I tend to have somewhat mixed feelings about the Fable franchise. As a PC gamer I’ve only been able to properly play the first and third instalments, and both of these have given me moments of elation and exasperation.

Fable III came out for the PC in May 2011, almost a year after it did on the Xbox 360. Set fifty years after the events of the previous game, you are the prince/ss of Albion, your father having left your kingdom in the questionable hands of your older brother Logan following his death. When the game begins he is shown to be an outright tyrant, cold-bloodedly ordering protestors (and/or even your childhood sweetheart) killed and generally behaving in a manner befitting an antagonist. However, as the story progresses it turns that he was only acting out of necessity; his seemingly cruel decisions were made in order to ultimately save the kingdom from a far larger threat (and let’s face it: having to make such difficult decisions in order to protect your people from that would change anyone for the worse).

Like all Fable games, Fable III did some things well and some things not so well. The PC version (which is, of course, the version I played) has pretty poorly optimised controls, and while they’re not too bad overall having hold down the confirm button for every little decision can get a tad annoying. Additionally missions can get a little repetitive (especially if you plan on cultivating relationships with anyone), and I’ve been glitched into a corner by irregularly respawning mobs – and subsequently had no choice but to let them kill me – more than once.

The real brick wall moment of Fable III (although, as I hope to suggest, this is not necessarily a bad thing), however, is when you depose Logan and have to face up to the cold hard reality of ruling a kingdom in danger. You have a series of increasingly difficult decisions to make, and always choosing in favour of your citizens’ immediate wellbeing, while making them happy, could spell their doom in the long term. The latter also puts you seriously out of pocket, and with in-game time passing irregularly it can be quite tricky to rustle up the required funds unless you’re willing to indulge in some serious lute playing/pie baking/blacksmithing (not that there’s that much difference between all the job mini games). However, maybe pushing such a complex series of moral choices on a player – and thus forcing them to think long and hard about them – is, from both a narrative and a roleplaying perspective, a good thing.

That said, I did enjoy Fable III for the most part, so perhaps it’s fair to say that all the little niggles were eclipsed by the experience as a whole. Let’s hope that upcoming threequel Gears of War 3 will be the same.

Mortal Kombat by NetherRealm Studios is an awesome game that I reviewed not too long ago. I highly recommend the game to fighting game fans.

Now NetherRealm has unleashed the first DLC for the game, in a female kombatant named Skarlet. She is the 33rd fighter on the roster for the game. I’ve purchased Skarlet and played with her quite a bit, and I have to say that she is very cool and fun to fight with. But is she worth the $5 admission price?

Skarlet’s story is similar to Ermac’s or perhaps Mileena’s. She is another mystical construct of Shang Tsung’s, molded together from the blood of Shao Kahn’s arena to fight for him. Similar to how Ermac is comprised entirely of souls, Skarlet is made entirely out of blood. Players could see Skarlet tied up in the background of one of Mortal Kombat’s levels during gameplay, and also in the Story mode. She was hung there to feed off of the blood of the kombatants who died in the arena.

Skarlet was originally rumored to be a secret character in Mortal Kombat 2, but was in actuality a color glitch for Kitana, much like the rumored Ermac was a color glitch for Scorpion. The red bikini-clad warrior weilds 4 kunai and short ninja blades.

Skarlet is very fast, and similar in fighting style to Kitana. Her projectiles are kunai, which she throws in pairs. One cool feature she has is that she can throw the first kunai and delay the second throw as long as you want, which definitely has some tactical advantages, especially against online players who try to be super cheap with Kano. 

Just like the other female warriors on Kombat’s roster, Skarlet is built more for speed than strength. She has some cool Smoke-esque teleportation moves that give her an edge in battle.

She has a gruesome X-Ray move, where she stabs her opponent in the temple with a kunai, and then kick her heel straight through their eyeball. Ouch. 

She also has some cool Fatalities. Her main fatality is pretty brutal, showing her slitting her opponent’s throat straight through to the spine, and soaking in the resulting plasma shower.

