Game of the Year and Single player gaming experience of the year:Fable 2
I have to admit this first of all. I never played the first Fable much. I bought it at launch and played it a bit but in the end, it just got left by the wayside in favour of so many other games. But when I started hearing bits and pieces about its sequel, I realised I had to have it. In fact, I needed it so much that it was a huge deciding factor in my decision to buy a 360.

Eventually, a mere two years after buying the console, I had the chance to play Fable 2. Was I disappointed? Hell no! Sure it was far from perfect and it was missing a few promised features, such as the much mooted ‘Plant an acorn as a child, come back as an adult to see a fully grown tree’ feature but for me, it was an amazing experience with my only real complaint being that it ended a little too soon for my liking. The game starts out very slow (don’t all RPGs?), but the start still shows off the impressive graphics and made me stop and stare for a few moments. Sure they don’t look photo realistic (and the character models are a bit lacking), but the cinematography is great if you ask me. It makes the opening city, Bowerstone, seem huge when actually it isn’t really.

There are a few simple quests set up to give you a taste of the moral quandaries you’ll be facing in the future once you’ve reached adulthood. Some nice comedic moments abound such as an arrest warrant stating: ‘assault with a weapon we can’t believe could possibly be deadly but unfortunately was’. The sort of thing that makes you smile at the thought put into the writing. The narrator of the game is voiced by Zoe Wannamaker which is nice casting, I’ve also noticed a cameo by James Corden (of Gavin and Stacey fame) and I’m sure I recognise other voices from somewhere too. After childhood has passed, the game opens up much more. It doesn’t open up to the levels of Oblivion but to the sort of level I’m most happy with. This might sound strange but I don’t strictly want an entirely open ended and non linear game, I like the interactive fiction part of games, having a story unfold around me.

It gave me a certain amount of freedom without feeling overwhelming, with often funny consequences (try walking into a city naked, yet another nice touch), but not so much that it detracts from a good narrative structure. In Fable 2 you can do various jobs, buy property and rent it out (and earn money while not actually playing), get married etc. All a bit Sims like, and it is in places, certainly when it comes to keeping your husband or wife happy, but it’s nice to have the option. The game feels full of options even if they’re not quite as open ended as they appear to be. The jobs, such as bartending, blacksmithing and woodcutting, are all a little samey (basic press the button at the right time games) but they’re still strangely addictive. Of course as I said earlier, Fable 2 isn’t perfect. Many people reported game ending bugs and glitches, but somehow I was lucky. Despite playing through it twice from start to finish, not once did I have a problem.

The only downside I could really find in it is it’s just not very challenging, instead it feels like it’s aimed at those who want to simply enjoy the experience rather than those wanting a challenge on their hand. In summary I really can’t recommend Fable 2 enough. It may not be the longest game in the world but it truly is one of the most memorable gaming experiences I’ve had in years, certainly compared to anything else on the Xbox 360. The game is now available for under £20 and with new DLC coming soon, there really is no excuse to not give this game a shot. I hope you will be as pleasantly surprised as I was. I’m really glad it lived up to my expectations as far too many games don’t, most notably Mass Effect last year.

Multiplayer game of the year: Gears of War 2 Horde mode
This is a tricky one for me to award as, at time of writing, I haven’t yet played Call of Duty: World at War online and I’ve only played the single player segments of Left 4 Dead, both games that I suspect rightfully deserve this title. However Gears of War 2 Horde mode is brilliant fun and certainly the most fun I’ve had in multiplayer since Call of Duty 4. It is such a simple concept, 5 players versus an array of enemies in one small enclosed area. Of course this is a concept that Left 4 Dead improves upon hugely but as I’ve not played it with friends yet, it’d be wrong to vote for it.

Original IP of the year:Mirror’s Edge
Such an unique premise for a game and from EA of all places! I didn’t really pay much attention to this until friends started playing it and raving about it. I still wasn’t too sure but rented it from work as I figured, I might as well while it was free. I only had it for a night but instantly loved it. Much like Left 4 Dead and Gears 2 Horde, it was a simple concept that I couldn’t help but marvel that no one had thought of it before, but it worked so well. Then of course, I was extremely fortunate that Nokkonwud got me it for Christmas so now I can play it to my heart’s delight! If you’ve not played it and you love the concept of freerunning, you need to get this.

