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Official blog and geeky manifesto of The Ruku

Game Review: Fable II (Xbox 360)

November 23rd, 2008 Posted in Entertainment, Gaming
Nov, 23 2008
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Fable 2 is a game that the housemate and I have been looking forward to since it was in development. We both loved the original and a sequel would be even more awesome, right?

So this time around, Fable 2 is set 500 years after the original game and any sign of heroes/heroettes have been seemingly forgotten about. After selecting your hero’s gender and a gorgeous opening sequence (complete with a highly detailed render of falling bird poop), the game sets you out to play as a young boy or girl named Sparrow who -with your sister Rose, run around old Bowerstone collecting enough money to buy a seemingly magic music box.

After a tragic turn of events, you fast-forward to your hero’s adulthood and thus, the main meaty bits of the storyline begin.

The first change players will notice is the setting. Fable 2 is now set in a stylized Renaissance/highwayman era, complete with such technological advances of the time such as flintlock guns. A lot of the places in Albion have changed considerably, with whole areas being completely renamed in places.

This time around, Lionhead has fiddled and built upon the original’s interface quite a bit. Things now seem a tad more intuitive as the game now gives you a glowing “breadcrumb trail” that shows you where you need to go. Quest NPC’s also now adopt a World of Warcraft-style exclamation mark above their heads to grab your attention. Your alignment also gets a good beating with the overhaul stick, and allows you to fine-tune how your character acts as opposed to just good or evil. For example, you can be a halo-wearing angel of a person, yet still be corrupt and selfish. You’ll also notice a few of the creatures you’ll face have been changed around for better or worse (Unfortunately, Rock Trolls are still the annoyingest thing this side of Albion).

Controls have also been modified, you now have full control over the camera and combat has been redone to adopt a “one button does everything” layout, which is both a blessing and a curse. While the new system benefits basic hack and slash combat, trying to do flourishes or other special abilities you can attain becomes a bit of a hassle, especially in the midst of combat. Another change is that -unlike the original, you can’t assign shortcuts to the D-pad. Shortcuts now appear when needed, and change depending on the situation.

A new addition to the game is your hero’s faithful dog, who primarily acts as a furry treasure detector, though he also has a few other tricks up his sleeve as well. Another addition to the game is multiplayer

Graphics in Fable 2 are top notch, with the cinematics stealing the show. Character models are well designed and rendered, and the environments look fantastic. Everything looks like it came straight out of a steampunk/fantasy novel and I’ve yet to see any issues pop up.

Sound and music -just as the first, is brilliant. While NPC’s once again suffer from sounding all the same, there’s enough variety in the voices for it not to be annoying.

Speaking of voices, Lionhead pulled out all the stops this time and got some pretty well-known actors to do voices for the main characters, including Ron Glass, Stephen Fry, Julia Swahlia and Helena Bonham-Carter.

Music is typical Fable fare (which isn’t a bad thing in the slightest), with quite a few of the tracks from the previous game remixed and updated for the new game.

Sadly, the game isn’t without its flaws. One of the major ones is that the game’s a little on the bug-ridden side, which will hopefully be fixed in a later update. While it’s nothing that particularly bricks the game, they are noticeable.

Overall, Fable 2 is an excellent sequel to an already great game. It has its flaws, but I still can highly recommend it to both newcomers to the series and diehard fans.

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You Touched Me All Night Long, Baby

November 23rd, 2008 Posted in Entertainment, Rants
Nov, 23 2008
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This being the internet, there’s quite a lot out there that’s going to make you go “wait, what?!“. Most of these probably involve something you found on YouTube or some other site and -unless it’s Japanese, not a lot of them are mobile phone accessories (well, maybe that vibrator addon for the iPod I saw a while back, that was worth a raised eyebrow).

Then there’s the Etre Touchy gloves.

These gloves are fancy, almost Science-Fiction looking gloves with the thumb and index fingers removed to enable the wearer to use their iPod Touch/iPhone/Nintendo DS/other touchscreen or handheld device. Oh, and they keep your hands nice and warm. Kinda like a happy medium between fingered and fingerless gloves, really.

That’s it. Nothing really special, aside from the sexy sexy blue stripe on the thumb and finger holes and the fact they’re seemingly versatile beyond electronic devices from chopsticks to ‘mining nose gold’.

In all honesty, I really don’t know what to think of these. Being a paticularly ham-fisted person myself, I totally get the idea behind them. But -like the iPod Sock that Apple bought out some time ago, it’s an idea with little point in the real world. If you’re that hung-up about pulling your gloves off, then wear fingerless ones. Alternatively, spare the US$22.30 and grab yourself a pair of $8.95 gloves from Target, lop off the two fingers required (on the gloves, not your fingers) and you’ve got yourself a cheaper alternative.

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Software Review: The New Xbox Experience

November 20th, 2008 Posted in Entertainment, Gaming
Nov, 20 2008
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So I power up my Xbox 360 in the hopes to get some Fable 2 in before I pass out due to the fact it’s 3:00am, and I get prompted o update my console.