So it all comes down to this: is Skarlet worth 5 bucks? Really, it depends on whether you’ve mastered the rest of the roster and want a new face, and also whether you enjoy fighting with the ladies. She looks cool, she fights fast and furiously, and she definitely earns the right to be called a Mortal Kombat fighter with some of the most brutal moves displayed thus far. I don’t regret the purchase.

Archive Reviews is a new series dedicated to reviewing games that have been on shelves for a while, but some people may have just gotten around to picking up, from a ludicrous Steam sale or what have you.

Does Splinter Cell : Conviction live up to the hype after years in development? The answer is an emphatic yes.

Ubisoft took some huge risks when they decided to completely overhaul Splinter Cell from the ground up in 2007. Then, they decided that overhaul needed a makeover, and here we are today with Splinter Cell Conviction.

All that reconstructive surgery has paid off, because even though it may not resemble its former self very much, Splinter Cell Conviction has been refined into one kick-ass stealth-action game. The story pulls you in, the graphics are great, and the  gameplay is fast and fluid. This is a great game to pickup now, since you can get it online for super cheap (click here for Amazon link).
If you were to pay full price for this game, you might feel like you didn’t quite get your money’s worth, because the campaign is very short. Even with the very awesome multiplayer thrown in, you can see everything the game has to offer you in under 10 hours. But at the bargain price you can get it for now, Splinter Cell Conviction is worth every penny.

Even though the game is short, it squeezes every last drop of action-packed fun out of the time you spend playing it. If you are into action movies or tv shows like 24, you will probably love this game. In fact, Sam Fisher in this game is very reminiscent of Jack Bauer, beating the hell out of suspects in brutal interrogation sequences and leaving behind a body count worthy of The Expendables. The only thing missing is Sam screaming angrily into his cell phone at the President.

If you haven’t played Sam’s last outing, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, don’t worry, the game catches you up quickly. Basically, Sam’s daughter has been killed, he killed his best friend Lambert, and he broke away from Third Echelon, the group he has worked with since the first game. Conviction’s  story starts out with Sam mourning the loss of his daughter, and desperate to find out the truth behind what happened to her.It quickly turns into much more than that, and Sam finds himself once again trying to save America from terrorists that are planning to attack Washington D.C. Hmm… that sounds familiar…

The game has great pacing. The game is always driving you forward, and you always know where to go thanks to a distance marker and projections that pop up on walls to tell you where to go. You will also see flashbacks appear as projections on the wall, helping drive the story forward without stopping the gameplay. Also, there are no load screens in this game unless you die. Everything combines to make you feel like you are living out your favorite action blockbuster.

There’s only one spot  that seemed out of place in the campaign. Throughout the whole game stealth is almost completely forsaken for guns-blazing action, yet in one spot you have to remain hidden in the shadows or you fail instantly. The pulls you completely out of the game and just feels like an archaic game mechanic. Even Chaos Theory from years ago had a more modern take on stealth.

Some people have been knocking the scene where you go back and relive Sam’s time in Iraq 20 years ago, but I found it refreshing. Sure there are no stealth mechanics here and it basically becomes Gears Of War here, but it is fun and adds depth to Sam’s character.

While the single player won’t take too long to finish, there are other, arguably better, pieces to the Conviction puzzle. There’s a seperate co-op campaign, Infiltration, Last Stand, and Hunter game modes.

The co-op campaign is really amazing. The great gameplay from the single player mode is further enhanced by having a friend fighting alongside you. You and a friend play as Third Echelon agent Archer and Russian agent Kestrel. The story here is a prequel to the single player campaign, where the team is hunting down W.M.D.s. It is integral that you fully cooperate with your partner in this mode, because if your partner dies (or sets off an alarm, in one frustrating sequence), it’s game over. Just like Gears Of War, you can revive your fallen partner before he bleeds out.

Splinter Cell Conviction is a great game, especially for the under $20 price point you’ll find it at  now. It might not be very recognizable as a Splinter Cell game, but this is probably exactly the change needed to breathe new life into the franchise. If you’re buying the game just for the story, it would be hard to recommend back when it was $60. But at the current price you get a great , if short campaign, and an even greater co-op campaign, alongside some other great modes.