Story of the Year:Lost Odyssey
The only game to make me cry this year. The Thousand Years of Dreams segments were always touching and really evoked such emotions that I’m sure non game players would be astonished by.

Biggest Letdown of the Year:Spiderman: Web of Shadows
I haven’t really been let down by a game this year so it was a bit tricky to decide. It was between Sonic Chronicles and Spiderman: Web of Shadows. When I was sent Sonic Chronicles to review, I was really looking forward to trying it as I figured Bioware + Sonic must equal excellent. It was just too kiddy and basic, seems like a terrible waste of a game. However Spiderman was such a waste. The first half of the game was brilliant fun and Treyarch completely blew it for the second half I didn’t actually have high expectations of this till I played the first half and if the whole game had been like it, it would have been in my top 10 games of the year. Instead, it became merely average and deeply flawed. I’ve still yet to complete it.

Surprise of the Year:Fifa 09/Quantum of Solace
Joint winners here as I couldn’t decide between the two. Fifa 09 might seem an odd choice to some but I haven’t played a football game in a couple of years. The last ones were Pro Evo 6 and Fifa 07 and Pro Evo ruled entirely but was a little limited in options. I didn’t really pay attention to the 08 varieties. So when I heard such good reviews about Fifa 09, I risked it as Tesco had it quite cheap. Really glad I did. It is great fun and feels like the full package to me. I especially love the Be a Pro mode, something I’ve wanted for years in a football game! Really glad I bought it.
Quantum of Solace was the first Bond game since Goldeneye that was actually good fun to play, so it deserves to win something. It’s unfortunate that it arrived in between so many huge games such as Gears 2, CoD:WaW and Fallout 3 because it really did deserve more attention. At only around £20 if you look around, it really is worth a go.

Game or gaming innovation you’re most excited about for 2009: Apple iPhone
This might seem an odd one too, but have you seen some of the games on offer? Sim City, Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid Touch, Guitar Hero Rock Tour along with many attractive independent releases such as Rolando and Doctor Awesome. Mark my words, 2009 could be a big one for the iPhone. I’ll write more at a later date as I’m currently writing up an article on this for play.tm

Stay tuned for the Personal Review of the Year!

As you may be able to guess, Spiderman: Web of Shadows is exactly this, at least for the first half of this ‘nearly good’ experience. It’s not overly complex nor oozing originality, but what it does offer is great fun that you can dip in or out of to your heart’s content. No commitment is required; you won’t have to commit to an hour run through before you get anywhere. Just call it pure unadulterated fluff, just like the films in fact. Nothing thought provoking, but still leaving you with that nice warm feeling afterwards safe in the knowledge that the past two hours were not wasted at all. Doesn’t that sound brilliant? Pity that was only a description of the first half of the game, if the entire game was like this, I’d be writing a review of one of the enjoyable games I’ve played of the year. Unfortunately the second half is like playing an entirely different game and that’s where everything gets a lot more infuriating.

Web of Shadows starts fairly promising, which is where the initial fun factor kicks in. Having a huge city to roam is nothing new, but finally the web slinging antics of Spiderman is implemented pretty well for once. When playing Spiderman 3, I found the web slinging just a bit too clunky and awkward but 9 times out of 10 Web of Shadows does it right, meaning it is actually fun to swing across the city. This is especially handy considering there are literally thousands of collectibles to pick up. Aaaargh collectibles I hear you cry. Don’t worry, they’re not essential but it is extremely handy to pick up a fair few as each collectible helps you level up Spidey, meaning you swing faster and hit harder. I actually collected a lot of these and really enjoyed looking around, considering I usually hate searching for collectibles, this is a big plus point for me. As well as this method of upgrading, you also gain experience points for completing missions and killing bad guys. This then helps you upgrade specific abilities, mostly fighting related. It can also help unlock new moves. Rather than just having the good Spiderman moves to unlock, there is also the option of Spiderman’s other costume, the black symbiote suit to upgrade. It also plays a vital role in later missions so it’s not just there for aesthetic sake. The fighting system is a little basic, as essentially it works around two main attacks: punch/kick and web attacks. One move you will be using a lot is the web sling which once fired propels you towards the enemy and gives them a good kick basically. Further on in the game it becomes essential for some battles as well as increasingly powerful. In one memorable boss fight against Vulture, it was the only attack I ever used as I was up in the air the entire time. It’s quite fun bouncing around though. The fighting system on the whole works pretty well despite its simplicity, but as the game progresses it can get a bit tedious. This is more due to the length of fights than anything else though. Besides fighting in the air and on the ground, there’s also a fair bit of fighting on walls which is where the usually reasonable camera angles fall down a bit. It just gets a bit too confusing at times if you’re trying to rush round on a wall and it can get a little confusing knowing which way to turn.

