The cake is an analogy. Fable II Review.

One man and his dog

Imagine someone promised to bake you a cake.  A strawberry cream cake, with fresh strawberries, and whipped cream.  On collecting your delicious cake though you receive a lemon drizzle cake.  The Lemon drizzle cake is great, but because you were promised strawberries and cream you can’t help but feel a little disappointed.

This was the problem that Fable had when it made its debut on the X-Box in 2004, it wasn’t a bad game, thanks to the game’s designer Peter Molyneux though it couldn’t be anything other than an anti-climax.  The game won many awards, was critically acclaimed and at the time the fastest selling game on the console.  However, Molyneux was still forced to make a public apology on the lionhead forums as the game did not contain many of the features that he had previously promised.

I have purposefully avoided everything Molyneux has had to say regarding Fable 2.  So that I could avoid the inevitable disappointment when I found out that the game would be unable to make my hair grow back, or cure cancer, or make girls like me.

Playing the game I’m afraid to say that Fable 2 has a few technical issues.  Graphically while the visuals can be breathtaking, the overall effect is often ruined by glitches, clipping issues, pixelisation, poor draw distances, and almost Halo 2-esque levels of pop-up are not uncommon.

I keep coming across little Irks all the while I’m playing this game.  I can’t close doors,  when I return from a rough day’s adventuring, take the missus upstairs for a bit of the other I find my every move being scrutinized by half a dozen friends and well-wishers.  I’ve on several occasions transported to a quest location to find I’ve already killed antagonist X and need to travel back to the quest giver, achieving little more than being forced to sit through the loading screen for the second time in two minutes.  I’m unable to sell my first home because the game still thinks it’s my marital home.  The list of flaws seems to stretch on well into the middle distance.

Ultimately though all of the faults are unimportant.  When playing Fable II all the minor irritants don’t matter.  The game as a whole is so much more than the sum of its parts.

From the very outset Fable II is full of golden moments from the game’s cliched but well presented prologue you find yourself in a world in which things like graphics and load screens don’t matter, it is the world itself which matters and is constructed with such a sense of verisimilitude that even the smallest action can become a joy simply through the way the world around you reacts.

I considered the removal of the mini-map to be a step backward from the original Fable, several of the mini-map’s functions have been reintroduced though in the guise of the hero’s new canine companion.  While I met the inclusion of the dog with apprehension, I found it to be well handled and in-keeping with the overall style of the game.  Never appearing  too intrusive, it’s assistance is not essential to the play experience, but I felt enhanced it.  I suppose it depends on your opinion of dogs prior to playing Fable 2 but I took a great deal of enjoyment from simply observing my dog’s mannerisms, even just watching it tear-arsing around the countryside put a big, foolish grin on my face.

There is a real sense of drama running through the game giving it the air of a hollywood blockbuster.  The role of clothing in the game is now solely cosmetic, allowing a player to choose a look which they find appealing, without having to think about armour values (The pink frock coat over an olive green Waistcoat is mine! You can’t have it!).  The one button combat is suprisingly nuanced, while still allowing a degree of success through mashing.  The camera adds to the cinematic nature of combat highlighting blows with use of slow motion and Crash-zooms.

While I felt that graphically Fable II fell short, the sound is awesome.  The music expands on Danny Elfman’s original theme, and composer and Lionhead mainstay Russell Shaw does an excellent job without Hollywood intervention.  The dialogue is well written and the voice cast is impressive, including solid contributions from Firefly’s Ron Glass, Stephen Fry and my own personal milf de jour Zoe Wanamaker.  While some of the NPC dialogue can be overused, on several occasions they have left me laughing out loud.

I whole-heartedly recommend Fable II, as I have allowed myself to become completely enamoured with the world it creates.  There is a real sense of charm that runs all the way through this game and while i admit it has it’s flaws, it is never the less a work of flawed genious.

Tags: Add new tag, cake, games, Molyneux, review

Dead Space Redux

I’ve always been a fan of survival horror games, so I was pleased that I got to play the opening half hour or so of Dead Space last week. This time of year tends to bring the behemoths out to play in the console Christmas wars and the likes of Dead Space are often overlooked, which would be a terrible shame.

