I’ve been playing Fable 2 since late December, hoping that it would deliver on all the hype. After putting in quite a few hours and completing the main story line, I’ve decided that, like a lot of critics, I’m not quite convinced. Certainly there are impressive elements — the graphics and visual style are suitably impressive, and the combat system manages to be simple, fun, and relatively deep.

However, as plenty of critics have said, the story is way too short, and ends abruptly without so much as a boss fight. The clothing system is pretty fun to play with, but there is an unfortunate lack of options for outfitting your character, and the only equipment that affects your performance is weaponry (which is also lacking variety).

Aside from all these issues, the one that sticks with me the most is the poorly balanced real estate system. On the surface, it’s a neat system. You can buy property and rent it out to earn money. You can purchase furniture to improve the value of your properties and sell them for a profit. You can interact with the local economy to improve (or destroy) the amount of profit you get from your businesses. You collect rent every five minutes of real time, even when you’re not playing.

As nice as it is to earn money when you aren’t playing, the real estate system actually creates an incentive not to play once you get further into the game. After finishing the main story, you gain the ability to purchase Fairfax Castle for 1,000,000 gold. I didn’t have close to that amount, so my strategy was to buy up as much valuable real estate as possible and then stop playing for a week until my bank account got fat enough. There wasn’t enough content to keep me occupied in Albion until I had enough money, so I just switched to a different game. Call me crazy, but shouldn’t game mechanics actually encourage people to play?

To make matters worse, now that I have more money than I can spend, there’s no reward that seems worth the trouble. Apparently the reward for collecting all 50 silver keys, aside from an Xbox achievement is 50,000 gold? Seriously? After spending a million on a piece of property? Why would I spend hours collecting keys for chump change like that?

As much as I complain about Fable 2, my wife and my brother (who get the brunt of my complaints) would be quick to point out that I’m still playing. I can’t really explain why, except maybe for my compulsion to collect obscure achievements.

One thing my gamer friends (ok, that’s all of them) and I always talk about is coordinating our purchase of a game so we can play together. Things rarely work out that way, mainly since everyone but me is still playing World of Warcraft. But last week three of us arranged to pick up Left 4 Dead at the same time. We even carpooled to the store.

After a few play sessions with everything from one to four players, here are some initial thoughts:

The co-op basket
Left 4 Dead is similar to Portal in one very important way. No, not that it’s made by Valve. At it’s core, Left 4 Dead is an experiment in one gameplay mechanic. Just like Portal took the concept of the portal gun and explored it to its utmost potential, Left 4 Dead attempts the same feat with multiplayer co-op. Zombie games are nothing new. Co-op isn’t either. But Left 4 Dead is designed to force teamwork in co-op, which, strangely, hasn’t been done too often.

From this angle, Left 4 Dead is a smashing success. Co-op play is great fun. It’s intense, fast-paced, requires communication, and presents a decent challenge even on the normal difficulty setting.

The problem is that the game puts all its undead eggs in this one basket. The amout of fun this game offers is directly proportional to the number of people playing. It’s fantastic with four, pretty good with three, just ok with two, and borderline boring with one. Not being one to play online with strangers, I anticipate that we’ll frequently run into scheduling problems. And that’s too much like work.

Embrace the random
The other primary feature of Left 4 Dead is it’s sophisticated AI system. Every time you play a level, it’s different. The game AI decides where to place boss zombies and where zombie rushes will come from. It definitely keeps you on your toes. I imagine higher difficulty levels (which I haven’t yet graduated to) are quite intense. Even music and sound effects are controlled by this system, which creates a wonderful mood just at the right times and gives perfect queues to build suspense about which monster might be around the next corner.

In fact, I think Left 4 Dead’s AI system presents a big step forward in gaming. There’s no more memorizing enemy locations and finding just the right way to take them out. The randomness of gameplay forces you to play the game with urgency each time through.

However (you knew it was coming), all this glorious randomness comes with a price: there’s not much content. The game includes four campaigns, each of which takes about an hour to play from start to finish. They’re brilliantly designed, but they’re short. Actually, they’re about the right length. One hour of zombie slaying is about right. There just aren’t enough campaigns to choose from. It may be impossible to know where the zombies are coming from, but you can certainly learn the best locations to fight them. The first time through a campaign is exhilarating; you don’t know where you’re going, and you don’t know from which door death might emerge.

Overall, Left 4 Dead is quite well executed. There aren’t enough games these days that focus on quality over quantity. Valve has produced the last few. Nevertheless, I find myself wishing for just a little more quantity on this one. I don’t know how many more coordinated play sessions we’ll pull off before somebody loses interest. Once that happens, the chances of anyone else sticking around drop considerably. Just like in the zombie apocalypse, if you don’t all stick together, the fun won’t last long.

Clearly I’ve been a bit absent from the blog lately. I’ve got two excuses. One is that I wanted to let the SPUDZOOKA announcement percolate a little. The other is that I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto IV in every spare moment. It’s amazing that I managed to get SPUDZOOKA out the door at all considering the fact that I bought GTA a couple days before I finished it.

So here are a few thoughts about GTA based on my experience so far. The reasons I play? Entertaining gameplay and world-class writing.

