Entry 020: "Fable III" Pt. 1

Dear Internet,

                "Fable III" is the obviously third installment in the Fable series made by Peter Molyneux, who has become synonymous with the concept of promising the moon for his games and delivering a boulder, a boulder of marble carved into the likeness of the moon, but still a boulder mind you.  It is not so much that he makes promises that he cannot keep, but more that he shares his concepts for the game he is working on with the general public before running them by his team to determine their feasibility technologically wise or otherwise.  The first Fable game was to have trees growing back after you cut them down.  When the team realized that this was going to take half of the usable processing to do, the idea had to be scrapped.  So, when it comes to his games, it is best to completely ignore a majority of what he says before the game actually comes out.  "Fable 3" is pretty much that, an active attempt on my half to know as little about the game before starting it.  

                I have played the first and second in the series, but those were quite some time ago.  The first came out nearly ten years ago and somewhere in between that and the release of "Fable III" being released almost three years ago I got through the first two games.  Sadly, what happened during those games are mostly a blur to me.  The stories were less than memorable.  In fact the only thing that I remember about the second game's story was that it was a near identical cookie-cut plot to the first.  There was also something about being jailed or forced to work against your will at one point, but as I said it is all fuzzy.  Why am I mentioning all this, Internet?  It is because "Fable III" is supposed to be a direct sequel to "Fable II," taking place 50 years after the last game.  Every time that somebody who looks remotely old steps into the story, I feel like I am supposed to know them.  I cannot tell who and what is supposed to be a reference to the older games other than the most obvious names like Bowerstone Castle.  So, on matters of recycling plot and matters of originality of the series, I must remain mute.

                There is still a lot to cover with just the five hours of play today.  The Fable games have all allowed the player to determine what kind of "Hero" they can become.  I make use of quotation marks because the player can become a goodly hero as per the definition of the word hero or a murderous, chicken kicking thief.  Rarely is there a non-partial option.  At one point, a random NPC came walking up to me and started telling me to say along the line of "Try to be evil for a change, you might like it."  However there was one exception to this polarized morality when the main character is forced to decide who would be innocently executed, your lady friend or a bunch of strangers.  The game tries to end-spectrum this choice, but after a while of indecision, the game chooses for you.  While not an actual third option because no one is saved in reality, it was refreshing to see that even indecision was an option in a game series where one must either be a crazed ax murderer or a social worker who operates a kitten orphanage.

                Without spending too much time on gameplay that I have only scratched the surface on, I will just quickly list a few gripes.  Enemies are not lootable beyond experience which means that having to pass through three to four packs of wolves when making your way through a path means nothing when they barely give you EXP.  If you want or have to dig for treasure, you must wait for you trusty canine companion to notice it.  If the dog is acting buggy and not noticing it, you have to circle around and around to get the dog to reset its path checker.  There is a quest guider that points the exact way that the player has to travel to reach their destination.  A glowing golden dust points the way constantly to the end of the dungeon, so never mind remembering the pathway since the game tells you how to get out.  That might not seem like much and rather helpful if there was more than one path to go through in some of these dungeons.  It is mostly straight halls with a forked path occasionally popping up.  If one follows the forked path, it almost always ends quickly with a chest or treasure for the player.  Since the forked path is so short, one cannot get lost even if there was no golden dust guiding them.  Also, the guiding glitter can be buggy.  When talking to people, the player is limited to three options, positive, negative, and humor.  These three options have various different variations.  For example, positive interactions include shaking hands, chatting, and dancing.  The player is given one option for each of the three major branches of interaction, and as far as I can tell no way to change which specific sub-action to do to the person they are talking to.  This leads to situations where the player can go up to a total stranger, give them a fierce tickling, and become good friends because of it.  I might get the police after me if I tried that, but I'm not the prince of a kingdom.

                The writing for the minor stories and side quests are definitely something to enjoy.  One special side quest included a chicken farmer who believed his feathered stock were attempting to overthrow their masters in a coup d'état.  Another included a small jab into avaunt-guard theater.  The jokes range from the subtle to the full on knee slapper.  I shall just include a few screencaps that you can guess what is going on.

                Internet, I have a few more things that I want to say, but they will have to wait for more time to develop so I can make a legitimate claim against them.  The most prominent being the length of the game due to certain playing habits that the game inevitable draws out of me.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

Entry 019: "King Kong Lives" (1986)

I wish it stayed dead.

