Fable II

I wrote this review ages ago for a gaming website my hubby, Tyson, and I have. I've never put it on my blog before, so here you go!

My Overall Thoughts:

-    This game is good, but I liked the first one a ton better.  It has an alright story, but they altered things that should have been left alone.  

-    I would still suggest playing this if you have played the first one, but prepare to be let down.

My Thoughts on Game play:

-    The story starts out with you as a kid, but it isn’t long before you become an adult. The story is kinda connected to the first one. The game takes place a long time after the first one ends. The heroes of Albion are mostly myths, and your character is a descendant of the guy in Fable I.

-    Your character can level up in 3 different areas:  Strength, Will (magic), and Skill (shooting).  It is pretty simple, and easy to catch on.  No need to follow a tutorial or anything.

-    This game has a lot of morality and ethical choices in it. You decide if you want to be good or bad. I try to stay in the middle mostly, but sometimes, I like to go evil. 

-    The game has a main story line to follow along with several side quests. The quests are easy enough to follow, and they provide a trail of gold light for you to follow in case you get lost or don’t know where you are going. This is one of the new features that I actually like. A lot of games could use this attribute.

-    The ending is very very anticlimactic.  The whole game is based on getting Lucian, and I was expecting an epic boss fight at the end of the game. I was very disappointed. You don’t even get to fight the guy! What the heck! What was the point? 

My Thoughts on Controls:

                

-    Control is easy, but I have an issue with one thing. Strength and Skill are easy enough to grasp, but it took me a while to figure out what to do with my spells. You have to hold down the B button for a while before you let go and cast your spell. It is soooooooooo lame! The first game had way better magic controls. When you level up a spell, you have to hold the B button down longer to activate the upgraded spell, and the enemies can hit you while you are holding B. It sucks. 

                

-    The D-pad was not as useful in this game either. You couldn’t assign potions or food to a direction. It just automatically selected what it thought you wanted. Targeting other people brought up expression on your D-pad, but it randomly chooses the ones to use.  

                

-    The last issue I have with the controls is the menu. You have to scroll through a lot of crap to get to stuff. It isn’t fun. This is why it is good to be able to assign stuff to the D-pad.

                

-    They should have left all the good control stuff alone. It would have been so much better if this game controlled like the first one.

My Thoughts on Graphics:

                

-    I thought they could have upped the graphics big time in this game.  It looks just like the Fable on the original Xbox. The 360 can do sooooo much better than what they put in this game.

My Thoughts on Sound:

                 

-    The music is pretty classic to the old one. It’s there in the background, but it isn’t annoying. It’s calming and stuff. Sometimes the battle music gets annoying, but it’s all good.  I wouldn’t go out and buy the soundtrack for this game or anything, but the music is ok. 

                

-    The characters talk to you and stuff, and sometimes it bugs me, but that is what you get when you enter a village of adoring fans. Your character makes noises when you interact with other people, but you never say anything.

Lego Indiana Jones

My Overall Thoughts:

-    Buy it! Love it! Conquer it!

-    When we first got this game, I wasn’t really into it. I thought it was frustrating. I picked it up again, and it became my new crack! I was so addicted. I couldn’t stop playing!

My Thoughts on Game Play:

-    This game is awesome for Indiana Jones fans and Lego fans. If you are both, it is doubly awesome! The game goes through the classic and memorable Indiana Jones movies: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade. Classic scenes from the movies are redone as cut scenes, but since Lego men don’t talk, a lot of hilarious sounds and gestures are used to portray the story. It was really fun to play through these movies as Lego men. Indiana Jones was my favorite, but I wish he had a gun. It was awesome to wreck things and break down/build up Lego creations.

-    Each movie is split into six different stages. You may play each stage in two different modes, Story and Free Play. Story mode goes through the movie with the cut scenes and specific characters. Free Play allows you go through the stage with several different characters. You will need each character to find treasures and mail boxes. Different characters have different abilities and tools. One guy carries a shovel, another guy has a wrench, some guys are small and fit through smaller doors, the girls can jump higher, some guys have bombs, etc.

