Lightning’, makes up for his lack of ranged attack, and he cuts through enemies fairly quickly.  His shield also comes in handy, zapping enemies who come too close.

During the closed beta, I unlocked Arakna, a Necro hero who collects the souls of downed enemies with one ability, firing them out around her in a rapid burst, where they then explode with another ability.  She would have been my second squad member, but my heroes were reset with the start of the open beta, and this time I decided to unlock some different ones, starting with Vex.

Vex is a Quantum Hero, with time-travel abilities.  The Chrono Blink reminded me of Blitz’s teleport, but seemed to use more energy, and I felt that his melee attacks were rather slow.  I replaced him with SRS-42 the Missile Commander, a Cyber hero who uses ranged explosive weapons.. can’t go wrong with that, huh?

SRS-42’s abilities include a Missile Barrage, which brings down 15 missiles in quick succession on a location of your choosing.. best used on a slow moving target, or on a unit stunned or incapacitated by an ally.  His other abilities are more for self-protection; one removes all status effects, while the other detonates enemy projectiles on-route to SRS-42.

The open beta is available via Steam until Monday 4th April.. I hope to get some more time in on this before it finishes so I can try out more heroes.. and I also want to try out the PvP 😉

Reins of the Red Proto-Drake

Over the last week we’ve been achievement-whoring our way through more old content..

Today, I managed to complete “Glory of the Hero”, which meant a very nice reward: The Reins of the Red Proto-Drake!

This also brings me to 25 mounts, and the achievement “Filling Up the Barn” 🙂

Critter Gitter!

A friend just sent me some Critter Bites.. which allows me to turn critters into temporary pets!

I started grabbing all the critters I could find around Orgrimmar, until not only did I have the achievement “Critter Gitter”, I also had a large following of dung beetles, toads and other small critters.. wheeee! 🙂

Left 4 Dead 2 – Cold Stream

Cold Stream is a new campaign created by modder Matthew Lourdelet, who previously created the 2 Evil Eyes campaign.

Having received some well-deserved support from Valve, this became available for players to beta test last night.

I got round to playing it this morning.  We first spawned in the stream itself..  I thought this was a very pretty location with the rushing water and trees..

We decided this first part of the map could maybe have done with a few more pointers on direction, as once you’ve headed into the trees it’s fairly easy to lose your sense of direction..

We also wandered in and out of a small building before realising we were supposed to jump out of the first floor window to carry on.. maybe if this window had been broken it would have given us a clue, but as it was it looked like a recipe for fall damage.  Minor points, though.. and they didn’t hold us up for long 🙂

In the second map, we emerged in a tunnel full of rushing water.  A minor complaint here was the lack of sound for the water.. noticeable in the tunnel where you’d expect to really hear it.  I think it was around here that we started talking about how cool it would be if the water were to push you along, as it certainly looked fast-flowing..

I think the foggy lighting here would be great cover when playing as the Infected.. 🙂

Towards the end of this level we were nearly wiped out by a sneak-attacking tank, who incapacitated most of the team with a massive rock which came crashing down onto the group.  We hadn’t even picked up the bots by the time he got to us, and after I threw the bile on him, he sent me flying past the still-incapped Ellis..

The bile brought enough zombies to kill him off, and we carried on through a building and back into a tunnel full of water.

This time, there was a push behind the water!  Straight ahead there appeared to be a drop to the death, but we headed right and down a set of stairs with more water flowing down them.  I was rather pleased with this bit 😉

On the third level we were surprised with an explosion, sending cars and trucks flying and leaving a large hole on the bridge we were crossing!

I liked how this changed the map right before us, but wonder how this feels in Versus mode.. whether the infected get trapped here, or whether it allows insta-kills over the edge.  I need more friends who still want to play this game 😉

We had noticed a witch crying, and before the explosion I had been looking for her, hoping to beat The Undoer to the kill 😉

She turned out to be standing on a surface below the bridge, with no way up.  I noticed that this bug has been mentioned on the Steam forum dedicated to Cold Stream, along with the bug we got at the beginning of the Finale level..

That’s me, spawned on the outside of the safe room.. oops.

Using the radio in the safe room starts a cutscene with what we assumed was a rescue helicopter that crashes down into the trees.. all which needs some kind of voice acting as it just feels a bit strange.  After this, we were free to run out to look for the helicopter, or an alternative rescue..

A little further along, I thought the game had crashed when everything seemed to stick.. then we realised it was just a slow-motion effect.  At the time this seemed rather impressive, but I’m now thinking it should maybe have been left out.  In games like Homefront and Call of Duty, slow-motion is used to allow you to respond quickly to a threat.. here, it just seems to be used to add to the explosion, and after the second play-through I think this would be more of an annoying delay than something to be impressed by.

For the rescue, again, hindsight comes in..