To progress through the game, Spidey has to receive mission details from a designated character which changes at regular intervals. Each character is a famous comicbook hero, starting with Luke Cage who helps you get to grips with the controls, but changes later on to heroes such as Wolverine and Moonknight. Missions tend to consist of one primary mission strand centred on the storyline and then a few optional missions mainly involving saving civilians or killing a certain number of enemies. The missions are a little samey in places, generally a matter of killing something but sometimes there’s a few glimmers of originality. One level in particular trains you to use the web sling attack by getting you to attack 25 snipers scattered across a number of high buildings with a tight time limit. It might sound hard but it’s far from it when using the web sling attack and it’s quite fun bouncing around too. The storyline missions are admittedly fairly predictable but they do open up some more options. Some missions require you to choose a ‘path’, whether to do the honourable Spiderman thing or whether to turn to the dark side of Venom. This doesn’t seem to affect a huge deal besides unlocking unique achievements depending on what you do, but it’s still a nice touch.

It all sounds great fun doesn’t it? Spiderman crossed with Grand Theft Auto 4 and Crackdown, the comicbook fan’s idea of heaven. If only the whole game was like this. The first 40% or so of the game is just how I described above, good, harmless fun. Then it all goes very sadly wrong. The sheer fact that the first half or so of the game is so much fun makes the rest of it so utterly depressing, there’s just no excuse why this second half is so poor other than laziness from what I can see. At first, although the warning signs are there, they’re forgivable. There’s a mission where Spiderman has to chase Blackcat across the city and then fight her, it gets a bit long and infuriating in places as the camera angles go a bit all over the place. But you can forgive it in that one mission as it also looks pretty cool and does make you feel like you’re playing a ‘proper’ Spiderman game. The problem is it just continues with other boss fights. The battle with Electro suffers from the exact same problems and I had to restart it a number of times simply because the camera got me confused and sent me the wrong way. Sure, it could be argued it’s partially my fault, but it feels unforgiving and unfair. The game for the first half feels like a game a child would enjoy but the second half is so different and harsher that it would drive a child insane! Fights with Wolverine and Venom are just as annoying with the difficulty feeling like it’s been briefly increased from simple to infuriatingly awkward. Plus all these boss fights feel never ending. They introduce decent concepts such as a chase around the city then repeat it a number of times in a monotonous manner so you forget what was good about the fight in the first place and simply get bored of it. A huge amount of the latter part of the game is like this as it just gets far too dull and contrived. It’s really not a good sign when you realise you just don’t really care about the game anymore; you just want it to be over. It’s a great shame to see.

Treyarch are seemingly masters at making ‘nearly good’ games, games that really should be brilliant but somehow just about miss the mark, almost as if they lack that soul that make games special. Just look at Call of Duty 3 and Quantum of Solace, all technically fine games, yet they just don’t quite cut it as quality games, so close and yet so far seems to be Treyarch’s motto. Yet again they have somehow done it with this. Spiderman: Web of Shadows should have been brilliant, nearly everything was there to make it great, yet right at the last hurdle, it is let down by a mediocre, sloppy second half. Spiderman and his fans deserve better, we can but hope this will happen the next time round Treyarch try making a good Spiderman game.

