After being frustrated by only having 2 team mates in Left 4 Dead I started playing Tomb Raider Evolution demo. Notice how I said "started"? Thats because I never got into, inside, through the island. I never left the cliffs!! I couldntt for the life of me figure out how to get inside the island. I saw the ruins/cave in the cliff where I asumed I was supposed go but I could not get there. I felt like an IDIOT! I am not a newb at video games, nor am I stupid in general, but this demo made me fell like I was both! Ive never played a TR game all the way through before so that might have something to do with it, but the only other example of a terrble demo thats worse, is that Simpsons demo....did ANYONE pass that boss/demo?!?

So first off yes, this is late. I wanted to finish the game before I gave a final judgment. I argued with myself over how this should be written: review the game based solely on its merits and flaws or compare it to the first game or both. In the end I chose both but really emphasized the comparison aspect.



The visuals are mediocre. For how long the 360 has been out and with all the other developers “wowing” me like Fallout, Oblivion, Bioshock, etc, these graphics are just not up to par. Many people complain of the “ice skating effect,” this is when your character appears to be skating on ice rather than running on the ground. I never noticed this until I heard this complaint from others, then I saw it all the time. The visuals for Fable 1 were great and fit the art direction that game was going with. These just felt lazy. It’s as if they had two separate art directions for characters and environments; with characters taking on a cartoony feel and the environments looking very real.



The sound and music are spectacular. The little music that is in the game fits so well you don’t ever notice that there is music until you pause the game and realize how quiet it is. The sound effects and voice acting are also excellent. Yes there may only be a few NPC voices but all are done well enough to bring you into the game. The dog noises in particular are a real treat, they had my real dog reacting every time the dog in the game found something.



Story, or lack there of. It is just a simple revenge story from the very beginning. I was very caught up in the story of Fable 1, and looked forward to what twists the plot would weave in the second installment… but they never came. This is my biggest complaint as the only reason I kept playing this sub par game was to find out what Monlyneux had in store for me, turns out it was nothing.



Combat-wombat-garbage bat! There is one button for mele attacks, one button for blocking, and one button for combo-like flourishes…..and guess what theyre all the same button! Isn’t that neat? Well no it’s a terrible system designed for retarded “non gamers” who have the motor skills and hand-eye coordination of an aborted fetus. Magic is one button that is held to charge up the spell(during this you cant move, or block and you take damage) to do more damage, instead of holding the button to make the spell last longer and link to more enemies to do more damage as in Fable1. Guns and crossbows are very fun to use in this game, guns in particular. Although you cant run and shoot at the same time…wtf? The manual aiming system is awful and the auto aim feature frequently does not pick the enemy closest to you. Even with these problems it was very satisfying to shoot someone and see them fly back with experience orbs flowing like blood.

There are other problems with bad design that just exacerbate the poor gaming experience. The menu/item select screen and the expression wheel. To eat food you have to pause the game, scroll to items, then scroll to food, then scroll the piece of food to eat, eat it, then it throws you back into the game. If you want to eat another piece of food or the same type of food you have to do this all over again. In Fable 1 food and potions could be hot keyed to the d pad manually. They have removed this feature and instead the game will hot key items it thinks you need. To be fair it will hot key potions, but only when you are about to die with a sliver of health left, in the heat of an awkward one button battle you have decide to pause it or hope the game hot keys the potion in time. In a game that touts it’s ability to choose your own path, the expression wheel is the ultimate personification of this….except instead of re tooling the difficult to use wheel from the last game they decided to use a similarly hard to use and extremely awkward piece of garbage. With the rest of the game so “nerfed” in terms of user control(one button combat and no hot key) and other games streamlining path control(mass effect, KoTOR) the expression wheel is just too daunting to use.



Bugs, oh man there are so many bugs! From visual errors to sound bugs to game play mishaps. There is a lot of clipping in this game, and it was very distracting when I am trying to immurse myself in this other world when my head passes through a rock or my knees go through chairs. I metioned the ice capades earlier. The sound will cut in and out, with loud scratches when it pops back in. I don’t know how many times I came back from a mission or quest and the person I had to see to collect the reward was invisible. The bredcrum trail that lead to them and encircled them was there but the NPC was invisible. Fable 1 had all of these problems but I expected to see less or none at all in the sequel.

It sounds as if I hated the game, and in truth I did. I had very high hopes because I loved the first game so much. I think they changed way too much and none of what they changed was for the better. Hopefully I can get an extra %20 at game crazy trading this in and pre ordering left 4 dead.

Valve=FAIL


Playing episode 2 of Half Life last night will be the last time I open the orange box. You have failed Valve. Yes this "critique" is years late as this game has been out a while, I am here to tell you that this game is(was?) way OVER HYPED Valve is not GOD and does not deserve your praise. There are errors which I find unforgivable not to mention UN-fun.


1. Gordon Freeman is NOT some 600 pound obese whale!! So why am I getting caught on EVERYTHING?!? Mainly door jams. Unless I line up the cross hairs so that they are in the direct middle of the doorway I get "stuck" and cant go through. When I say middle the term should not be used relatively, but completely 100% in the middle of the left and right door jam. And forget walking over some random trash in the game NOOOO, its impossible. "Oh this shard of a box I just smashed cause it was in my way, I can’t step over it?.....REALLY??.....it's like an inch tall!

2. AI stands for Always Intheway. How many times has the AI been so close to me that I can’t move so I can't run out of the way of enemy fire? How about every time there is AI around, at least Alyx will kill stuff. It seems like all the other AI are shooting blanks....or paper balls or something. Here is a tip: when the game gives you people to control point them to the area of heavy fire and watch them die....then breath a sigh of relief.

3. Killing anything other than a zombie or police/soldier is a chore. Chore is the correct word people, chores are boring, never fun, repetitive, and sometimes difficult. I played Half Life 2, ep 1, and almost finished ep2. I stopped at the part where I am throwing 'Magnusson balls" at the AT-AT rip-offs. Why did I stop at that part? Well it really sucks when I have to hold some sticky bomb with the grav gun, can't run, can't shoot and when I get close enough to throw it some hunter shoots the bomb negating all the work I did to get close enough to the strider. Killing one or two in this new unconventional way is exciting, but killing a whole swarm of 12 or so is tiresome, irritating, and very frustrating.....just give me some rockets you jerks!!

4.MOAR STORY!!! Less fetch. It seems like I am doing a fetch quest every 5 minutes. In episode 2 the main story/point is to get to White Forrest and launch some rocket. But is seems like I never move in a "straight" line. I am always veering off to help someone, plug something in, send a transmission, or climb a building only to come out on the other side 10 feet away...only with less ammo and health. This may not bug some or any of you, but I find it very irritating that I rarely move forward it's usually up then down, since ep2 is so short it's not as bad, but it was like this all the time in Half Life 2.

Why; I wrote this cause all I ever hear about Valve and Half Life is praise. Yes PORTAL was awesome, but notice I never mention it nor TF2. Half Life 2, ep1, and ep2 are far from perfect so please stop saying they are!