“Oh rapture! What could it be?” I ask myself, thinking it might be something useful like an update to the backwards compatibility software. Alas, it’s the long-awaited and much-hyped ‘New Xbox Experience’ dashboard update.

So I update, wait for it to install and start fiddling, and see if it was worth the precious gaming time.

The first thing I’ll touch on is the new Avatar feature, which gives your profile a more personal touch by enabling you to create a cartoony-looking characterto represent yourself over Xbox Live, in a fashion similar to the ‘Mii’ feature on the Nintendo Wii. You can also use your avatar in a number of Xbox Live Arcade games such as Uno.
Unlike the Mii’s, you can fully customize your avatar down to what wristwatch they are wearing and there’s a possibility you can buy/unlock extra clothes or items in the future.

While it certainly gives your profile some personality aside from “Hurr! I iz NoobKilla1138. Here r teh gaymz I play!”, I find it to be a tad underfeatured. I kinda thought it’d lean more towards being a rival to the Playstation’s upcoming “Home” feature, but it’s not a major thing. Hopefully Microsoft does a bit more with the avatars in the future.

Possibly the coolest thing with the new update is the ability to join a party with your friends over Xbox Live. You can voicechat, watch movies and videos and -of course, play multiplayer games.

Another cool feature is the ability to install games onto the Xbox hard drive. This gives you faster load times and is meant to quiet your Xbox down a bit. As only have a 20GB harddrive at present, I didn’t look too much into this feature.

The update also revamps the dashboard entirely, abandoning the “blades” system in favour of a more traditional menu system which aims to streamline everything (which it does so pretty well, to be honest). The new guide feature has also changed to adopt -funnily enough, a “blades” style system itself, which is a hell of a lot better than the old “let’s cram everything into one window” setup.

Other features include some extra themes and the ability to purchase Xbox Marketplace content via the xbox.com site. Netflix streaming support is also going to be added in in the future once a few legal issues are worked out.

With all this new stuff, you can also use all your old gamerpics and themes, which look fairly decent when used with the new dashboard. So that $5 sexy Lara Croft theme you swoon over when your xbox boots up still has a home on your console.

All in all, I like the new update. That being said, I would have liked a choice between the old and new system, but if Microsoft deems this new experience as the way to go, all we can really do is wait and see how much of an experience it’ll become.

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First Impressions: Left 4 Dead (Xbox 360)

November 12th, 2008 Posted in Entertainment, Gaming
Nov, 12 2008
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To anyone who knows me personally, it’s a well known fact I loves me some zombies. Unfortunately, with no virus epidemics bringing the human race to it’s knees (yet…), I’m forced to get my zombie killing on in the polygonal landscapes of video games.

Enter Left 4 Dead, Valve Software’s entry into the hallowed maggot-ridden halls of zombie survival horror. Armed with a modified Counter-Strike: Source engine under it’s hood, Left 4 Dead breathes a whole new life into a heavily saturated genre. The demo to this came out on the 6th of November and today I spared no time in kicking the housemate off of Fable 2 and downloading the hell out of it.

In Left 4 Dead, you play as one of four survivors armed with various weapons. The main aspect of the game is to play through four “movies” which make up the game’s campaign. The other survivors aid you in your quest by pelting zombies with bullets, healing you and others and (sometimes) providing tasty tasty eats so you can reload your weapon. There will also be a “human vs infected” versus mode in the full game, but that wasn’t available in the Xbox 360 demo.

Other survivors can be controlled by other players over Xbox Live or by the computer in an offline single player mode. Local co-op mode is also available, but only restricted to two players for some inane reason. While I understand there may be slowdown issues relating to having four-player split screen, seriously people. If Bungie can do it, why can’t Valve?

To provide a seemingly endless amount of replay value, Valve has implemented what’s come to be known as the ‘Director’. An AI which places enemies in varying positions depending on the player’s situation, status, skill and location, as well as increade or decrease the challenge involved in the game depending on thoe factors.

In case anyone is wondering, the zombies in this game are strongly influenced by the modern-era zombie flicks such as the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Days Later. To those who haven’t watched either (FOR SHAME!), the zombies still move around like a normal human being, if not quicker. While I prefer the old standard of slow-moving mindless twits for zombies like in Capcom’s Dead Rising, having a ton of these”updated” ones running around definitely brings a level of tension to the game it might have otherwise missed out on.

The sound in the game is pretty good. Everything sounds like it should, down to the weapons. The voice acting in the game is pretty good -judging from what little there is in the demo, but no music in the game to be heard from the looks of things, though.

Graphics are fairly decent, but the character models are really not up to par with some of the other games out there at present. Though, considering you’ll be staring at a large amount of stuff on the screen at once, it’s one sacrifice I’m willing to deal with. The environments in the game look fantastic, and look straight out of a zombie movie. The game’s graphics also went over a lot of post-processing to achieve that gritty movie feel.

