When was the last time you played a video game on a console that had numbered levels? It was so much easier to say to you mates, "I'm up to Level 13" or "I'm stuck on world 3 level 6". Now you have to elaborate with crap like "I've just got past the bit where his mate gets poisoned by the mutant fish frog and you have to go down the black hole to retrieve stone/gem type thing that I need to take to [insert stupid plot points here]".

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.

I find myself increasingly un-impressed with the countless sequels and developers wringing out the last drops of life from dishevelled franchises and so I pose the question to you, what lies in store for the future of gaming? What is the next big revolution we are going to see?

Personally, I think that the way forward is to utilise the human body more effectively in games and I don't just mean "Wii wand waving". A full on sensory onslaught, with innovative peripherals that utilise every human sense, whether this be done via brainwave manipulation, or some other sci-fi esq method, I hope this is what we will see in the next generation of computer games.

This of course has been the aim of developers and researchers for years, but only now are we at a point where it is really needed to shake up an industry that is milking its cash cow with the same old games just tweaked in some way.

So please leave comments with some ideas, for both new types of games and also new peripherals.

I'll kick it off - I wanna see a sensor that can read nerve impulses send down the spinal column and use these to recreate movement in a game accurately. I have no idea if this is even anatomically accurate but seems good to me!

Normally, I like shooters. I’m not too fussy about the story or why exactly I should care about these Alien MonstrositiesTM (Gears of War, I’m looking at you). This stems from a history of playing Duke Nukem (which I regularly confused with Doom) and just loving the running about blowing stuff up. Flash forward to Halo, which was the first proper shooter I played. I dunno how, but somehow I skipped right past the Quake and Unreal Tournament phases. So yeah, while my gaming pedigree might not be as extensive as some, I know what I like and what I like is guns. Big guns, little guns, laser (pew pew!) rifles, sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols... yeah. Mario is all well and good but I always figured the guy needed to be packing some serious heat. He was fighting dragons, y’know? Even in Age of Empires, I found a cheat that gave you a supercar armed with a rocket launcher. Considering that the most advanced units in the game were Hoplites for the infantry and Cataphracts for the calvary, you can guess the results yourself.

Except, these days I’m starting to like RPGs. It started with Fable on the Xbox, and progressed with Mass Effect. I really like the idea of making a character your own; customising everything from clothing to behaviour. Fable was a pretty good intro to this sort of thing. A lot of people found it to be limited, and not as expansive as was promised. Me, I just loved it for what it was because I never believe the hype. Now Fable 2’s coming out, along with Fallout 3, and I’m actually looking forward to playing those games. I recently started playing Mass Effect again, just to remember what RPGs usually involve: Lots of dialogue, lots of exploration, lots of patience. I’m particularly looking forward to Fallout, because it manages to combine my predilection for shooting stuff, with lots of stuff to uncover, and a character you can make unique. This is part of why I like Mass Effect, despite the slightly predictable story and extremely tedious gameplay. It’s not just that I get to shoot all my baddies the attraction is that despite there being a colossal amount of ways to dispatch them, I’m doing it MY way.

Fable 2: October 21 2008

Fallout 3: October 28 2008

Gears Of War 2: November 7 2008

Let me be the first to say, i suck at football. There i said it. Both the videogames and the real thing. I'm just not athletic enough for the real thing, and for some reason i can't seem to get my head around the electronic one.

Having said that though, i AM substantially better at the electronic footie games. Simply handicap the computer, and BAM! Instant superstar. It seems like EA will never end their yearly installment of sports games, seeing as Fifa 09's out now. I got the demo earlier in the week, loved it. I found it significantly better than Fifa 08, and coming from me, that's saying something. Note that i don't necessarily mean easier, i just found it a better experience than the last edition. Fifa for life, yo.

So Slash said to me, you gotten the PES demo yet? and i thought, meh, let's give it a try, couldn't hurt, love the free stuff, etc etc. As an aside, if Apple offered me a free Macbook, just to try it out, i wouldn't say no either. Microsoft for life is one thing, but free stuff is another story entirely. So i queue up the download, turn off my xbox so it can download in the background (and hence not be paused because i decided to play grifball on halo).

Fast forward to several hours later, i turn on the console to play, and it's freezing. I'm thinking, aww hell naw. My bad boy's less than a year old and while it still shows signs of microsofty craziness (which they really should patent) like randomly freeing in the middle of gameplay, it's never frozen on start up before. Naturally, i employ the one universal solution to problems like this: I turn it off, and then back on again. No joy, repeat: No joy. I'm getting worried now, because i'm afraid of the ring of doom showing up. But i can't do anything with a catatonic console, so i turn it off again and search the intarwebs. Google points me to microsoft (well duh), who then tell me to either wait for it to cool down, or clear the cache, or both. Neither works. Then i notice it's only freezing after i sign into xbl, so i disconnect the wireless bridge and hey presto, it's working now. Then i first turn off background downloads so it won't try any funny business when i turn it off, then i check my downloads to see what's up.

The PES demo hasn't been downloaded. After several hours. Hours, because i had 4 other items in the queue and they should all have been done by now. So then i cancel the demo, then clear the cache, then plug in the wireless bridge, and the next item starts downloading as soon as i'm signed into xbl. I'm relieved but i don't dare turn off my console in case it doesn't start up again. Yeah, i'm paranoid like that. I spend the whole time playing Mass Effect, and as soon as the downloads are done i quit the game, turn on backgroud downloads, and switch off.

Do you see now? I'll take dodgy looking players over console destroying demos any day. And yeah sure it might not have been the PES demo, it might have been my connection, etc etc. Seeing as xbl and the marketplace have never given me any trouble with downloads, and the only problem my connection gives me is lag, i think i'm justified in blaming it all on the demo.

I'm not touching that demo, let alone the game, with a 10ft pole and neither should you. FIFAAAAAAAAA for life, yo

Continuing the build up to the annual console kickball debate and the FIFA Vs Pro Evo arguments. The guys at videogameszone.de have put together a gallery of comparisons between the two new games player models, decide for yourself.

Steven Gerrard is a very good example.

Check out the comparisons here -
Player model comparison gallery