Dear Internet,

                "King Kong Lives" is a bad movie.  I do not feel like beating around the bush for 600 words or so to get to this.  I could tell it was going to be a bad movie from the first ten minutes.  The plot of the story follows directly from remake version made in 1976.  The movie begins with the final moments of the last film, so one does not even need to watch the remake to know what happened.  Mighty Kong climbs up a giant building, fights with helicopters that shoot him full of very bloody holes, and he falls to his death.  Or does he?  "King Kong Lives" decides to revive the gigantic terror.  He does not die but is instead taken to a warehouse facility.  There, scientists but him on life support.  Cue the giant dialysis machine and other equally proportional medical machines.  The best part of the opening scene is the giant mechanical heart that they wish to transplant into Kong to take him out of his coma.

                Why do these scientists want to preserve King Kong and bring him back to life?  Did they just forget the numerous individuals that the beast killed and maimed in the last film?  Even in the opening scene that acted as a recap, he killed the men that were piloting one helicopter.  This giant plot hole of the purpose of keeping Kong alive is magnified later on when the heroine of the story notes after finding the mangled bodies of hunters that Kong killed, "You've killed now.  Nothing will stop them from killing you."  He already did kill, many times before he went into his coma.  If anything, up to that point the army was being merciful, only trying to subdue the Kongs with knockout gas.  Oh, did I forget to mention that, Internet, there is another Kong.

                Lady Kong appears early on in the film when a jungle explorer decides to take a nap in a pile of leaves.  Lo and behold, that's not just a pile of leaves, but the hand of a  giant gorilla.  As the explorer, Hank, runs for his life, the local indigenous people jump out of the bushes and rescue Hank by using tranquilizer darts which are more effective than what the army later uses in the film.  Those all natural cures are always so much better than the synthetic ones, are they not?  So, the university that treats the King pays for Lady to be flown in so they can utilize the plasma that she has for a transfusion for King Kong so they can transplant his mechanical heart.  While this seems like an elaborate setup for a line asking if "Kong can love with a heart of metal," the line never comes.  Instead, the viewer is given an unintentionally humorous surgical scene for Kong's transplant.

                All the doctors suit up and the photographers all assemble to witness the world's largest artificial heart transplant.  The scene is littered with giant forceps, clamps and other large surgical equipment.  Instead of being a dramatic scene, it comes across as a bit act by clowns with comically huge instruments.  On the circular saw with a diameter of more than a foot, there is a warning sticker slapped right above.  So, you know they are not using specially made equipment but more likely went down to their closest industrial supply store.  When the doctors cut into Kong's breastbone, blood spews everywhere, coating their scrubs red.  Instead of being grossed by it, I wondered why none of them were wearing eye protection.  Did none of them think that having a giant saw cut through bone might spew blood into their eyes?  When it get time to remove Kong's heart, what do they use?  A giant claw crane.  There is a better chance of that thing squeezing so hard that the heart bursts like a crushed grape than removing it intact.

The Claaaaaw.

                After the successful surgery, everyone goes to a high class tuxedo fancy party, but the main hero still finds a bottle of beer to drink while everyone else drinks out of glasses.  Meanwhile, Kong wakes up, gets up, and is jumping before the scientists watching him decide to subdue him with a magic button.  That does not last long until Kong reawakens, goes to find his lady friend, and escapes with her.  Where do the titanic colossi escape into the mountains?  Honeymoon Ridge, of course, where the audience has to sit through the apes flirt, or attempt to in Kong's case.  Somehow, giant snakes are not romantic.  

                The cast that populate this film are so poorly made that you cannot sympathize with their stupidity.  In one scene, when King Kong rescues Lady Kong, all the personnel decide to get in their bulldozers to stop Kong.  Moments ago, there was talk of a tranquilizer gun that could put one of them down quickly.  Instead, everyone forgets about it.  At the same time, Hank decides to stop the men firing on Kong by driving a car into the car that the soldiers are standing on.  One of the soldiers gets nearly run over and the others are thrown for quite a loop.  Hank gets a wrist slap over that and everyone forgets how he helped Kong escape.  Another sign of stupidity occurs when the heroine of the film, Dr. Amy Franklin, comments that Kong's mechanical heart is "actually stronger."  How in the world did an artificial heart get stronger?  That's like saying the horsepower in your car's engine increased overnight without you doing anything to it.