 

-    Treasures and Mail Boxes are hidden throughout each stage. There are ten treasures and one box that need to be mailed. Treasures build artifacts that allow you to unlock bonus stages, and mail boxes unlock extra abilities and other benefits.

 

-    After finishing each stage, you are allowed to go back to Barnett College. It is kind of like the home base for the game. You can go around the college and check out things you’ve collected and do other extra stuff. When you beat 100% of the game, it rains hearts and money in the college! It is fantastic!

-    There were a few glitchy things in the game, and it was frustrating. I got stuck floating in the air once, and there were a few jumping parts that sucked! I feel like this game wasn’t tested as well as it should have been. The AI was retarded, and hindered more than helped most of the time.

 

My Thoughts on Control:

-    The controls are easy to learn, and I didn’t have any complaints, except the glitches. It was easy to jump around and do stuff and switch between characters.

My Thoughts on Graphics:

-    I love that everything was made from Legos! It was fun to see scenes and props from the movies made out of Legos. Like I said before, the Lego men were hilarious!

My Thoughts on Sound:

-    The music for the game is taken from the soundtrack of each movie! AWESOME! John Williams is so much fun, and it really helps get you in the mood to play some Indiana Jones!

-    Sound effects are fabulous, and the Lego men noises are funny!

Batman: Arkham Asylum

My Overall Thoughts:

-    I really really enjoyed this game.  Batman fans are going to love and adore it!  

-    Batman: Arkham Asylum is a sophisticated game that is challenging yet beatable.  It is everything a Batman game should be, great villains, detective solving, beating people up, dark and scary surroundings, and everything else!  I was geekin’ out the whole way through.  This game is seriously epic , and I think any gamer will enjoy playing it.

My Thoughts on Gameplay:

-    Batman has once again captured the notorious Joker, but this time, being captured was all part of Joker’s plan.  He quickly takes over Arkham Asylum and puts his plan into motion.  Several of Batman’s villains are seen throughout the game.  Some of them are working to help Joker, and others are just up to their own tricks.  It is pretty thrilling to play as Batman and take down these bad dudes using detective skills, fighting techniques, and of course, awesome gadgets.

-    I loved the different playing styles this game incorporates.  Batman becomes the ultimate predator when taking out armed thugs.  You can hide in air ducts and on top of gargoyles to take out opponents all stealthy like.  You can also take on 1-20 guys in hand to hand combat.  Final take downs are just so awesome!  The guys with knives and electric rods are annoying though.  Batman gets gassed by the Scarecrow a few times, and the game style changes to a side scrolling stealth type of play.  There is a lot more, but I don’t want to spoil it for ya.

                

-    Throughout the game you will find little riddler trophies, and you can choose to solve the riddles or not.  It will give you achievements, but it isn’t important to the main story line.  I think I solved about half of the riddles just running through the game and looking at things out of the ordinary.

-    Like I said, this game is challenging all the way through, but I never got stuck and everything is doable.  I think this game would be enjoyable for all gamers.

My Thoughts on Control:  

-    The controls are pretty sophisticated, but pretty easy to learn.  The game will prompt you what to do, so you will never forget how to do anything.  The prompting is a lot like Zelda, so it isn’t annoying or anything.

                

-    My only complaint is the hand to hand combat might have been a little too sophisticated for me.  Your basic attack button is X, but you can also counter attack with Y when a thug is about to hit you.  My problem was you couldn’t just button mash the X and use the Y when needed.  Timing is everything, and it was little hard to fight a big group of guys, especially when some of the guys had electric rods and knives.  You have to stun the knife guys before you can take them out, and you have to jump over the rod guys and take them from behind.  The key is to try to be aware of ALL the guys around you.  It gets tough, but the game is really good at being aware of Batman’s surroundings.