Awesome- 4.5 / 5

The epic franchise “Black Ops” of the Call Of Duty series hit the shelves November 9th 2010.

In the campaign mode: You play as the elite Black Ops forces which fight in the secret wars and deniable Ops that took place during the cold war in the 60’s.

The story basically follows what happened behind the enemy lines when the CIA sent a secret force called Black Operatives to carry out a mission of stopping an experimental weapon known as NOVA-6.

Alot of people compare the Modern Warfare 2 Story to the Black Ops story line, which im my case is completely different. Loads of people said that the Black Ops story line was too confusing to understand, and i remember reading reviews about Black Ops before it was released and Treyarch even said that during the first few missions of the game people would get easily mis-lead or confused at whats going on, but by the end of the game, everybody will understand everything. I guess there is a fine line between Complex and Complicated.

Multi-Player : Where do i start? There are 15 prestige modes with a different emblem the higher rank prestige you get : -

At the minute im rank 3 on the Xbox 360, And haven’t even prestiged on my PS3, But i have seen many many people who already hit 15th prestige within a 2-3 month period…now that’s some insane Black Opsing!

The multi-player maps are as listed :-

· Array – Covered in snow and great for snipers.

· Cracked – In the broken streets of Vietnam, good for CQ’s

· Crisis – Alot of camping spots, great for snipers and Indoor/Outdoor combat

· Firing range – Very small map, Is used for military practice sessions

· Grid – One of my fav maps, Covered in snow, Great for long and short range fights

· Hanoi – An old prison camp, pretty big map

· Havana – Set in the streets of cuba, A great map to get out your shotguns!

· Jungle – As stated set in the jungle, look out for them snipers!

· Launch – In my opinion a plain map, best part about it, is the launch pad(That can kill you)

· Nuke Town – Hectic action here, random grenades/tomahawks

· Radiation – A new processing plant, great for domination matches.

· Summit – Snowy mountains, research facility? My favourite map

· Villa – Set in Cuba, Headquarters and capture the flag is awesome for this map

· WMD – An old abandoned Russian base also great for snipers.

First Strike Maps : -

· Berlin Wall – The crossing point between Eastern and Western Berlin

· Discovery – A snow ridden German research facility station

· Kowloon – Set in china, The first online map with a zip-line and Also a great level in the single player campaign mode

· Stadium – North American sports complex

Escalation Maps : -

· Hotel – Kind of like Nuke town, 2 hotels one winner!

· Convoy – Awsome for CQ’s, Not too keen on this map myself

· Zoo – Abandoned Russian Zoo, Also one of my Favourite maps

· Stockpile – Houses, Trucks, Broken roads, Bridges, You name it, it has it.

As people say the online perspective of the whole franchise is the best thing about the game, and thats the only reason why people buy and play it. But when your in love with games as i am, You have to look at game as a whole, Campaign, Multiplayer and Zombies.

When playing online against random people the only problem i have is the flaming when people lose, nobody likes a sore loser right? No matter which format of Black Ops you play, In each lobby you will always get a sour puss that hates to be beaten. If we didn’t have these kind of people online the online part of this game would be outstanding, but sadly gets burnt to the ground because of this.

The guns, Attachments, Perks and such are great, Everybody has their own gun which they love, and cherish as they did in Modern Warfare 2, My favourites are PSG1 With silencer (Ghost & Hardened perk) And the Commando, Silencer(Ghost,Ninja & Hardened perk).

Trayarch changed the “quick scoping” so nobody could do it anymore, there was word flying around that alot of people wouldn’t play Black Ops because of this….They was wrong!

All in all the mechanics for the online gaming is priceless, You get CoD points to buy stuff such as New weaponry, Different Camo Colours for the gun of your choice(If at the correct level), To buy different shapes/Objects to use as your own personal GamerCard, and you can also buy the backgrounds to them to make them look fantastic.

You can take place in different game types, Called “Wager Matches” Where you put down CoD points and basically gamble them against 5 other players.