                The closest thing to a adequately written character is Lt. Col. Archie Nevitt, the officer instructed to watch over the captured Lady Kong and track King Kong throughout the film.  The film tries to portray him as a disgruntled army commander who wants nothing to do with the whole affair, but instead he is the most sympathetic character of the lot.  At first he is willing to capture the escaped Kongs by use of gas rather than killing them, even if it is because of orders.  Later on he is forced to keep his entire command at a base for over four months to watch over Lady Kong because the army does not know what to do with it.  Nobody mentions anything about releasing it back where it came from.  After that, when his men are nearly killed trying to stop Kong he is rightfully infuriated about risking his men in such a fiasco.  At the end of the film, he is squashed under Kong's fist and Nevitt's legs stick up comically in the air.  Throughout the film he has to try and protect people and property from the rampaging beasts.  His involvement is only because the main cast was too foolish in their hopes to revive a monster and keep its mate nearby.  He is there to do his job mostly, and when those around him are so incompetent to do theirs and recognize the situation for what it is, he makes the tough decisions that need to be made.

                "King Kong Lives" has got many more marks against it that I stopped counting.  If I continued to take notes on all the problems and inconsistencies of the movie, I would have doubled my notes.  The only way to enjoy this film is to go into it as a bad movie.  Make your expectations low and laugh at the ludicrously bad writing, acting, and plot.  Also, try to stop yourself from wondering why in the world the people in this story thought that reviving a monster would stop it from being a monster.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. For tomorrow, Fable 3 for the Xbox 360.  That also means more streaming, hopefully.

Entry 018: "Metroid: Other M" Pt. 3

Dear Internet,

                I was right, sadly.  The girl turned out to be the AI Mother Brain copy/clone/android.  I am so lost when it comes to this game's story that I do not care anymore.  That is not such a bad thing considering that it is over, so I do not have to suffer through it anymore.  It is difficult for me to touch  upon this game any more than I have, especially since I have already discussed the major flaws and there was only about two hours of gameplay since yesterday.  

                The gameplay continued to be enjoyable mostly until the end, but there were two major annoyances.  In a boss fight against the Queen Metroid, the game has an annoying hole in its presentation.  It completely forgets to inform you that you have access to Power Bombs.  The sequence of the fight gets to the point where the player has to enter the monster's throat and plant the bomb in the beast's stomach.  Since the entirety of the game handles power ups in the same manner by alerting the player of their activation, the absence of a notification makes the player unaware of their fighting option.  So instead of using the Power Bomb, I and others, I am sure, believed that the game wanted us to lay as many bombs as possible.  After the fifth death, I was forced to look up the solution.  If this game was smarter in its presentation, I might think it was being clever.  On one hand if it was purposefully portraying the protagonist as a fool waiting to be told to when and where to start using her suit's features, it would be a stroke of genius to create a trap for the player by making them also forget to use a suit feature that they already had access to.  The player could then be sympathetic to the protagonist because they too were waiting to be told to use a weapon they already had.  However on the other hand, this game is not near clever enough to try to pull this stunt.  This is something that I might expect from Hideo Kojima or Suda Goichi of "Metal Gear Solid" and "No More Heroes" fame, respectively.  Those two are able to make their games break the forth wall and even criticize the player for something.

                The other thing that annoyed me was the final boss fight.  The player is forced into another first person perspective.  Meanwhile, four or five giant beetle creatures are hopping around attacking other space marines.  What would be the obvious thing to do?  Shoot the bugs of course.  What does the game want you to do?  Aim at MB, the android girl.  I was not even trying to do this.  It was an accident when it happened.  In hindsight it might have been the obvious choice, go after the one controlling the creatures instead of the beasts themselves, but MB was a small smudge on the screen blending into the background at the time.  The game also treats MB sympathetically, trying to make her grief of being cast aside understandable.  So, why does the game expect you to be willing or thinking about shooting her?  I have no answer.  Maybe it has something to do with the underlining, over layering, strike though theme that the game wants to smack in the player.

It's like a game of Where's Waldo but with something trying to rip off your face.

                On top of the whole game is the theme of motherhood.  The game is practically a cradle for it.  I would rather not go over how many things point to this especially with the title's acronym, the excessive use of the word baby at times, the crumbling female relationships present and so on.  A quick search will give endless analysis and discussion for the theme.  What the game fails to do is do anything more with the theme than present it to the player.  Is the game supposed to discuss the relationship of the Queen Metroid with its offspring and how Samus has killed numerous of her offspring?  Does the game wish to point out how Madeline hesitated to aid MB when she was going to be reprogrammed  and try to state that surrogate motherhood is weaker than biological?  Perhaps the game is trying to touch upon Samus' desire to have children and realization that her biological clock is ticking down like the self destruct timer at the end of most of her games?  I do not know, and I do not care.  The problem with dancing around a theme like this and never making a concrete statement is akin to creating a committee which spends all day bouncing around ideas and never making a choice.  Both get us nowhere and at the end are considered wasted time.