By this time next week, there’ll probably be another one too. It’s been a very busy time. I’ve got The Last Remnant, Scene It: Box Office Smash and Lord of The Rings Online: Mines of Moria to review at the moment. Although I’ve not had a chance to start The Last Remnant yet, I need to get on with it as soon as possible so that will be mostly done by next week. Looking forward to playing Scene It, I loved the first one. I’m still not keen on the reviews layout so when I get a chance, I’ll have to sort that out somehow.

Anyway it’s been a tricky week for my personal life. I suspect December on the whole is going to be rough. I’ve also managed to damage my elbow somehow which is nice, not. I’m not sure how exactly, I think maybe it’s from when I fell down some stairs a couple of weeks ago. At the time I thought I was ok despite banging my elbow. But since last Thursday, I’ve had a big painful lump on the side of my elbow. According to the doctor it’s slightly infected and to come back in a week if it hadn’t healed by itself. It hasn’t so I think I’ll be off to the doctor again soon Makes using my left arm a bit awkward at times as I can’t lift it very high without pain and it’s hot and painful on the whole really. Bloody irritating!

With my relatively limited gaming time (I’ve also been working quite a few evenings lately), I’ve played a fair bit of Gears of War 2 Horde with friends which has been a great laugh and some excellent stress relief I’ve had a few rentals arrive, namely BF: Bad Company and Madden 09. Madden is purely for point whoring which is a bit slower than normal as I can never figure out American Football games very well :p BF: Bad Company seems pretty good but I’ve sent it back as I think I’d rather buy it cheap at a later date. I’m trying to whore a fair amount of points at the moment as the AV Forums Xmas Challenge has kicked off and I’d like to do quite respectably. Therefore I’ve bought some cheap games thanks to actually having some spare money for once. From work I bought Just Cause, Saint’s Row, Blitz The League, Stranglehold and PES2008 for £25. No easy, quick 1ks but hopefully enough points to help me along the way. I’d certainly like to reach 70k by the end of the year. I’ve also bought Space Chimps for £7.99 as I figure if I hit it hard, I should be able to sell it for the same sort of price quickly enough. Also just rented Crash of the Titans and Conan from work for the week.

I’m still trying to get into Fallout 3, but I just can’t I’ll keep perservering but it’s not looking good for me! Guess I could always whore points from it if I get desperate and I still can’t get into it.

Anyway, no huge update. Not really got anything exciting to say so apologises for the emo bloggyness of this post

Got quite a few bits and pieces to discuss games wise. Been burying myself in them a bit while trying to not think about stuff. First up, I reached the devil’s number in gamerscore!

Then promptly wrecked it by getting my score back to ending in 0 or 5, much better! I’m hoping to increase my score quite a bit in the next month or so as I’ve signed up for a 30 day challenge with some people off AV Forums. It can go towards my aim to hit 100k sometime next year I can dream!

After discovering a nice trade in trick I bought Quantum of Solace in HMV for £18. For those of you who don’t know: currently Blockbuster are doing Grand Theft Auto 4 pre-owned in their 2 for £18 range. While HMV are paying £18 trade in for each copy of GTA4, so I bought 2 copies of it in Blockbuster then traded them in at HMV for £36 and bought Quantum of Solace. Not bad at all! If there were more new releases out that I wanted, I’d do it again but I’ve got pretty much everything I want for now.

The Bond game has grown on me a lot, the Casino Royale levels (which make up for the bulk of it despite the game’s name) are particularly enjoyable especially the level where Bond is poisoned and has to go to his car for the antidote. The only segment in a game that has ever made me feel slightly woozy. I’ll be playing this on a harder difficulty in the coming days as admittedly it’s far from challenging on New Recruit difficulty.

Thanks to the NXE, I bought myself a new 60gb HD meaning I can install plenty of games. The 360 is now so quiet that at first it almost made me think there was something wrong with my 360! So far I’ve got QoS, Fallout 3 (which I’ve still hardly played, oops), Gears 2 and Spiderman: Web of Shadows installed and still got 22gb free. I’ve finished Gears 2 on normal difficulty with Daz now, was good fun. The ending was a huge anti climax though. I’ll be going through it again now to get the collectibles, it’s nice that the war journal explains which chapter has the missing collectibles. Makes it a lot simpler to do. Then I’ll be playing it through on insane with someone at some point.

