That came about far quicker than I expected it to. I’ve not done that many side quests though, which might be why. I don’t know how far from complete this means I now am, but I’m guessing I’m half way there, perhaps?

First things to do as King: decide whether to execute my brother or not (I didn’t), then decide if I’m going to be an evil-for-their-own-good ruler or a loved-but-may-end-up-getting-everyone-killed ruler. This was mainly determined by my decisions on spending the castle funds, and since I went the “good” route, I’m now horribly overdrawn and somehow need to raise not only 6.5 million gold just to “win” against The Darkness (no, not the band), but also the 1.5 million or so I’m overspent by.

Or millions will perish. Sigh.

Now begins a tedious and dull run of making money before I can do the next bit of the story. Who thought that would be a good idea? Oh yeah, Peter Molyneux. Tch.

In other Fable news, I got married before becoming King, had a child (called Dave) and then moved my family into the castle once I was crowned.

It’s actually quite good so far. I’ve not played Fable II, so some of the initial story of this is lost on me. In addition, I have played the original Fable, and this doesn’t really play much like it. At least, it doesn’t seem to. It has been a while though.

So far, I’ve recovered my father’s music box (uh, right), and beaten the mercenaries (sparing their boss, who now seems to be an ally). Mostly though, I’ve been shaking hands with people, holding hands with people and trying to take them to bed, and playing Lute Hero. As you do.

I’m enjoying it, I think.

The last section of the game takes place in Central Park. Which has mostly been raised into the sky. As you walk (or run) through it, bits crumble away so paths are cut off and stuff. Except that barely affected anything. There are baddies to kill, or stealth past and ignore. Then you get to a section where there are stealthed baddies, except I had a suit upgrade that negated that, and they’re stupidly easy to kill – any that got close were punched in the face, and most got stuck trying to jump up to the platform I was on so were easy pickings for my gun. I don’t think I took any damage at all.

Finally, a tunnel opens. “The final boss?” I thought, “Or a huge fight at least?”. No. Nothing. Game completed.

Like they forgot to include a whole level or something. Damp squib. Oh well.

Despite not really changing the formula all that much (aside from there being fewer soldiers to shoot and more aliens), somehow Crysis 2 has gone from mediocre to pretty actually fantastic. I’m not sure why.

I am now drawn into the story, and often with me a decent story is enough of a carrot to get me to progress. It’s not necessarily a great story but I do want to know what happens next, at least. I’m also on top of the controls, which are now not so overwhelming. I’m not struggling with ammo so much either, as I generally kill everything with stealth melee attacks rather than shooting stuff. All in all, much more fun than it was previously.

Currently, I’ve just caused the Otis building (I think?) to collapse. I don’t know how far into the game that is, but judging from the number of remaining locked cutscenes, I’d have to say I’m about 80% of the way through.

Just one main issue I have with it now: Why is it, that when you get shot too much, you die, but when you get launched a billion feet into the air, land on your head, get shot at by aliens, stomped on, then start to get organically deconstructed by a giant cockroach, you simply have to wait for your suit to reboot and all is well again? Hmm.

I’ve spent most of my time plundering the Lairs of Romulus, and also finishing off the remaining Leonardo’s Machines bits (although one still needs to be done), as well as mopping up all the feathers, some Borgia Flags, and lots of treasures. I’ve also tried completing the Shop Quests, but I’m still a few items short.

Alongside all this, I’ve also been sending my assassins off on missions, and they’ve all reached the highest rank now. Oh yeah, and I’ve grabbed a few more achievements – including the one for killing a guard with a broom. Ace.

I mean, I was expecting to finish it, of course – but I didn’t expect to play though Sequence 5 and get to the end and have “Sequence 9 Complete” come up. Turns out I was much further through the game than I thought. Since I’ve spent about 80% of the game “off-story”, that means the main story was very, very short compared to Assassin’s Creed 2. I don’t really mind as there’s been plenty to do (and I still have lots of Lairs and Machines and some of the DLC left as well), and I’ve spent well over 20 hours on it so far, but if I were just going for the main plot I’d be a bit disappointed, I think.

Still, it was fantastic. Although I hated the end bit with Desmond. It was like that bit in Prey that I didn’t want to play all over again. Tch.

Jumped straight back in and continued sending my recruits on missions and buying up property. Aces.

Yet, it’s also very different. For starters, there’s the whole Assassin’s Guild thing. You “save” people from nasty guards, and they pledge to follow you. They then become your apprentices – so you can use them in battle, trigger them like a smart bomb to blanket the guards with arrows, or send them off on missions in far off exotic locations to rough up traders, protect nobelmen, or steal stuff from Templars. Then, like it’s an RPG or something, they gain XP and level up to become more proficient and can take on harder missions. Not that you take part in these missions – they’re all done in the background and you just see the spoils at the end. Strangely, it feels like playing Championship Manager or something, and I am somehow addicted to this part of the game.