Presumably attracted by the fire and smoke from the wreckage of the first helicopter, a second helicopter was waiting to rescue us.  I think this should have been the other way round, with us having to wait and hold out against a horde.. this would have been more challenging.  Instead, we almost discovered the ladder by chance, and with the common infected piling on Ellis and Rochelle, we were free to run up the ladder to safety.

Having run through this campaign though, I realised quite how much I miss playing the game.. the adrenaline rush, the need for really close co-operation.. the awesome feeling when you and your friends survive despite the AI director being harsh.. 🙁

Global Agenda

Shooter MMO Global Agenda was recommended to me at the start of the weekend.. and while I wouldn’t ordinarily pick up a game with little idea about it, developers Hi-Rez Studios had pledged to give all the proceeds of sales during the weekend to the Red Cross Japan Earthquake efforts.  So, I signed up and paid.. knowing that even if I didn’t like the game, at least some good was coming of it.

I had the choice of Robotics, Medic, Recon and Assault, and for my first character I went with Robotics, as I’d get to play with turrets, forcefields and drones..

The game starts off showing my character in a stasis field, in a facility under attack from soldiers who start to free me.  During the scuffle the chamber is smashed and I am freed, but all the soldiers are gone when I get control of my character.

This is where the tutorial kicks in, with directions for basic running and jumping to start with, then a cool jetpack which allows short flights, and my first weapon..

While I have the Mace equipped, I also have the use of a shield, which seems to last as long as my energy reserves, indicated by the blue bar near the middle of the screen.

I reach the top of the building as directed, and I’m told I have to dive off the edge.. a nice cutscene follows where I jump off as instructed, bare feet on view, and eventually crash through the window of a storage room.  Here I get a nice ranged gun, and in the next rooms I get to try it out on easy enemies such as Watchers and Sector workers who try to hide.. and Alarm Responders, who are a little bit tougher.  I also get a ‘Rest’ device, which lets me heal myself.. so far so good 🙂

I’m heading for the roof again.. right at the top I’m introduced to a one-way forcefield, which will let me out to face the first boss, a flying Guardian who fires some kind of homing rocket and wipes me out.  I get a fairly quick respawn back on the safe side of the forcefield, and head out to finish the Guardian off.  Here, I was surprised to find he hadn’t been reset, so it only took another few hits to kill him.

My reward was a cutscene of my escape via train ride.. on top of the train, of course!  My stop is an armoury.. more weapons?  I level up at this point, and am given an off-hand, which for me is a deployable force-field.. which comes in handy because there are plenty more security androids to fight through.  Each roof leads to another, with markers indicating where I can jump off, and use the jetpack to fly to the next place.  Limited energy means I can’t just fly around without thinking about it, which I guess stops it becoming overpowered, but I’m happy being able to jump around for the time being.

Next on the list is a suit, which comes with a robotic arm sticking up over my shoulder.. this turns out to be a repair arm, but isn’t explained at this point.  A few more rooftop fights later, and I find my way into another building, where I’m jumped by this rather cool looking Elite Assassin..

I was expecting a tough fight, but I defeated him rather quickly.. it is still tutorial time though.

Another level up, and I have a Personal Turret, which I deployed here purely for the screenshot 😉

My next mission involves escaping through the sewers, and I suspect that’s where the tutorial will end and I’ll get into the main game..

Goblins!

We finally rolled our Goblin characters.. Scragglefizz and Fizwik.

Fizwik is a Hunter, and Scragglefizz is a Shaman.
Goblin totems are these rather interesting drill-looking things.. when I got my first totem I was rather pleased I’d gone Shaman 🙂

I absolutely loved the Goblin starting area; it just seems to have been designed to go a bit wild in!  There are little roads everywhere, and one of the first things you’re given is a Hot Rod to go and collect your friends in.  There was rather a lot of accidental bumping of pedestrians, followed by more intentional bumping as they yelled at us 🙂

We also got to take charge of a modified Shredder to kick ‘footbombs’.. Deathwing appeared over the mountain as we were kicking balls, and of course, I went for firing them at him as he flew overhead 😉

It was then that the mountain starts to blow.. so the next quests involved collecting riches and attempting to get off the island.. the only boat being that of Trade Prince Galliwix, who does a double-cross as you hand over your life savings!  Can I kill him?  I want to kill him..

The ship then heads for Azshara, but meets some ships en-route.. and the Alliance blasted us!  We washed up with the wreckage on the shores of The Lost Isles..and after gathering supplies, getting rid of some pestering monkeys and attaching fireworks to cluckers.. the goblins had to settle this new area.

This meant the Town-In-A-Box came out..

(Screenshot taken from Wowhead, since I was too busy being excited about a big pile of explosives to take one myself!)

Hitting the plunger set off some seriously impressive phasing as we were blasted up into the air in a cloud of smoke, to come down in the middle of a small town 🙂

If you want to see this without playing through the levels, there’s a video on Youtube: Town-In-A-Box Creation.

EscapeCraft 2

A friend of mine has been messing around with various fan-made adventure mods within Minecraft lately, one of which was EscapeCraft 2.

I have to admit that I wasn’t hugely interested in the mods, expecting them to be a series of jumping exercises which would frustrate me more than anything else, but after enough prodding I thought I should at least give it a go..

The game starts with a few instructions.. not to punch any blocks other than dirt, and to use Peaceful and Easy modes to prevent or allow mob spawning as puzzles require them.  Of course you could ignore these and punch straight through the walls, but that would defeat the purpose of playing a puzzle game 😉

After receiving your instructions, you drop into the starting room – the scenario is that you’ve just awoken and are in some kind of testing facility.

In the next room, I was reminded of Portal’s Companion Cube, as I was asked to pull a lever on the wall and kill ‘Subject 1089’..

Killing the hapless test subject opened the door to the next area.. once through, I found out that there was another way to solve the puzzle.. a hidden forge in this room contains a lever which you can use to open the door without harming any animals!

The next room involved two waterfalls and a lot of lava.. after a few burnings I made it through.  I should note that death results in the loss of items in your inventory.. this might not matter if it were random items of treasure, but if you lose an item needed to solve a puzzle, you’ll need to re-copy the world into your Minecraft folder and start over.

Following the waterfall and lava room came the obsidian and wool room.. and with the gift of gravel and iron I created fire!

The fire spread along the walls and to the roof; blocks then fell to create the stairs to the next area.  Very nicely done 🙂

After fire came water.. which had to be poured into the right place to not set off the TNT which lined the room.

Again, no mishaps.. though I was tempted to set the TNT off for the chained explosions that would have resulted 😉

Following these successful levels, some GlaDOS style notices warned me of what was to come.. other.. subjects?

Zombies joined me in the puzzle that was to follow, and I managed to get myself killed when one dropped down beside me and made me jump.. I blindly lashed out with the sword and smashed the glass floor of the maze.  Durrp.

After completing this level, I stopped the game on account of pub lunch 🙂

One conclusion though.. Minecraft mods are nowhere near the jumping-puzzle hell I expected, and the puzzles are actually quite clever..

Homefront

Homefront is a first person shooter by Kaos Studios, set in an occupied and rather run-down America.  This follows a speculative future history of rising oil prices, the collapse of the financial system, war, and the rise to power of a unified Korea and a very sneaky EMP blast which renders the US helpless to the invasion that follows.

The game begins with you being beaten and dragged out of your home by Korean soldiers and forced onto a bus, which takes you through the streets where soldiers are beating and killing civilians.. setting the scene, really.  I know from all the reviews what I’m going to see, but it still hits.. especially the little boy who sees his parents shot down by soldiers who then just casually wandered away.  The little boy howled, horrible, terrified cries, and ran to his dead parents.. and I wanted to blast those soldiers to hell.

However, I’m unable to move until a truck slams into our bus, and I’m rescued by the freedom fighters.  I’m given a gun, but I don’t get to go on a murderous rampage.. instead I have to run away through some buildings, accompanied by my new ‘friends’.  My friends quickly begin to annoy me as they keep on yelling at me whenever I step away from the immediate objective, or don’t move fast enough.  The lack of a sprint button also annoys me at times, as the collectible scraps of newspaper are everywhere.. I can go and get them but if they’re not yelling at me to do something, my friends just carry on walking, and then I have to hope that they’re scripted to stop somewhere, because I just can not run to catch them up.

Mass graves.. After a mission in a concentration camp went wrong, we escaped and came across the mass graves.  We took out all the soldiers around the field, as well as the turrets, but then had to hide in amongst the bodies when a helicopter showed up.  I could have done without the xbox key prompt here.. as could some of the gaming press, who highlight the “Press X to jump in mass grave” as an example of what’s wrong with the game.  I’d rather have had a cutscene, though I guess it was done this way to give the illusion of choice.

Later on in the game we headed towards a survivalist camp.  I was set free to make my way to the top of a church to provide cover, having to pick off guards who blocked the way or were close to discovering my friends.  After the tightly controlled earlier parts of the game I wished I’d been able to take out more of the guards this way, but an RPG destroyed my tower and I had to fight my way back to my friends and the helicopter.  Uh-oh..

I shouldn’t have worried about the helicopter, because it wasn’t too hard to fly, and I got used to it very quickly..

Guarding the hijacked fuel tankers was one of my favourite parts of the game.. powerful rockets and plenty of targets to pick off.

Next up was the assault on the Golden Gate Bridge.. this time looking after a gun rather than flying.  I also loved this part.. picking off enemies while in the helicopter, and then making our way along the bridge with less hand-holding.

Something blew up, and I ended up underneath the bridge.. I think this whole section was inspired by Half Life 2, as not only were there broken girders and walkways, but also enemy troops and a helicopter to contend with!  No headcrabs, though 😉

There was even more destruction when I got back on the deck as I got to take out a helicopter and an armoured truck!

All this massive destruction let the game end on a high, despite early irritation with the too-short leash around my neck.