Initial Feelings
At the start I was just looking for a new BBG as I'd ended whatever it was I was playing before. I didn't have an exceptional amount of time for games, so my PS3 wasn't being used that much. A BBG I could play before and after work, just poke in now and then.

The initial appeal for me was (in my opinion) Nile's unique focus. It's somewhat collaborative, based on trading between cities located along the Nile river in Egypt (although you can play without trading) and entirely focused on entombing yourself in the nicest tomb on the Nile. That's it, you're playing to try to kill off your character. That sounded like fun, and a solid end condition compared to the RPGs I normally play.

The first month or so was mainly just a race building up my initial infrastructure. You need to be producing clay, reeds, and wheat so that you can produce bricks, baskets, and bread. Initial building upgrades are on the order of minutes to an hour, so you're just sitting there upgrading and planning. At this point I was just gunning for entombment.

Challenges
One friend was playing based on the One City Challenge, completing the game while building only one (of a possible four) cities. The advantages to multiple cities is you can be creating up to four natural resources for goods, to do it on one city means you have to rely a LOT more on trading and smart worker management.

I did not go that route, as I wanted to finish the game in a decent amount of time. However, as the months wore on, friends started dying off and I realized I was still pressing on. Sometime around the third month my goal switched to being the lowest possible rank when I died off. And that's how I played for the next 8 months.

Strategy
My strategy stayed mostly the same for the game, I had two key changes, however. Initially I was simply trying to bulk up my main city center so I could entomb myself (have to max out one city center to level 22). The other cities, as I founded them, were founded to support my build speed, and ship goods back to the capital to be sold/used in the build process. If you're smart about producing the other luxury goods needed you can keep your capital upgrading constantly without much buying at the market.

This worked for a while, I was constantly dropping ranks and the city center was well on its way to being ready to entomb me. However, when the time came to pull the trigger, I wanted to drop just a few more levels and realized I wasn't sure the best way. That's when I recognized that the average level of your structures in the city is a solid determining factor for rank. So I had a level 22 city center and really low other buildings, which was really hurting my rank.

Therefore, the first change I made was to next focus on building all my buildings up simultaneously. This really sped up my rank dropping, I'd frequently lose 20 or so every update. In fact, it worked awesomely until around rank 200. I probably spent two months trying to get from 200 down below 100. Why? Because of the other caveat to ranking, "average rank of buildings and total resources on hand."

*THWAP*

So while I had four fairly done cities, I couldn't get anywhere on rankings because my stockpiles were empty! This was my second tactic shift, going from a race to build, to a race to build and squirrel away. I kept upgrading anything that I could, but also started buying massive amounts of anything I didn't produce natively. I maxed out my bread (used as currency) production in every city and simply bought all the time. This helped a lot, although ranking up was still slow as I had to spend bread to get other goods, and I'd spend some time building my stores back up before I could gain any ground in the rankings.

Conclusion
Finally I reached my (new) goal: Entomb myself under level 100. Specifically, I made it to 99 after 68 'years' in game. I could have done that better if I'd focused more on stockpiling the entire game, but hey, live and learn. Fun game, worth a peek if you only want to devote a few minutes spread out through the day.

The Premise
So what's it all about? If I had to summarize the game in three words or less it'd be: "Communist Sci-fi GTA".Yes, I cheated by using some abbreviations, but still, that sums it up quite nicely. The game starts out with you meeting your brother on Mars, sometime in the not so close future. Mars has been colonized by Earth, and is controlled by a military group named the Earth Defense Force (EDF). They maintain control and security because at this point in the future we've ravaged Earth's resources, and we have to get our metals from Mars.

Of course, the game wouldn't have a plot without strife, and naturally the EDF has taken a turn for the totalitarian regime. This regime manifests itself in the typical ways, forcing workers to work long hours, illegal search and seizure, and, of course, executions. Naturally this angers you in the bottom of your 'just wanted to come and earn a living' soul, and you join up with the Red Faction. Red Faction being the stereotypical worker uprising, complete with pick-up trucks for APCs, mining tools for weapons, and cheesy lines on the underground radio broadcasts designed to uplift the huddled masses.