                "Metroid: Other M" is an average game.  It might have been a good game.  The game mechanics are very enjoyable and there is a lot of satisfaction in blowing up giant alien bugs, but the heavy handed, idiotic, poorly made story and terrible first person narration using a rather listless voice actor makes the parts that the player has to slug through annoying at best, and hitting-your-head-on-a-wall at worst.  The game took me about eleven and a half hours to get through.  Two hours of that is the story.  I know this because the game unlocks a theater mode once you beat it which can play every cinematic the game has.  Subtracting the time that I had to play over due to dying, the game is one fifth movie non-interactive.  At this point, some game creators should just go and make films instead of making video games.  But alas, hopefully this will not happen again anytime soon.  Me playing a bad game, I mean.  There is no doubt video games that are more interested in being crappy movies will continue for a while yet.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Tomorrow's review will be..."King Kong Lives" 1986.

The game did tell me, an hour after the mentioned boss fight.

Entry 017: "Metroid: Other M" Pt 2

Dear Internet,

                "Metroid: Other M" does not fail my further continued expectations.  What I mean by that is the story continues to get worse.  The character of Samus continues to spiral down into mediocrity, or even worse stupidity.  Two quick examples occur that paint her as such.  One occurs when she meets a larva Metroid to her surprise, not ours.  There was enough foreshadowing to paint a barn, so it really comes as no shock.  What does come as a shock is Adam firing at Samus just as the Metroid is about to attack her.  When asked why he says, "You can't destroy these Metroids."  He says it like it is an excuse for attacking Samus, which really just paints him further as a jerk as I have told you about, Internet.  If he really is playing as a double-agent, which is yet uncertain since this story likes to pull 180s sometimes right after another, then at least an ulterior motive would make more sense than half cooked up reasons.  What makes it worse is that Samus accepts this as an answer.  She could have killed the small Metroid with ease, which is shown by how Adam kills it.  Adam could still have told Samus about the new breed of Metroid without making her suit power down.  Instead, what happens is he forced her suit to power down so he could go on an apparent suicide mission.  But the story is not done, so he might turn out OK.

He shot her on a hunch?

                The other thing that marks a flaw against the "Other M" Samus is her hesitation against the reborn Ridley, a space dragon for all intents and purposes.  When he appears, Samus recalls a moment in her childhood when the creature attacked her people.  What makes this all around silly is that she has already  fought him two to three times depending if you count a robot version.  Making her still trying to overcome a childhood trauma that she has already faced numerous times discounts the personal growth that would have already occurred.  Pushing character development and personal growth is something that this game bleeds of.  However, by not taking Samus as she had already been presented before causes the game to cherry pick what it wants out of her.  "Other M" wants Samus to be both frail and hardened, but it fails in its delivery.  A character cannot display bravery without having fear.  Samus takes a step back because she allows her fear to seep back despite repeatedly confronting it already.   

                Internet, perhaps I have been overly negative so far with this game.  I have only been talking about the story and how it comes across as a poor man's fan-fiction.  The game play is something completely different.  The basic controls are simple but stress highly upon the skill of the player.  Third person perspective segments have a fixed camera for each room and mostly prevent awkward camera angles.  First person segments are entered with a twist of the wrist by pointing to the screen, which makes Samus stay still while firing which creates an awkward transition.  The platforming is well done with only a few questionable jumps presented.  There are a few puzzles whose solutions are less obvious mostly due to little to no hints given and really dark rooms, but the latter might be my brightness settings set too low.  The enemies are merciless.  I found myself time and time again having to retry bosses in this game, but they never once felt broken.  Instead, they were based upon the tested and true pattern formula.  The player has to learn how to fight them, in my case through trial and error.  

                "Other M" will continue for at least one day more.   That means more whiney Samus, more terrible narration, and more terrible plot.  Is everything going to be a clone?  Metroids get cloned.  Ridley gets cloned.  Space pirates get cloned.  This better be a cloned Samus if the story wants to redeem itself with its liberal use of a overly emotional bounty hunter.  Oh, yes, internet, before I forget.  Let us keep to a minimal Samus' decision to nickname the mysterious assassin "the Deleter."  Was being an assassin not good enough?  Traitor is a strong enough word already.  Why give a nickname that sounds like a ten year old would make?  Frankly, Internet, I do not care.

                Also, crappy story prediction, Madeline is the AI program Mother Brain.  Why do I say this?  She has the same initials.  I hope I'm wrong.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop