I finished GRAW2 again the other day. I generally play my games on easy, because they are primarily entertainment, so i'm looking to get as much fun as possible out of it with as little effort as possible. I don't consider that to be lazy, as i've already paid upwards of £30 for the damn thing and should therefore be allowed to take things easy. I mention this because i finished GRAW2 on a higher difficulty level, which i would have been unable to do if i'd finished it on that difficulty before. I like difficulties that stack up (like say Halo 3, where finishing it on Legendary gives you the achievements for Normal and Heroic as well), but i think that negates the possibility of future playthroughs. If i slog through the game on Legendary, and get the achievements for all 3 difficulty levels, then there's no reason for me to ever play it again. So, i first finished GRAW2 on the easiest setting, and having found out that it was an excellent game, i kept it for future playthroughs. It's really well done; and possesses an early view of the game direction that COD4 implemented beautifully i.e. the sense that "big thangs popping up in here". Where Ghost Recon had nuclear missiles, Call of Duty had... okay, shut up. Where the nuclear missile was detonated in Ghost Recon, In Call of Duty...

Okay okay it might sound like COD4 copies those two scenarios from GRAW2, but my point was that it's done very very well in Ghost Recon, and Call of Duty manages to hammer it home even better. So if you've played COD4 to death, and you're looking for something new (or rather, old), GRAW2 is quite cheap these days, and if you've managed to get a free Xbox, you might as well get a free copy of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2. (Now you see why i say GRAW2)

Moving on, i JUST now finished The Bourne Conspiracy, and i gotta tell you, playing as Jason Bourne really impresses upon you just how badass he is. Watching the movies are one thing, because you see him on the screen and a small (but very much aware) part of you knows that the film studio can make him as dangerous/suave/gangsta as he needs to be to make an entertaining movie. But playing him? It's like playing the movie, in a good way. The hand to hand fights are fast and furious when they go right, but when they go wrong they devolve into button mashing fests because your button presses stack up so even though it looks like he's not responding, he will be in about a second or two. This doesn't help, because by now you've pressed all four buttons in order to get him to MOVE ALREADY! When he finally does, you see a sweet combo, but you don't know how you did it. The takedowns are pretty well done too, because they tried to capture the movie effect, and having seen what Bourne is capable of, no amount of xx, yy, up-down-back would do. They made it so he does all the work, and you just sit back and press the on screen buttons at the right time so he follows through perfectly. Missing a prompt isn't the end of the world (or the mission, bar a few situations), because when you miss and he fumbles, the enemies DO follow through perfectly, so whatever happens, you get to see a really good fight. They might have overdone it though, because towards the end of the game, i felt like i was watching him unravel this conspiracy (as opposed to actually playing it and unravelling the conspiracy myself), and pressing buttons at certain times. I plan to play it again, because i found it surprisingly short, and i like the achievements, because they're challenges such as complete a mission without using a shooting takedown, etc etc

The NXE came last week and for better or worse, the old dashboard is gone, bar a few diehards who refuse to connect to XBL. I like it, a lot. One question i get asked a lot about it is, what does it do? Short answer is: nothing, because it's not supposed to do anything. Long answer is: It's an interface that provides access to all your system functions while looking good, the last phrase being key here. It's essentially doing the exact same thing the old dash did, but better. It's faster, smoother (to look at anyway), and things are somewhat better organised. That's all there is to say, really. The only major addition is the Avatars, which look like a thinly veiled rip off of the Miis. One wonders if the threat of lawsuits is what detered them from copying the Miis wholesale. It's not like they HAD to go with that appearance for their avatars afterall. That said, i like the variety available for customisation although once i find what i like i tend to stick to it. I like the friends' list, but i don't like how you have to be online to see it. I understand that you need to be online to do stuff with it, what i'm peeving about is how it's just not there when you're offline (as in, not signed in to XBL). It's completely unavailable. Oh well. It's also somewhat slower on the marketplace, because it tends to want to load up all the pages at the same time, so i get a row of loading icons, and then they all show at the same time. I like installing games, my xbox is now quieter because there's no disc noise, hopefully it'll last longer since the disc is not spinning anymore. Installing games does eat up a lot of space though, i've installed about 4 games, and i'm down to about 65gb, from say 80. It usually caps at 90gb, take say 10 off for save data, videos, themes, and that's where i got 80 from.