Another change is the way you can upgrade and rebuild parts of Rome. OK, so you did the same in Monteriggioni in the previous game, but here it’s essential. You can’t shop without opening shops to shop in. You can’t get at your earned cash from the bank without building a bank. And more than once I’ve been in the situation where I need money, have loads in the bank, but there’s no bank nearby except for ones I’ve not yet restored and I don’t have the money to pay to do that. Gnngh!

Perhaps more important a change to all of these is the introduction of the Borgia Towers. Whereas in ACII you could just climb to high places and synchronise in order to get the map for an area, most of these high places are now protected Borgia towers. Anything in the same region as a tower is under Borgia control, and you’re prevented from renovating buildings nearby until the tower is destroyed. To do that, you have to find and kill the captain of the tower, who is usually hidden or protected. If he sees you, he’ll run – and fail to catch him and you’ve missed your chance until the next guard shift change when you have to try again. Kill him, and you can scale the tower and torch it, releasing the region of it’s Borgia influence and opening it up to rebuilding and stuff. I hated this at first, but now I’m really enjoying the tower parts of the game.

In terms of how far into the game I am, I’ve just assassinated the French captain bloke. It’s maybe a third of the way into the game, I think, but I’ve spent so much time on side things (like the towers) that I would have completed it by now otherwise!

Really enjoying it, although perhaps not quite as much as the last game. I’m not sure yet…

I don’t know whether or not the final episode was shorter, or if the puzzles were just more obvious, but it didn’t seem to take me very long to save Hell (and by extension, the world). A very Soda Poppers (sorry, %$&* Poppers) heavy episode, but that was OK given the outcome. Is that spoilers?

I might give Sam and Max a bit of a break now though, until the next series is found cheap somewhere!

I’ve played about the first hour or so of Brotherhood now. It carries on directly from the previous game, and there’s a quite clever sequence where you lose most of your weapons, armour and health points from the previous game, which is better than in other games where it is unexplained, or something.

At the moment, I’m in Monteriggioni – as Desmond. Which is awesome. I’d be very surprised if a later Assassin’s Creed game isn’t almost entirely Desmond. Anyway, it’s great so far!

EDIT: Haha! Look!

View Larger Map

By far the best of the series. Unless Episode 5 beats it, of course. Loved Superball again, mainly because he’s so deadpan. The mariachis were all sorts of amaze, and the Max/Ms Bosco “relationship” was fantastic. The baby making machine, and the various possible Bosco outcomes awesome too.

And, best of all, it relied upon proper, logical puzzles instead of try everything on everything puzzles. Yay!

I’m starting to notice, however, that every task in every game seems to be made up of three mini-tasks. I’m not the only one to notice, either – even Max makes a comment about it!

Nice to see Superball back too. He was one of my favourite characters from the first “series”. Way better than the irritating Soda Poppers, who – thankfully – haven’t been spotted since Episode 1 of this series. Phew!

Made a start on Episode 4 after 3 too, and it’s been even better so far!

Unfortunately, I found it a bit of a slog. I know the puzzles on previous Sam & Max games have been more than a little, uh, obtuse, but I was finding this one even more illogical than before and it took ages to get through. It also wasn’t as funny as other episodes, and although I spent longer on it due to not knowing what to do, it was actually a lot shorter in terms of number of things that needed doing. If that makes sense.

And that’s it! I could go and get all the treasures now, but I get nothing for it (except money, which I have more than I could ever spend anyway), but I’ve done everything else!

Brotherhood needs to be bought now. And soon. I did buy it from the online Ubisoft store, but they cancelled my order, so I hate them now.

Of course, the DLC is bought using in-game money, which you collect – platform game style – to progress. There’s some swording and (with the right DLC) some shooting, but the aim is basically to collect coins, buy expansion packs to let you progress to other areas of the map in a Metroid type way, in order to collect more coins. And so on.

It’s short, it’s easy (I don’t think you can die), and it’s very funny. The DLC in-jokes (it has horse armour) and general gaming trope mickey-taking (“Awardments”! Zombies!) are great.

That’s probably the best game I’ve played in quite a long time. So good, in fact, I’m a bit disappointed it’s all over. Well, it isn’t quite, as I immediately went back in a mopped up some achievements, bagged the last few glyphs, and started the trawl for feathers.

Luckily, being behind the times with the series, I can now pick up the follow-up, Brotherhood, for peanuts as the game after that, Revelations, is out very soon. Excellent! Sometimes living a little in the past is good

The end of the game was brilliant, but the final boss fight was unexpectedly short and easy. Very, very easy, in fact. The guy at the end of the first game was really difficult, but this guy? If you hold block you can’t get hit. At all. Oh well. At least it wasn’t frustrating.