· Gun game – You kill, you get a gun upgrade, but if you get knifed or accidentally commit suicide, you get de-ranked to the previous gun that you had, First person to get to the Ballistic Knife and get the kill, Is the winner.

· Sticks and Stones – Stripped down to the basics! Crossbow, Ballistic Knife and a Tomahawk, Lots of fun but hard to get used to.

· One in the Chamber – You start with a handgun and a single bullet, and your knife of course, You shoot and kill somebody, you get an extra bullet, Failing that, you’ll have to rely on your knife to do the talking, Each player has 3 lives, once all lives are used, your game’s up.

· Sharpshooter – Each player is placed with a random weapon, and after 45 seconds of using that weapon, the more kills you get with that weapon the more chance you have to have a better weapon/perk, My favourite out of all the Wager Match games.

Zombies : Back in the days of World At War, thanks to Treyarch, they brought a new game to the Call Of Duty Franchise, and named it Zombies.

Blasting your way through waves and waves of Nazi Zombies, who wouldn’t want to play this survival mode Hack, Slash, And shooter horror?

You can have a “solo” or “Multiplayer” mode for Zombies, the more players the more zombies per wave, and its great fun with your friends, trying to engage in endless waves, you could be at it for hours!

· Kino der Toten – This level has a Teleporter which is essentially used each wave to protect yourself from the zombies, set in a theatre like mansion.

· Five – The reason i like this map is because of the characters you are, John.F.Kennedy,Richard Nixon,Fidel Castro and Robert Mcnamara, Also a bonus boss like Zombie called “The Pentagon Theif” Although he does take alot of bullets, you can crush him to the ground. Although this map does have somewhat teleporters, The zombies can also use them too, a hard map to survive on, but alot of fun.

· Ascension(First strike Map Pack) – Space monkeys! The little rascals, If you don’t have a HDTV, your more than likely not going to beable to see these little runts! Instead of Hellhounds or a Pentagon thief these are guys to look out for. I specifically like this map due to the fact of the Lunar Landers that help you get out of sticky situations, Alot of turrets to help you aswell, and you also get 2 new buffs! Stamina- up and PhD Flopper.

· Call of the Dead (Escalation map pack)- Theres a reason why i like this map too, CELEBS! Sarah Michelle Gellar, Robert Englund, Michael Rooker and Danny Trejo. It also features Robert A.Romero the producer, He’s the guy that spawns before the first round and Follows you around the map constantly, unless banished, and even though you can banish him, it only lasts for a single round, The first Zombie map to have a zip-line from one end of the map, to the other, For quick and evasive manouvers! This level also involves a gun called the Wunderwaffle DG-2, Kind of like the Death machine, but has a slight kick to it.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, Has alot more pro’s than con’s in my opinion, some people have got to realise that Treyarch has done a fantastic job and they need to stop flaming them for nothing, what people don’t understand is, it takes a very long time to make a beautifully crafted game such as this, i cannot fault anything about this game other than the online multiplayer(They should have dedicated servers) Other than that, The story mode is well designed and has a fantastic story to it, Online multiplayer is the best that the Call of Duty series has seen and as for Zombies, Treyarch pulled it off once again, but will they make a better Call Of Duty with Modern Warfare 3? We’ll see.

In short, Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox 360 is epic.

It’s great to witness Rockstar giving an superb concept a second chance. Red Dead Revolver wasn’t the most well-executed title in release, but the game had enough potential to give even the most disappointed customer (like me) some hope that developers would revisit the franchise and figure out exactly where it was they’d gone wrong.

And they had.

Rockstar has played to their own strengths, introducing the world of cowboys and outlaws to the acclaimed game-play found in their fantastic Grand Theft Auto series.

You play John Marston, an outlaw who has stepped away from a life of thieving, murdering and probably pillaging, for an honest attempt to make a living as a rancher, and to keep his wife and son safe. (Typical spaghetti western fare.) As unluck would have it, two government agents kidnap Marston’s family and given him no other choice but to hunt down his former criminal buddies and bring them to justice.

