Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the 360 Back Track! I have noticed while looking at Gamefly.com that the 360 is kind of losing exclusive games for its console. It’s like Halo will be the last thing Microsoft has going for it. Gears of War has ended with the third game and well, you can’t just rely on the download market or Japanese shoot em’ ups to drive your sales anymore. This is turning into the Turbo Grafx for pete’s sake, literally, since it’s a console mostly known for its quality shooters like Halo, Gears of War, Deathsmiles, and you get the idea. It also doesn’t help that it basically has no good RPG franchise going for it. It does have its quality RPG titles like Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, and Tales of Vespira. You could say “Oh Cam, what about the Fable franchise?” Well, you could say that, but you would be wrong, the Fable games are not the best games on the 360. In fact, to prove this point, I’m going to review today the recent game in the franchise and what is considered the second worst game in the series called Fable 3! I can’t believe what some sites are giving this game like an 8 out of 10 and 9 out of 10. In my opinion, that is way off the mark since this game is one of the worst and messiest games I have ever played. It isn’t the worst game on the 360 since it does have its moments, but it’s a really bad game.

The story of Fable 3 takes place 50 years after the second game in the continent of Albion. The old king is dead and you play as one of two princes, and you basically play the good egg out of the two. After some incidences at the castle caused by your jerk wad of a brother, you leave the castle with your mentor Walter Beck and your servant Jasper. You then find an ancient artifact that was owned by your father, and you start to develop a revolution to take down your brother, and become king in his place. While there are some great voice work and some decent characters, the story isn’t original and it doesn’t really get interesting until a little after halfway through, and I didn’t really feel connected until I became king.

The gameplay is a somewhat mix of action with RPG elements, and a somewhat king simulation. You run or teleport from place to place completing missions. To arm yourself against the horrors that await you in Fable 3, you get a sword, a hammer, and either a rifle or a handgun to take down your enemies. You also have a decent magic system where you can upgrade how powerful your magic can be and combine 2 spells together. Throughout the game, you can make decisions that will alter the later parts of the game, like how much support the other kingdoms will give you in the ending part of the game where you are king and need to make big decisions that will affect the ending of the game. Later in the game, you will become king and this is where the game will actually be interesting. You have to make the decisions that will either improve you in being a good king, or make you a bad king with some results in poor defenses against the final enemy, distrust from your allies, and well, giving you big evil wings in the end. You can also get in a relationship with a woman and get married to her, but it’s rather tedious, so I wouldn’t really bother with it, but that’s just me. You can also team up with other people and go around the world of Albion taking down evil. There are also mini-games, like making pies and playing music that will net you some extra cash for some of the fairly expensive weapons and clothes.

The art style is fantastic and it reminds me of other games like Overlord. It’s a beautiful looking game and it’s one of the better looking exclusives on the console, even though I think Tales of Vespira looks better if we are talking exclusive RPG’s. The music isn’t bad either, but again, I feel like I’m playing Overlord, due to the sound of the music. The voice acting is also not that bad and it seems like the actors really wanted to pull you into the story, and even though I said the story was unoriginal I did feel pulled into it due to the voice work.

However, a lot of big things and little things really bring this game down. The first thing I want to complain about, and well I am going to complain about is the over-powered firearms and magic. This made the game way too easy, because I could easily flank the enemies from far away, and I only died once. The loading times are ridiculous. It seems like it took forever for a lot of the loading screens to be done with. There are also a bunch of glitches that I found that pulled me out of the game, like seeing hair on top of a character’s head move, and just a bunch of little, but nothing serious bugs that just made me shake my head since I’m a game tester and I hate seeing this stuff in a released game. The AI is terrible. I feel like the ally and enemies are just not that smart. I was able to just flank enemies from afar and they could never get out of the way or get close to me. Even if they got close to me, they wouldn’t attack. Even though it’s nice that I could carry a sword or hammer, with the over-powered magic and guns, I had no reason to upgrade my melee weapons. The king gimmick might be the most interesting thing in the game, but it comes in so late in the game and it just isn’t fully pulled off. The reaction from your allies when you make a bad decision is silly, since it’s like, “ oh, hey, I’m glad I’m your ally!” and then when you make a bad decision “ I can’t believe I fought for you! You suck!” How does that make sense? They should have known that you were going to make some harsh choices when you became king, and it’s like they never knew that. It’s terrible writing at its best. There are also a bunch of little things that drag this game down, like holding the A button to open doors, a clunky menu system where everything is set up into room-like areas that I guess they were trying to do like Terranigma did, but not well-executed, and very repetitious main missions and relationship missions. I felt like I was doing the same dang thing over and over and OVER AGAIN!

Overall, Fable 3 and Lionhead Studios are terrible. I mean, I can’t believe these guys get so much money for such below-average games. Fable 3 is one of the worst executed games I have ever played and one of the worst games on the 360. I can’t recommend this action RPG and I can’t recommend any games from Lionhead. I can understand the founder being really high-spirited about his games, but I can’t see why they promise so much and deliver so little. Don’t buy this game, and even if you own it, return it! I say, go out and get Tales of Vespira or the other Japanese-styled RPG’s over this terrible game. Stop sucking up to the companies’ mainstream reviewers! You can give a game a bad score. It will show them that they need to WORK HARDER!