Spiderman: Web of Shadows is still really enjoyable although I have got stuck on one bit which I need to go back to. Review will be within the week. For now though, I recommend it, a surprisingly good game although sadly somewhat flawed, always the way with Treyarch games. Ignore me, end of the second act is ****ing irritating. Treyarch blew it

So what’s been happening the past week or so? Quite a lot but not necessarily much of interest! I’ve been quietly musing upon my future business venture, I’ve been working, I’ve been writing reviews and occasionally I’ve been playing games purely for fun! Shocking I know.

Work’s ok, nothing exciting at all really. I mostly spend my time labelling stock or alphabetising DVDs, it’ll do for now. Not sure how much good it’s doing me mentally but I don’t fancy going into that on here.

Reviews wise? Well as you can see, I’ve recently had reviews of Fifa 09 and Wrath of the Lich King uploaded for XboxGameZone and play.tm respectively. I’m now working on Dungeon Maker for the DS for play.tm and Spiderman: Web of Shadows for the 360 for XboxGameZone. No rest for the wicked! I’m really enjoying it of late though so that’s good Considering how I can expand this into a paid role somewhere but we’ll see. The quality might not be up to it anyhow!

So in between all that work, what have I been playing? Oooh there’s been lots, and I’ve been very lucky with how many new games I’ve played lately. I have of course been playing a fair bit of WoW but I can’t see anyone that reads this blog really caring about that so I’ll not bother writing on it.

I’ve done some point whoring thanks to a newly activated Lovefilm 3 month trial (again). Currently I have Madden 09 (not played it yet), Summer Athletics and NBA2k9. Despite Summer Athletics being theoretically an easy 1000, due to my inability to be able to hammer buttons quickly or waggle joysticks (in this case, joypads), I can’t see me 1king this. At least not without severe friction burns or dislocated fingers. NBA2k9 is much more my sort of pace, I enjoy Basketball games anyhow and the points are flowing nicely here. Nothing overly special but if you like previous 2k games, this one will suit you just fine.

I’ve also been playing a number of the bigger games of the season. I rented Quantum of Solace from work Sunday night. With the newest releases, I only have them for 2 nights (albeit completely free) so I didn’t get round to completing QoS but got to see enough to judge it. Much like the film of the same name, this game lacks a certain something that makes it any more than average. Maybe it’s down to Treyarch, the developers, who have the uncanny knack of making games that are fine but lack a little bit of soul that makes them stand out. Just look at CoD3, it should have been as good as CoD2 but somehow it didn’t quite hit the spot. QoS is just the same. It is nice how it ties up a few missing bits in between Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace the film though. And admittedly in my case, the same rule applies as with the film. I’ll forgive Daniel Craig anything! The likeness is a bit poor though, but it’s still his voice so I’m happy!

I’ve 1ked Fable 2 now and it was very satisfying. I know everyone else did it within a week of launch but I enjoyed taking my time and I enjoyed the game itself immensely. It is very flawed at times and lacking a lot of the promises that Peter Molyneux made, but I’m content with what is there.

I’ve still not finished Gears of War 2, got near the end of Act 4 while co-oping with my friend Daz but since then one or the other of us have been busy every evening. Hopefully Thursday we’ll manage to meet up again to finish this off. I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far, much the same as the original but that’s no bad thing at all. Not played multiplayer yet but I have played Horde with Abooie, DaveyPitch, Daz and Leowyatt which was excellent fun. Hopefully be doing that again soon!

Finally, I now have Fallout 3. The new 360 for the living room arrived yesterday along with the GAME limited edition of Fallout 3.

Nice figure, eh? Second figure I’ve had in 2 weeks, I’d love to collect more…….must resist!

I’ve only played the game for 30 minutes or so yet and for some of that, I was so tired I was falling asleep at the controller. So no real first impressions yet. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll find more time to do so and I’ll post my thoughts.