John’s none-too-happy about any of this, and spends a fair portion of the game’s well-spoken dialogue explaining his situation to pretty much everyone he meets. And, John Marston meets a lot of people.  Maybe too many…

Yet with all the supporting characters, Red Dead Redemption becomes ultra-divisive. Marston himself has a surprisingly high degree of respectability through his polite words and helpful demeanor, yet the bulk of the in-world people he encounters finds himself working with over the fifteen or so hours of his mission are degenerate, irredeemable scumbags. Most of them seem to have some sort of disturbing quirk to their personality or actions. Like Seth, who spends his days robbing the dead of their belongings or MacDougal, a fancy-pants professor at Yale who enjoys insults and shooting up heroin. (I love Rockstar) That’s not to say there’s nothing to enjoy about any of these guys, but for the most part you’re probably not going to feel to comfortable about buddying up them.

Red Dead Redemption has a problem with its dialogue and the more detailed portions of the plot. The voice acting is top-notch, believable for this game world, but the writing leaves much to desired and doesn’t ring true to life. Yet, Hang ‘em High didn’t either.

Apart from a couple of decent jokes and some other interesting scenes scattered throughout the game, the dialoque isn’t captivating.; it’s just interesting.

The world of Red Dead Redemption is the best aspect of the game, which is pretty much the general idea behind every Rockstar game. Using the great state of New Austin, Rockstar’s Texas, players can venture across the border and into beautiful Mexico. The world isn’t particularly large, but the means through which you’re allowed to transverse this space instills a much larger, much more old-fashioned sense of scale into the desert plains. Traveling in a reasonable amount of time is fairly simple using the stagecoach taxis or the train, but usually Marston’s own horse is adequate enough for the job. There are plenty of breeds of horses around to break in and ride into the sunset, some faster and more reliable than others. Players will need to perform some guesswork to know which kind of horse you’re riding, because that’s not information that’s ever relayed to you in any discernible fashion.

Only the coats of the animals are provided as a means to tell the different breeds apart, so unless you’re a horse nut  it’s going to be completely up to some luck and your own sense of speed to determine whether the shiny new horse from MacFarlane’s Ranch is better than the one you broke over in Brennigan’s Stead.

Despite the size of the world, there is plenty to do in New Austin and Mexico, including plenty of minigames and side-missions. Poker’s a quick way to earn some cash, or lose everything if that’s how the luck of the draw goes. There are some strangers scattered out around the world that need some help with this or that; giving them some assistance tends to be more compelling than the larger narrative, so not much incentive is really needed to embark on their menial tasks. You can kill and skin some animals in the wild, and this leads into some substantial challenges that get pretty tough the deeper into the ranks you go. There are herbs and flowers to gather, gang hideouts to shoot up, property to purchase, and a handful of other distractions to filter one’s mind away from the story. Most of this stuff is a lot of fun, or at least alluring enough to give you reason to leave the beaten path for a short while.

In addition to the lengthy single-player, there are a handful of multi-player modes to have some light entertainment with. There’s free-roam, which is exactly what is sounds like: venture around New Austin and Mexico with random dudes pulled in from Xbox Live riding around and putting holes in one another. From this hub, the rest of the multi-player modes are accessible. There’s free-for-all, some gang shootouts, and more objective-focused game types like capture-the-flag. All the multi-player seems to be is some extra fun to have with the sixty-bones spent on the base game. The approach is very uncoordinated and chaotic, but that’s really the point. This isn’t a super-competitive playground like you’d find in a Call of Duty or Halo title. There’s more incentive to drop-in, have a bit of a go at it, and drop-out.

There’s a lot to love, a little to loathe, and plenty to do in Rockstar’s latest open-world criminal simulator. The successes of Red Dead Redemption greatly outweigh its failures, with its feral and authentic open-world and hours upon hours of content in which to take part. Getting through everything this game has to offer takes some serious dedication, but fortunately it’s all fluid and familiar enough that putting forth that sort of effort shouldn’t be all that laborious. It’s great to see Rockstar expand the Grand Theft Auto formula into other, more daring locales, and re-imagining the exceptionally lackluster Red Dead Revolver seems to have paid off rather well for them in the end.