This game gets a 4 out of 10

Valentines day was supose to be a day of love, so whty did no one tell me about this being released today?

All joking aside thanks again for support me and watching my videos. Happy Valentines Day!

Today on Gaming with Killatia after playing hours of Otomedius Excellent we take a look at the games predecessor Gradius 3 for the Snes

Catch my Tales of Symphonia review on gotgame.com Right now!

            The story starts off with an evil villain named Inferno who contacts the United Nations and states that he has basically taken the whole world hostage. Inferno then demands that he rule the world or else it will all burn to the ground. While the United Nations tries to think of a more logical way on how to stop the villain, an army general goes commando and brings along 4 bland and personality-deprived teammates to take down Inferno and SAVE THE WORLD!!! Yeah, it’s total super popcorn flick stuff. No one has a solid personality, the characters you play as are bland, and some can even be useless in gameplay! I love this kind of terrible story telling, but at points it seems like they are trying too hard to make this story seem serious. It just isn’t possible, and you won’t give the slightest care for what happens in the story. Give them credit though, they did nail the stupid popcorn movie lines. Then again, the guys who created the awesome Just Cause 2 made this game.

            The gameplay, however, is much more interesting than the stupid, stupid cookie cutter story. You get to control 4 different vehicles that you can choose to play as in each level. However, the only two that are actually useful are the two vehicles that are on the cover art for this game. They really don’t play any differently from each other. The left analog stick can control them, and you can aim and shoot using the right analog stick. Each vehicle out of the 4 has its own special power, like a strong cannon, calling an air strike, pulse blasts, and a super strong armor. You can gain power-ups, health pick-ups, secondary weapons, and special items to unlock extras. During some areas of the game, you will be able to unlock the ability to ride combat helicopters to take down the tougher parts of the missions. You can also play with up to 4 people at the same time offline and online, and cause even more over-the-top action set pieces than seen in a Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis film. It’s over the top fun that reminds me of another downloadable game called Gatling Gears, but that’s for another time.

            The graphics are nice. They get the job done and are not the best nor are they the worst. Everything runs smoothly most of the time, and I rarely have dealt with slow-down with all the explosions and action on screen. The enemies are varied enough to make sure the game doesn’t feel incomplete. Controls feel good, and you pretty much have a good amount of control over your character’s vehicle. The music is fine, but it can sound a tiny bit generic and could have been used for any popcorn flick action film. It isn’t bad music, but it isn’t very memorable.

            There are some minor problems though that bring this game down. The first is its price tag, it’s 15 dollars on both PSN and Xboxlive. It’s a bit pricey for this kind of game when you could easily get Gatling Gears for 10 bucks on either platform, which in a way is a better game. The game can also get a bit boring due to a few minor things like repetitious boss fights, missions, and not enough variety besides the helicopter piloting. The story is also very boilerplate for an action game, which made me think back to Jackal on the NES. I enjoy it for its popcorn script, but overall it just feels like a waste of time. I also feel like two of the characters are completely pointless and/or useless. It’s the two drivers who have the pulse gun and the super armor, since their weapons are not the strongest, and along with the two other characters you can play as, are boring and unoriginal.

            Overall, this game reminds me a lot of Deathsmiles and Vanquish, where I enjoy the over-the-top gameplay, but it also doesn’t have a lot of substance. Granted, it’s easier than Gatling Gears, but I feel like Gatling Gears is a better game since I had more fun with that game than this game. It is better if you have more than one person playing with you, but don’t expect it to be a game you will play over and over and over again. I would say, wait for the game to drop down in price (if it ever does) to download it. Until then, get games like Gatling Gears or Hamilton’s Great Adventure.

This game gets an 8 out of 10

Title says it all, but I'm not sure if I want to continue playing this MMMORPG.

The story puts us in the futuristic and drab world of Detroit in 2027 where humans are now capable of having cybernetic upgrades or augmentations to their body. Of course, this doesn’t sound as glamorous since it also comes with riots about how terrible this kind of human evolution is and of course some other shady underworld dealings. You play as Adam Jensen a security guard, voiced by Elias Toufexis who you might have seen if you watched Smallville or Supernatural. During a surprise attack from a group of augmented beings that attack the company you are a security guard for, Adam basically gets pushed to near death while his exgirlfriend is killed. Six months after the event, Adam is brought back to life with a new augmented body and a pair of cool-looking shades. It is up to him to find out who was behind the whole attack, the murder of his exgirlfriend, and who were those augmented beings and wonder how the whole, pardon the pun, “Human Revolution” will happen. To be personally honest, I didn’t care much for the story. It kept me interested for a good while, but in the end, was a bit confusing and had some bland characters. Those are just my thoughts, since some people liked the complex, but still pretty confusing story.