The down points are the annoyingly repetitive fighting (especially later in the game when you have to block every attack and can’t just wade in) and the dodgy sensitivity of the wall running and ledge-grabbing when sometimes you can’t climb up even though you know you can – it just won’t let you, you have to climb down and back up the exact same bit to make it “work”. The way the save points work is irritating too, since it saves for you, but sometimes you still have to go back a fair way if you quit and reload.

Thankfully, the sequel fixes all that. There are more ways to prevent fights (better assassination moves), more moves within fights, fewer fights in general, and it’s easier to get away from them – partly because the wall running and ledge-grabbing is mostly fixed. There are more checkpoints too, so saving is less of an issue.

And it’s fun. More varied than the previous game. The cities seem bigger and better designed. Getting from one city to another is streamlined. And it looks even more impressive. Even the story is better. The Assassin’s Tomb raiding is fun. Looking for glyphs is fun. It’s all just brilliant. And fun – but I think I said that.

In terms of story, I’m part way through sequence 9 (of, I think, 14), and it’s taken easily 20 hours to get here. However, much of that time has been glyph, tomb, treasure and codex hunting. I have all the best armour and nearly all the weapons, and have upgraded the villa as far as I can, so I no longer need money, and can just get on with doing the missions for the most part. I’ve still a few codex pages and glyphs though, but nowhere to look for them just yet.

Only had two bugs so far – one where two guards on a boat didn’t appear (a pain since I was supposed to kill them), so I had to kill myself (the only time I’ve died so far!) to make them reappear. It’s a common bug, apparently. The other one was when I fell off a building, and landed under the floor. I stood up and my knees down were underneath the floor as I walked around. Once I’d climbed up something it was fine again though.

This demo improves on the previous one greatly, by fixing much was wrong with the physics (although they’re still not correct), and then makes it over fourteen billion times worse by not fixing anything else, and adding speaking Chaos who you can’t kill, feed into a mincer, or set on fire, and being quite frankly, insulting.

Then it added a “modern” Sonic Green Hill Zone level, which, like most “modern” Sonic games was a test of how long you could hold the same direction for whilst sometimes pressing a button to jump, duck, or activate the real-life Childhood Memory Eraser. The latter of which sadly doesn’t exist. Instead, grinding rails, having no control over Sonic for large portions of the level, and being unable to see what is coming in those sections where you do have some control, all combine to form the greatest Sonic gaming experience since, oooh, Sonic The Hedgehog: Stabby Eyeball Adventure.

Still. There’s always the 3DS version, right?

I was really close to the end of Lonesome Road, needing only to work through a few rooms and then meet up with the other courier. I think perhaps fighting him was on the cards, but I talked him round and now we’re friends. Or something. There was a big fight with a load of Marked Men instead, though, and then it was over.

Of course, I still have a few warheads to find and explode, but not as many as I was expecting to have left due to the huge number just lying around the “temple” at the end. And I’ve all the Gun Runners achievements (bar one) to mop up as well, so it’s not like I’m “done” yet.

Having said that, I’ve still the Gun Runner’s achievements to do, and I’ve got to do a Hardcore Mode runthrough for a further achievement (I’ll be following gospvg’s guide for that one, I suspect), so maybe I’ve a while yet.

Anyhoo. Back to Lonesome Road.

The story follows your trip into the Divide, a massive crack in the world created by nuclear explosions. Explosions it would appear I had something to do with. The original Courier Six – the guy who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip that forms the plot point of the main game story – knows about my past, and I’m there to find him.

I’m almost there, too, having just reached his temple. Why he has a temple, I don’t yet know.

The route was pretty hard, considering my high level. Mainly due to an abundance of Deathclaws, and loads of a new foe – Tunnellers, which the other courier says can take down a Deathclaw. And they hunt in packs. And literally come out of the walls. Nice.

I think I’m going to need to do a fair bit of back-tracking though soon – I’ve missed loads of warheads I can explode, and there’s an achievement for them all!

But guess what? Everyone is wrong except me. It was excellent. Sure, it’s shorter than some other DLC (about 6 hours or so), but I can’t really fault it. The story was good, the return of some enemies I’d not seen for aaaages in the game (Yao Guai, giant mantises, giant venus flytraps), and there was a link to the fate of the inhabitants of Vault 22 which was nice.

If I had to find fault, it would be only that navigating the map, with the big canyons and hard to reach high places was a bit of a pain, and The Burned Man wasn’t really the psycho I was expecting him to be, but really – nothing important.