Fable 2
Reviewed by:
Gerasimos Manolatos
Price: $69.99 (collector's edition), $59.99 (game only) Gerasimos Manolatos
The Skinny: Five hundred years after the events of Fable, a new hero awakens (that'd be you, so look alive) after the evil Lucien murders your sister and attempts to take control of all of Albion from the comfort of his high tower, The Spire.
The Good: A story that could very well take you 50 hours to complete, the third-person role-playing game has a lot of features that include fixes for some of the original game's problems as well as valuable additions. Wanna buy every single house in the game? Go ahead—even raise and lower rents as you see fit. Wanna murder that idiot that looked at you funny as he passed you? Do it. Wanna pay that woman next to that house to sleep with you? Okay. Everything you do in the game has either a positive or negative effect on your reputation, and if, say, you lower your likeability ratings down to George W. Bush levels, your character sprouts Devil horns and his body becomes disfigured and wretched-looking. What's more, there is no sacrifice in the visuals like you get in other open-world games, so you'll be fighting in one of the more visually stunning regions ever pixelated and copied to a DVD.
The Bad: You don't die once your health meter depletes, instead you lose a certain amount of experience. It works, but it's definitely a notch down from imposing any severe consequences for sucking.
Maxim Tip: You'll be presented with the choice of levelling up a wide array of magic spells. It's best to avoid being a jack-of-all-trades type and get something like Force Push (yes, of the Star Wars variety) up to the maximum level before working to get any others.
Buy, Rent, or Disembowel? Buy. Make this Fable your reality.
Dead Space
Reviewed by:
Gerasimos Manolatos
Price: $59.99 Gerasimos Manolatos
The Skinny: Engineer Isaac Clarke goes on a routine mission to fix a communications system in a deep space mining ship when his shuttle is grounded by a mysterious alien breed. It's up to him to beat back the evil throngs and fight his way off the ship before he is turned into alien fart dust.
The Good: In what we describe as a mix between Mass Effect and Half-Life, Dead Space is one scary-as-shit action adventure game that'll stay in your head long after you fight through to the end. You'll want to go back and piece together the story, which begins with you only knowing that aliens with scissorhands have eaten your fellow crewmembers, and you'll want to try out the harder levels (see below) for an even greater challenge. The bosses are big, bad, and ugly and you'll have a hell of a fun time trying to figure out how to take them out. We especially liked the navigation mechanism, activated by pushing down the right thumbstick, which shows you where you need to go for your next objective.
The Bad: The game is generally pretty easy on the medium setting. We got through the whole game with only minimal resistance and do-overs, especially against level bosses. There isn't any multiplayer component, which may warrant a rental for anyone who's looking for something more long term—it took us about 10 hours to get through the whole thing.
Did You Know? Protagonist Isaac Clarke is named after famed science fiction writers Arthur C. Clark and Isaac Asimov.
Buy, Rent, or Disembowel? Buy it.
SOCOM: Confrontation
Reviewed by:
Gerasimos Manolatos
Gerasimos Manolatos
Price: $59.99 (game and bluetooth headset), $39.99 (stand alone game)
The Skinny: Despite the past seven years of relative calm in the U.S., terrorism has been at an all-time high on video game consoles. Gear up for another go at the evildoers.
The Good: With Call of Duty 4 dominating the wartime shooters market, there are a lot of things on SOCOM: Confrontation that might warrant at least a peek. In fact, there probably isn't a tactical team-based shooter out there that's more realistic than SOCOM. You start off at a player customization screen that gives you a wide variety of options to trick out your online avatar and then it's off to war. The game is a slower-paced experience, so you'd best learn how to really maneuver yourself around a battlefield. For example, running out into the open, while maybe a better tactic in other games, will get you sniped or shot at quite easily. To that extent, you'll be able to lean around corners and duck underneath rubble with the use of the PS3's SIXAXIS motion controls.
The Bad: We were expecting a lot from the sequel to the popular PS2 title, but this one just falls flat overall. It took about 20 minutes from us inserting the game into the console to get into "the shit"—there's a lengthy install and a patch update (already?) that you'll need to get through before playing. The actual gameplay was underwhelming, as well—there was a lot of walking, running, looking, and nothing going on. (One online associate even shouted into his headset: "Where is everyone?") Also, this is a multiplayer-only game and, while the PlayStation Network is free to play on, you're going to have to endure being shot repeatedly by five-year veterans of the series.
More Green For Blue: Our experience with the official PlayStation bluetooh headset was a good one—for 20 extra dollars, it's worth it.
Buy, Rent, or Disembowel? Rent this and hope Sony comes through with patches to fix up some of the sloppiness.