Granted, I only saw the early sections of the game, but what I saw definitely whet my appetite for the rest of the game, from the stunning lighting effects to the creepy opening death the game sets itself up as ambitious and dark. The plot is perhaps a little tired, “hmmm lets go investigate that abandoned spaceship…” but the visceral nature of the gameplay and its limb-loosing arsenal should make up for it.

I’m something of an achievement whore and the points up for grabs here seem well balanced and fun with a minimum of pointless iterm collection, a focus on weapon use and definite replay potential.

With Hallowe’en around the corner Dead Space could be just the thing for a genuinely creepy experience, especially if you are a fan of Resi/F.E.A.R.

Tags: dead space, EA, review

Dead Space Review

It’s dark, my leg brushes something and sends it clattering across the floor. Instinctively I bristle, what else could have been alerted by my clumsiness? A second later I feel it’s safe to breathe out, and as I do an inhuman moan issues from around the next corner. Frozen in place all I can do is watch as the sleek, monstrous form comes into view. Turning towards me with eyes glowing in the darkness, it says ‘Meow?’

Dead Space is EA’s latest game in which you’re a regular joe trapped on a huge industrial capital ship in space as biomechanical monsters try to eat your face. Sounds familiar? It should; it’s the setup for just about any space monster movie ever but don’t be quick to dismiss it for it’s mildly cliched setting, Dead Space captures the atmosphere of such movies with aplomb dropping subtle hints to its inspiration all the time.

As I hinted at in my slightly misleading intro, Dead Space keeps you on your toes, unlike an overzealous feline jonesing for dinner number 3. I can’t say it’s strictly scary but it is tense. The designers have gone to great lengths to keep you guessing from where the next hideous, screaming monster is going to pop up from, and it’s here that the slightly annoying camera comes into it’s own leaving you frantically waving the mouse around to get a bead on a destructible chunk of necrotised flesh. Many are stating that the game isn’t survival horror but I beg to differ, the over-the-shoulder, clunky nature of the camera, light backtracking, ammo management, space-zombies and atmosphere all put it firmly into survival territory in my book. What other game have you stopped yourself from saving because you thought you heard some creature nearby as you were just accessing the save screen?

The only reason I can see that some are loathe to avoid the survival horror moniker is the fact that you’re actually pretty lethal to the beasties inhabiting the ship. Equipped from the start with a tool that lets you cut limbs from your assailants, a single bad guy proves little challenge provided you can catch him at range; but don’t expect this to be the norm. Later on you’ll be beset by bads from all corners and it’s here the game’s other main tool takes over; the stasis tool allows you to slow down time for a target, at the expense of draining it’s own ammo reserve. Together with inspired weapons, such as a remote control buzzsaw, you feel quite well tooled up to take on the Ishimura’s crew but don’t think that you’re going to be running around guns blazing. Without careful management you may end up swinging or throwing blunt objects at the monsters, a less than ideal situation.

I may be a little biased here, I got my copy of Far Cry 2 on Thursday but felt a little disappointed by it, so I decided to swallow the expense and pick up the game on Friday night after work. By midday on Sunday I was watching the end credits. Weighing in at about 12 hours the pace is good, and I never felt like any part was over long nor were there any obvious attempts to artificially lengthen the gameplay.The inventory management and weapon and character customisation, while fairly cosmetic, add to the game a surprising amount, forcing you to make trade offs in your gear. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not Diablo but a nice addition. Story-wise, it’s not Poe. The plot and ineviatble twists are perfectly acceptable and feel built into the game, rather than a last minute addition but never threaten the realms of genious.

Dead Space feels like a slightly brawnier version of Bioshock mixed with Paul W.S. Anderson’s only good movie, Event Horizon, with queues taken from Aliens and Resident Evil 4. Cinematic, tense and brutal it’s superb fun; highly recommended.

Tags: EA, games, movies, review, space, zombies

Stuporcollider vs. The Russian Mafia

IT’S ALIVE!

Hi folks, just got back from seeing Goldfrapp in Leicester and found that our little weekend problem has been sorted! Apparently the server our box is hosted on was the victim of a DDoS attack lasting most of the weekend, hence the reason why the site has been redirecting to an error page. We’re all good now so enjoy, and remember to keep your Windows patched and you malware checkers up to date! Zombies are only cool in horror films.

P.S. Goldfrapp were awesome, support guy not so much. Watch the quite brilliant video to A&E with gusto:

Tags: music, site maintenance, zombies

Sorry I’m late, what did I miss?