The gameplay is an interesting mix of stealth, first and third person shooting, and conversation branch stuff. This is basically what Alpha Protocol should have been. You go around doing missions, which you can take on by either going in guns blazing or sneaking around and stealthfully killing enemies only when needed. You also, from time to time, take down bosses, hack computers to do all sorts of mischief, to take on optional side quests, and level up your character and upgrade new kinds of augmentations. These augmentations are a major mechanic since sometimes you need to unlock certain upgrades to progress through parts of the story, like having certain level hacking, stronger armor, not dying after jumping from a 7 foot tall ledge, invisibility cloaking, and make yourself a super robot action hero that Blade Runner would be proud of. You will usually be going around to different parts of the world to get questions answered, but those answers bring more questions to the table. The game also has a bit of strategy to it, due to the fact that even though it says you can tackle this game any way you want to, it really pushes you to go on stealth, which I will talk about later. You can knock out enemies or you can straight up kill them, but killing them causes them to make a sound, which is weird after you stabbed them or cracked their neck in half, the sound is what causes more troops in that area to swoop in, and hopefully, you are either hiding or you hid the body so they can’t find it and set off the alarm system. The main varieties of enemies you will be facing are usually soldiers and giant robots, with the occasional boss fight. There is also a conversation branch-style mechanic that you see in games like Mass Effect and the Witcher 2, where you could change the results of the conversation with whatever you choose to say. There is a huge amount of content for your dollar, which results in the game being about 20 or 30 hours or so of gameplay if you choose to tackle everything. It’s even more replay value due to multiple endings that you can go through, depending on what you do throughout the game and what decisions you make.

The graphics are high-end and look amazing. There is just a lot of flash and style to this futuristic Minority Report mixed with Blade Runner look. The music is also high quality and it matches the mood of whatever the situation is. The composer for this game is named Michael McCann. He is mostly famous for stuff like Splintercell: Double Agent, Tom Clancy’s EndWar, and shows like The Foundation. The voice acting is also good with some quality voice actors. The controls work perfectly and give off a great shooter and stealth vibe and movement. It isn’t buggy or glitchy in the least. To be honest, when I went into this, I knew it was more stealth than shooting, and I thought it was going to be like Mass Effect, but with stealth, and I’m glad it isn’t that.

However, I do have a few grips that kind of turn me off about the game. Even though you can choose how you go into the missions, like either go in filling everyone with lead or just find a stealthy alternate route, it leans more on stealth and really pushes you to go Metal Gear Solid on the missions. That is fine since this game can be difficult if you go in rushing through the levels, but I feel like my actions are more limited than they should be. This game is about choices, which I understand and fully respect, but I’d actually like to have the option to go in with a more offensive choice, due to very limited ammo pick-ups. I’m not really good at conserving my ammo, and that’s a fault on my side of this game. I guess what I’m saying is that I want a combat and stealth element, like in the Assassin’s Creed and the Rocksteady Batman games. Even though the graphics look beautiful and amazing, all the areas you visit seem to be the same drab color choice. The detail is great, but it all looks the same the more you go into the game. I also found side missions to be extremely tedious due to a huge amount of backtracking, which is, in of itself, a tedious way to make filler for a game. It doesn’t help that the map isn’t the best and the towns can get a bit confusing layout wise, that in returns make backtracking frustrating. The loading times are also annoying since they take a good 15 seconds or so, but I heard at launch they were much worse. I also felt like the boss fights were extremely disappointing. The whole game is saying, “ take the stealthier route for bigger rewards”, but the boss fights are mostly “ shoot them until they stop moving their leg”. It kind of breaks the pace a little and is more annoying than interesting, since I hear that in the past Deus Ex games, you could run away and avoid the boss fights entirely. I was expecting something more like the Batman Arkham games or the Assassin’s Creed style bosses. At least the company admitted they screwed up with the boss fights. I also found some characters to be a little bit interesting, but still on the bland side, and really not that memorable. Not that the whole cast is like that, NO SIR! It’s just a few and it somewhat pulled me out of the story.

At first, my final thoughts about Human Revolution were at an honest 7 out of 10. This was before I then kept playing and got through it enough to have some of my complaints taken down and realized that it is a really good game. It is one of the best I played in 2011, but I would put it in the number 10 spot since I didn’t enjoy it as much as other people did, which is reasonable in my opinion. I definitely enjoy the setting, story even if it is a bit confusing at times, the stealth elements, music, and voice work. However, I didn’t like the throwaway action elements, boss fights, repetitive-looking levels, confusing level layout from time to time, and not being as fully immersive as other free-roaming games like Red Dead Redemption. I would highly recommend at least checking this game out, but keep in mind it’s more along the line of stealth and not a super action film with cyborgs. It has probably dropped in price by now, so I could recommend it and the overpriced, but actually having a great Deus Ex style boss fight DLC, The Missing Link. Maybe I prefer more action over stealth or maybe I prefer action and stealth mixed together like in Assassin’s Creed or Batman Arkham City, which are the best in that category in my opinion. Its one of the best you could play from 2011, but as of now, I’m ready to play some more Mass Effect 2 so I will see you all later.

This game gets an 8 out of 10