My main problem with the game were the controls. While they work, they differ greatly from other First Person Shooters out on the market at the moment to the point where something as simple as a melee attack resulted in a few healthy chunks taken out of my health bar. FPS fans might want to read up on this one before jumping in with reckless zombie-killing abandon.

So what does a zombie movie-loving chump such as myself think of this flesh-eating slice of Valve’s new game? It does have it’s hitches, but ultimately I’m not seeing any reason not to buy Left 4 Dead. This game is quite possibly my most anticipated game of this year, and so far it’s living up to the hype.

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Movie Review: The Mummy – Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

November 10th, 2008 Posted in Entertainment, Sights and Sounds
Nov, 10 2008
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I don’t mind when a movie sequel follows the same formula as its predecessors. I also don’t mind the occasional “bad” film. Especially when it shows a lot of promise, but still misses the mark. You can still switch off the DVD or walk out of the cinema thinking “well, it could have been worse…”

Which brings me to the new Mummy film, “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”. TOTDM once again drags adventurer Rick O’Connell and his history buff bookworm of a wife Evie into another action packed adventure against the undead.

Imhotep doesn’t return for a third flick, I’m assuming because he’s had his arse raped like a Catholic alterboy twice already so he’s just let sleeping mummies lie. Instead the movie begins in ancient China, where Han, a ruthless warlord conquers all who oppose him and becomes the first Emperor of China (talk about Han shooting first, eh?). He orders the Great Wall to be built, and the bodies of his enemies to be buried within it. Realizing that taking over the world is a long-ass job that requires more than one lifetime, he calls in Zi Yuan to find the secret of immortality. In exchange for making Han immortal, Zi Yuan requests that she spend her life with Han’s General. Some arcane trickery and Han murdering General Ming occurs, and Zi Yuan reveals that she in fact put a curse on Han and his men, who promptly get encased in Carbonite turned to terracotta and thus, becoming the Terracotta Army.

Fast forward to 1946. Despite living in retirement from the espionage biz, Rick and Evie accept a job to take The Eye of Shangri-La to a museum curator in Shanghai. Of course, not is all as it seems and Rick and Evie are once again thrust into the middle of another undead kill-a-thon with Johnathan (Evie’s brother) and Alex (Evie and Rick’s son) in tow.

I tried to like ‘Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’, I really did. I thought it’d be a neat Jade Empire-Meets-Indiana Jones movie, but it’s one of those films where it falls flat on its face from the weight of trying to be epic. It’s a good premise, a GREAT premise, but it was simply not meant to be (and it pains me to say that).

The main problem I have with the movie is the fact that they not only changed the actress who plays Evie, but completely changed the character into a more Lara Croft kinda gal. This time around Evie is played by Maria Bello, whose notable roles include the Piper Perabo career launcher backfire/complete dog turd of a film ‘Coyote Ugly’, and a role in ‘Thank You For Smoking’.
Bello’s portrayal of Evie is painful, to say the least. Her main problem (aside from not being Rachel Weisz) is that the script calls for her to be way too many things at once. A posh tea-drinking author one minute, an ass-kicking Lara Croft-esque action hero the next and then a concerned mother and wife after that. Multitasking may be the woman’s domain, but seriously.

This is one of the big things that shit me about hollywood (and sequels in particular), I don’t mind if the writers mix things up a little, really! But if you can’t get the original actor to play the role, write the role out. It doesn’t help when Maria Bello doesn’t really fit the role all that well. While this would normally provide a minor annoyance to my overall opinion of the film, having Bello play Evie could be likened to when Black Sabbath had Tony Martin as lead vocalist. It just. Doesn’t. Work.

The other characters aren’t as annoying and generally make good on their roles. Hats off to Brendan Fraser and -to a lesser extent, Michelle Yeoh for pretty much saving the film for me. Jet Li makes for a good titular villain, though he could have done with a tighter script. The only other character I didn’t actually like all that much was Alex O’Connell, played by Luke Ford. While not particularly a bad peformance, he tries too hard to emulate the mannerisms of Fraser’s character whilst at the same time trying to keep a sense of individuality to it, that it comes off feeling a bit forced and making the character look like a complete chump.

Special effects once again are brilliant, especially the undead creatures. Some of them (especially near the end) are a tad overblown, but they work. No real complaints here.

All in all, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor isn’t a good film. It simply tries way too hard to be the most epic of the trilogy, but it simply doesn’t match up to the brilliance of the first film, or the second film, where the only real complaint I have against it is that Dwayne Johnston thinks that just because he pretended to beat the shit out of people for a good 10 years of his life, he can apparently act.

That said, it does have some minor saving graces and it’s still somewhat enjoyable. If anything, to see Brendan Fraser once again stomp a few undead colons. He’s like this generation’s Bruce Campbell. y’know, without the chin.

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