Gameplay
Grand Theft Auto games have been known in the past for having some spotty gameplay. Driving has always been fun, but the weapon targeting system seems to get a complete overhaul with every release. As expected with GTA IV, the driving system and car physics are top notch. It’s still amazingly fun just to cruise around town. Now that I’ve made may way to the second area of the game, there are finally some straight roads to fly down at top speed. I’m still getting used to the hand brake in this one, since it’s so easy to skid, but I like the fact that you have to learn how to use the brakes if you’re going to get around quickly.

The targeting system again has been revamped, and this time it’s pretty good. After a little while getting used to it, I realized that it basically operates like a modified shooter control with a lock-on system added to it. You can walk around with your free target mode engaged and the system will automatically lock onto any enemies that come into view. It works pretty well.

They’ve also added a cover system, which lets you hide behind obstacles during a firefight. I’ve found this quite fun so far, since it gives me a way to take out targets systematically rather than just running in shooting like a madman, which I did a lot of in previous GTA titles.

Writing
Lots of people probably argue that gameplay is what makes GTA shine. It’s just a fun world to interact with. This is certainly true, but I think the real difference between GTA and a lot of other games is its writing. The characters are bigger-than-life and well developed. Niko, being a typical GTA hero, basically just does what people ask him to, but he seems to have a nicely layered back story that’s coming out bit by bit. Plus, a big reason I can drive around for hours is that the radio stations crack me up. This is comedy writing at its finest and a brilliant commentary on American culture.

It’s not just the radio stations, though. GTA IV finally seems to have latched onto something that others in the series have flirted with but never explored fully: the American Dream. Sure, all the GTA titles have dealt with the idea of one man pulling his own way up through whatever means necessary. But III and Vice City were simple mob stories. There wasn’t much to make you relate to the hero (in III he never spoke at all). He was just a criminal trying to get rich. San Andreas developed Carl’s character a bit more and toyed with the idea that he was a product of his circumstances and was somehow trying to rise above all the violence in his life.

But Niko Bellic is different to me. He’s a man ruined by his past, and he has come to the U.S. both to escape something and to find something (or someone). He finds Liberty City a very different place than he expected, complicated and damaged. It’s this interaction between Niko and Liberty City, his search for inner peace in a complex and chaotic place, that gives GTA IV something special. Niko in effect personifies the city, which in turn is a powerful American symbol, full of as much repressed anger and fear, but full of life as well. I can see him slowly forming a connection to the city and its inhabitants, just like I am as the player, and it’s a beautiful thing.

Gamasutra posted an article a few days ago about the 20 essential Japanese RPGs. It’s pretty long but worth a skim. I’ve spent most of my gaming life (until recently) fairly insulated from reviews and online chatter about the quality of games I played. As a result, I knew what I liked, but I didn’t know if anyone else agreed. It was fun to read someone else’s take on those games.

Turns out I have played quite a few of the ones listed, including:

• Final Fantasy IV
• Final Fantasy VI
• Final Fantasy VII
• Final Fantasy VIII
• Final Fantasy X
• Final Fantasy XII
• Chrono Trigger
• Chrono Cross

Lots of Square games on that list, obviously, but they were only one of two or three outfits creating US-bound RPGs in the 80s and 90s. Plus, I liked all their games, so I tended to go out and buy them.

I’ve never played Xenogears, but I did play the first installment of Xenosaga, and I definitely agree with this article’s take on that game:

Still, once again, the plot [of Xenosaga] was simply far too ambitious for its own good, and the number of planned installments was cut down from six to three, compressing the plot even more. It didn’t help that the first two games were saddled with terrible pacing issues, plodding cutscenes, and boring battle systems.

Japanese vs. “Western” RPGs
This article also intrigued me because I’m still working on Oblivion (which will no doubt be a looong process), and I’ve only just begun to understand the differences between Japanese and Western-style RPGs. This is yet another way in which I’m a little slow, but I have never really spent much time with any Western RPGs before Oblivion.

I tend to like story-based games with interesting characters, and Western RPGs have leaned away from story and more toward gameplay, with their open-ended worlds and emphasis on first-person role-playing.

To avoid launching into a rant about the state of stories in games (which you can find here at Blog of War, and also here and here), I’ll just say that so far I still prefer the Japanese model. Most definitions of narrative require an some act of telling (by an author and/or narrator). It’s this author who interprets events and helps shape their meaning.

Japanese-style RPGs tend to acknowledge the existence of an author/narrator and adopt a more cinematic style — they tell a story. Western RPGs tend to drop you in a world and let you, in a sense, create your own story. The trouble with this model is two-fold for me:

1. Most of us aren’t good story tellers. The things we do in these spaces probably isn’t very interesting. If I choose to spend my time in Oblivion on alchemy, I’ll just run around collecting seeds and roots all the time. Nothing riveting there. Sure, I could play the thief or the wizened wizard, but these are just types; they’re not characters with flaws and emotions. I want characters.
2. There’s no one to tell the story to. If a story needs a teller, it also, out of necessity, needs an audience. If a man tells a story in a forest and no one is there to listen, is it still a story? Sorry… The point is that I can certainly entertain myself in a sandbox-type game — where I’m the story-teller with no audience — but I find it far more compelling to be an active audience member, using the available gameplay to move a story along.

That’s my two cents. What’s your preference?