Anyway. FREE IPOD soon. SWEEEET

Peace

This is not a review, and as such might contain spoilers.

Okay, you played the first Fable, right? On the first xbox? Sure you did. You know all about how some dude killed your sister (but not really), then you found her, then you had to stop some renegade hero from destroying the world with ULTIMATE POWER.

Fable 2 is set between 300-500 years after the first game, in the same world. There are fewer places to visit, but man those places are HUGE. Naturally, all the advances time brings are visible in the world, the major (but not only) addition being guns. Awwww yeahhh. And not just any guns either, they go from flintlock pistols (Jack Sparrow FTW!)to clockwork rifles, and they're very well implemented. All the same things in the first fable are back, the thing is that while they might seem new, they're mostly just improved and exapanded upon. Like, where you could fart in the first game, in this one you can now extend the action, with dire consequences if you do it wrong or so i'm told (by the loading screen tips). I haven't had the courage to see just what might happen, but i strongly suspect it involves the words poo, and pants.

You can also get jobs now, because in 500 years the citizens of Albion wised up and stopped paying Heroes to be Heroic. I'm not sure "wised up" is the right phrase here, as there is now absolutely no motivation to help them out. If you need money, you gotta get a job, son. I like the jobs, they're a nice addition but i don't like how they're the easiest way to earn money. You can also gamble, and certain quests to give out cash payments, but gambling involves loss, and quests involve legwork so a job is by far the easiest/safest. Quests can get you dead, but we'll get to that in a bit. To make money, you can buy property (i've got my eye on this big ass castle but i keep getting sidetracked by more property to buy) such as businesses and houses, rent out the latter or live in them.

In Fable 2, Death is not permanent. Or even existent. When you "die" you get knocked out, lose all the experience orbs (gloowy, shiiiny orrrbs) lying around, and you get a scar. That's it. There is thus nothing to be afraid of in the more epic battles, because you respawn in the very same location and carry on with the fight. It does become a pain when you're hopelessly outnumbered, but that's it. In the game, you can also change certain cities/towns by your actions, but that's fairly limited in that there's only about two i noticed. There are probably more, but that's all i've seen. They're well done though, and i'm already planning a second playthrough, just to see what they would have turned out like if i'd done the other thing.

Ha, all this and i haven't gotten to the dog yet. There is no map in the game view, just in the pause screen, and even then you have to go into the quests/maps view. The dog is your in game radar/early warning system/sidekick/back up. He'll help you as much as you let him, by finding treasure in chests or buried. He's not really useful as a fighter unless you invest in him, but he's good for companionship, because otherwise it would just be you running about aimlessly in this huge world. With the dog, you can run around aimlessly because the dog will alert you to stuff you might have missed. He doesn't actually point the way to quests because there's a gold trail that leads you to your target. That can be turned off, and i think the dog might then pick up the slack as without the dog or the trail, getting around would be a major annoyance. He doesn't seem to be able to attack human or larger enemies unless they're on the ground, but that might just be me losing track of him. When i'm surrounded by 60 hollowmen, the dog is the least of my worries. He can be injured but not killed and it's in your interest to heal him as he won't be able to keep up and point out the all important treasure, plus all that whining gets irritating. When in towns he's well behaved, but the villagers always want to pet him, holding him up and making you wait for the animation to finish so you can check out that alley behind the shop. You can also name him (i called mine Dawg, because i'm a cat person), buy him treats, collars, a ball, and teach him tricks.

If you haven't explored the entire world by the time you finish the storyline, choose the family option. You won't regret it, and you can always start another game to get the other options.

There are lots more things to do, like get married, have kids, get married more than once, pick up prostitutes, have an orgy (no, seriously), start a party, get drunk, go on a killing spree, grow horns, and so on. It's... bigger, and better. There IS new stuff, but not a whole lot of it. What's there is extremely good though, and will keep you entertained for hours because what's not new has been drastically improved upon.

Watch out for Nicky The Nickname though.