                

-    All the gadgets are pulled out by pushing the Left Trigger and pushing the Right Trigger uses them.  It’s really simple.  You can select which gadget to use by selecting a direction on the d-pad.  I really didn’t prefer having gadgets assigned to a diagonal direction, but it was ok.

                

-    Batman has a detective mode that is really useful throughout the game.  You can easily go in and out of the mode by hitting LB.  The mode lets you see how many thugs you have to fight, and which ones are armed.  Clues and extra things are also highlighted in this mode.  

My Thoughts on Graphics:

-    The surroundings and characters are awesome!  The programmers did a really great job with the graphics in this game.  

-    Batman’s cape effects were great, and his costume could get torn and ripped but it didn’t regenerate, so it was more realistic.  

-    The environments were really done perfectly.  The entire story happens in one night, so it is dark and creepy just like Batman stories are supposed to be. 

-    The villains were designed really well.  They were creepy and scary to fight.  I wish they had kept Harley Quinn’s and Poison Ivy’s traditional costumes though.

My Thoughts on Sound:

-    Sound effects and music were really good.  No complaints.  It kept the game suspenseful and perfect.

                

-    I absolutely LOVE that they used the same voice actors from the old original Batman cartoon!  Mark Hamill does an AMAZING job (as always) with the Joker’s voice.  It was a real treat to have the old cast back together again to make this game even more epic.

Plants vs. Zombies

My Overall Thoughts:

-    This is a super fun and highly addicting tower defense type game!!  I played for hours and still craved more!

-    I've complete everything I can, but I'm still playing.  Seriously, I did EVERYTHING!  I have ALL the achievements.  I'm going through adventure mode again!

-    This is a great game for all ages!  I enjoyed it on the Xbox 360 just as much as I did on the PC.

My Thoughts on Gameplay:

-    The whole "story" of the game is waves of zombies are attacking your house, and you must plant different varieties of plants to protect your house/brains.

-    Going through adventure mode is a great place to start the game.  It teaches you how to play and introduces you to each plant and what it does as you unlock them.  You'll also get to battle in every scenario.  Fog is my least favorite.

-    Mini Challenges are really fun.  Each level is a different puzzle that makes you think a bit to solve.  Some levels are patterned after other popular PopCap games.

-    Survival levels are hard to get through towards the end.  I had to look online for help on a few of them.  It is played on the pool scenario.  I made it to flag 120 on Endless Survival!!!!

-    After you play for a while, you unlock the Zen Garden.  You can find plants during levels you play or buy some in Dave's shop.  The plants give you money, and you can sell them for lots of money when they're mature.

-    Dave's shop is run by Crazy Dave, apparently he is the only one who has survived the zombie apocalypse cause he's craaaazy!  At Dave's shop you can buy additional (awesome) plants, flowers, house upgrades, additional slots, and various other useful items.  My house is awesome!  Dave runs his shop out of the back of his car.  It's pretty funny.

-    You can play a cool Co-op mode where one player uses plants and the other player plays the zombies.  I personally like playing the zombies.  I think they have the advantage.  You can also play some of the mini challenges and adventure mode with 2 players.

My Thoughts on Control:

-    It is different to play with an Xbox controller rather than a mouse, but it isn't difficult at all.

-    I liked how I could scroll through the plants using the RB and LB.

My Thoughts on Graphics:

-    The graphics aren't anything fancy, but it is fun. 

-    I think the plant and zombie designs are really clever.  They are fun and cartoony.

-    I like that anyone can play this.  The zombies won't scare your little ones, but they are fun enough for adults to play.  

-    Watch Crazy Dave's license plate in his shop.  It changes each time.  Some of them are pretty funny.

My Thoughts on Sound:

-    I find myself humming along to the music and sound effects of the game A LOT!  I also like to say "brains" all deep and gravely like the zombies.  

-    I like Crazy Dave's jibberish!  He is a funny guy.

-    I LOVE the little music video at the end, and the song is highly addicting.  Don't be surprised if you are singing about zombies in your yard all day.