So anyway.  I finally realised that the SC was up and running, and I can’t help but think it’s expected of me to begin my residency as soon as poss’, thus avoiding the assumption that I’m not pulling my weight.  It’s not that I didn’t want to post you understand, It’s just that at the moment someone else is footing my bar-bill, and the last four days have worked to the following schedule: Work, Wine, Sleep, Repeat.

Setting out my stall looking to the future?  I figure I’m currently the resident console gamer meaning I’ll probably dedicate some time to that, the near future will involve a review of Fable 2 which I pretty much sacrificed yesterday upon the alter thereof.  I can also feel an editorial on Peter Molyneux and his work with Bullfrog and Lionhead brewing in my Journalistic Bowels.

Ending on a rant, and why not?  Why in the name of all that is unholy do people buy tickets for gigs that they have absolutely no interest in seeing, only to immediately put them back on the internet at an insanely jacked up price even before said tickets have been despatched.  I spent a large part of last friday trying to procure me a pair of tickets for AC/DC at the O2 arena in April next year only to find that every gig in Europe(!) had already sold out.  You snooze, you lose.  That’s okay y’know, I get that, that’s fine.  What really pisses me right off though is that while ticket’s were supposedly limited to two per person, sites like viagogo.co.uk (tagline: Real tickets for real fans) are advertising vendors selling blocks of (in one instance) 20 standing tickets at £275 a pop!  This isn’t just insulting, It’s damn near piracy, seriously do you want my credit card number, or my anal virginity?  I don’t know if these tickets were procured by vendors through corporate promotion, or through more nefarious means, but I can almost garauntee that come the 14th and 16th of April, there will still be empty seats at the O2 arena, and that’s a damned shame when there are real fans who are missing out due to profiteering.

Tags: games, hello, music, rant

Hello Dolly…

As a TV addicted Geek, Joss Whedon is something of a hero to me (and by “hero” I mean, yes I would). This being the case, I was most excited to hear about his latest project and, in accordance with my apparent Mormanesque look, I thought I would relay the good news to you all…

Dollhouse is to feature Whedon veterans Eliza Dushku (oh my, she’s a feisty one) and Amy Acker (I think I’d cry afterwards). The basic premise of the show is that a company has a number of agents on it’s books who they hire out to perform any task the customer requires. These “Actives”, are mindless shell people who spend most of their time in a childlike state in the agency’s over sized dolls house. Before each mission they have personalities and skills implanted as required, once the mission is complete they return home to be blanked and put back into their gilded cage. Mission range from business to pleasure and anything in-between (I’m expecting assassination to high-class hooker patrol).

The hook is that one of the Actives (Echo, Eliza Dushku) starts to remember the time between missions. Thus she begins to workout what’s happening and, one assumes, the intrigue begins.

I heard about this project in early 2008 and have been picking up details ever since. What prompted me into this most evangelic of posts, however, was reading a report that production had been halted. I feared the worst, FOX cutting another promising Sci-Fi show off before it’s even got going would not exactly be a surprise. They’ve even done it to Whedon twice, with his best two shows to date Angel and Firefly, at which point he declared he would never work for FOX again… Obviously the “big truck of cash” came to town and changed all that, but I’ve learned to accept it’s influence in life…

Thankfully it turned out to be Mr Whedon himself delaying production, the reason he gave was that he didn’t feel that the scripts he’d left others to complete were of sufficient quality, so is running his eye over them and bring them up to par. I found this strangely reassuring, as you don’t usually hear improvement in quality as a reason for many things these days (least of all television production) and it has raised my hopes still further that a classic may be on the cards…

The obligatory wikipedia and IMDB pages, plus the TV.com page:

Wiki link; IMDB link; TV.com link

Until next week dear fellows and fellowesses…

Tags: big truck of cash, dollhouse, FOX, geeks, joss whedon, tv

Silence is golden…

Listening to or, more correctly, flicking past Radio 3 in the car on my way to work, I didn’t expect to hear anything of interest, never mind something that would motivate me to blog (I think that’s a verb now-a-days).

In any case, I heard tell of an experimental performance called Gold Dust that is to be part of the Cut and Splice festival at Wilton’s Music Hall on 25^th October. This alone is not that interesting but the announcer went on to state that, to take part in this event, the performers (Matthew Lee Knowles and Neil Luck) must be isolated in adjacent hotel rooms for four days before hand. They are not allowed to eat, imbibing only liquids, and must attempt to move, sleep and think as little as possible. No contact with the outside world is permitted during this period, but they must update a blog with their experiences of the process. After their four days of isolation, they go straight to the venue and begin playing together.

Well I thought it sounded pretty cool, a bit weird and most certainly different, so here you go:

http://www.cutandsplice.com/2008/gold-dust/

Tags: art, experimental, gold dust, isolation, music, radio 3

The Internets has you, Neil

What do you write to introduce yourself to a new blog? It’s harder than it looks! glancing over my shoulder I’m tempted to rip off one of the starting posts of one of the great bloggers but noticed one thing; most of them don’t have one.

The most concise and awesome introduction I can find is that of Jason Kottke, posted way back in 1998 when Quake II still ruled the world. So read that post then come back here and you’ve got the best of both of the worlds of blogging, see?

I figure I should explain a little about this bloggery expedition. I’ve been reading blogs, sites and other repositories of random information for donkey’s years and I’ve even tried my hand at maintaining a blog or twelve, the most recent being the inevitably doomed A sine 9. My compatriots have all suffered similarly accursed wide reading habits and we feel we should subject allow you to share in our vast and pointless repository of knowledge. Here me and my fellow adventurers in Internet writing have tried to create a vault of stuff we find interesting as well as having space for the inevitable Angry Rant™, allowing us to keep a posting schedule where we don’t have to be brilliant and entertaining every day. Not that we aren’t. It’s just nice to have some breathing space, you understand.

Our goal here is to share what we enjoy with you, anonymous mass. You may think we’re writing drivel and choose never to visit again; well STFU you’re wrong and some kind of deviant who does unpleasant things to dromedaries. Some of you might stick around and see what we can squeeze forth from our herd-mind, which is dandy. Others may become hopelessly obsessed with our glorious prose and begin a campaign of stalking, which is kind of OK too if you’re Zoetica Ebb.

So subscribe to the feed, bookmark the site or forget you ever came to this forsaken manor and carry on with your ungulate entertainment. Meanwhile, the cat requires attention and he can shred a grown man’s lap in seconds.

Tags: blogging, geeks, optimist, rant

Watch Stalker now, free

I’m sure some of you non-neanderthals have played S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl, GSC Game World‘s magnum opus. What you might not know is that the game takes much of it’s inspiration from the novel Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky.

In 1979 the book was adapted into a motion picture by Andrei Tarkovsky, who directed the original (and by far the best) version of Solaris. Shot in Estonia, the film apparently suffered a great number of setbacks and conditions during shooting have been blamed in causing the early deaths of cast and crew.

The full version of the movie is linked below. Watch and enjoy:

Via Warren Ellis

Tags: games, movies, video

What price trust?

Some people give it away cheaply, others it has to be earned. We all trust people, many of which we have never met. We trust our favourite authors enough to spend £15 on their books, but that trust was developed through good and bad experiences of reading many books over many years. We trust our favourite tv producers enough to forgive the odd episode, storyline, or even series, trusting that things will get better. Musicians, Actors, Reviewers, Directors, the list goes on.

We also learn who not to trust, my friends and I trust Ewe Bolle to make bad movies, not many people want to be in Gary Glitters gang anymore and we trust England footballers to disappoint at every opportunity. Why count on them when I have ten fingers and ten toes.

The amount we have invested in a given relationship is often an indicator of the level of trust and the risk that trust portrays. It’s easy to trust a comic book writer with our £2 and 15 minutes for one book, start to read the book regularly and the risk increases, usually meaning you either drop the book when it continually dissapoints or read it to the end. It’s a simplistic analogy but the same is true of relationships with people. Casual acquaintances acrue more trust as they penetrate our lives deeper, opening us up to a schroedingers box of joy or pain.

Which brings me to a proposition. I want your trust. I know that, generally speaking, anyone who say ‘trust me’ winds up being the villain of the piece, but I’m gonna use Stupor Collider to call people out on their bullshit, help you decide where your trust is misplaced and let you know what deserves closer attention. Ultimatley the trust is only yours to give.

Tags: b movies, comics, rant, trust