The Game
Enough about the background, you'll learn all that and more in the opening cut-scene, how's the game play? I liked it... a lot. I'd even go so far as to say I loved it, if in a guilty-pleasure kinda way.

Controls
The controls were for the most part intuitive and par for the course for a PS3 game. A few tidbits caught me, such as having a more accurate look at your targeting reticle be a toggle, rather than just a mode you'll drop out of after releasing the button. My biggest concern was the variance found amongst vehicle controls. In a normal car R2 goes forwards and L2 goes backwards (mostly). If you get into a car with a turret and shoot, it'll track to the nearest enemy... sorta. But, let's say you get into a tank? Now left thumb stick moves you forwards and backwards, right thumbstick is turret control, and you shoot with L1/R1. Oh, you're in a walker? Well if it has jump packs you'll be using the X button, though if it has rockets those will be L1/L2... ARG!

A unified control scheme there is not! Thankfully, the 3rd person perspective was as I'd expect, and most ordinary vehicles behaved correctly, most of the time.

Physics
In a word, "fun". If I got two, perhaps "non-so realistic," but I'll stick with "fun". This game uses the Havok engine, which allows for a lot of fun stuff, such as an almost completely destructible environment. You can't impact the ground, but just about every building, vehicle, and sign can and will go kerblooey if met with sufficient force.

The buildings react fairly correctly, as far as I'd know having never taken down a building using det mines and a well placed dump truck. They teach you throughout the game how to take down buildings using more and more elaborate means, but basically if you find a building supported by anything, take out the anything and it'll crash down. They crash in the direction of the supports you removed, and if you're quick enough it'll come straight down.

Vehicle physics... not so good. Throughout the game I had issues with vehicles. I couldn't figure out why, but backing up in a car seemed it or miss. I always had to gas it a little forwards, then switch into reverse to get moving! Plus, you can climb many, many surfaces that you shouldn't be able to... things that are 75% grades that let you drive up them, for instance. Sure, "it's Mars" but still, all you ever had to do if you were stuck, was turn your tires slightly, and hit the gas. This technique, plus a dump truck, levels most buildings in fairly short order. Further, there were times I'd somehow ramp a vehicle over a small bump and find myself achieving darn near escape velocity, in my opinion. That said, it was awesome the time it happened on my way into an EDF camp and I smashed through a few buildings before coming to rest.

Overall, the physics were fun, and I'd say the quirks actually added to the fun, rather than detracting from it.

Environment
The graphics weren't at the level of some games that can, say, load a new level before you drive across a continent, but they were quite good considering some of the vistas you can look at. Mars is fairly well done, lots of red, lots of dust, and, uh, somehow a breathable atmosphere. You can even stumble across the Mars rover if you go hunting for ore deposits, and no... it's not destructible .

The buildings are not very varied. After you destroy 5-10, you'll know exactly how to take them down in 30 seconds or less.

Plot
The plot was kind of a typical Sci-Fi deal... you have colonists, oppressive military, easily predictable twists, but enjoyable overall.

Combat
Combat I'm torn on. On the one hand it was fun once you started building up a repertoire of weapons. My typical load out for most of the game was my sledgehammer, det mines, grenade launcher, and an assault rifle. That let me deal with infantry (rifle/sledge, and yes, you'll use the sledge the entire game, and no, it never gets old), armor (mines/grenades), buildings (see previous), and buildings (all of the above). The controls for combat made sense, although felt a little simplistic coming from a lot of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

My big issue was the difficulty. I played through on 'Normal', but even then I was dying a... freaking... lot. What's more, I got the feeling the game was designed that way, as the death penalty was measly in my opinion. Not that I'm bothered by frequent deaths, but when the loading times after a death were 30 seconds or a minute, I'd keep a book on my table just in case.

And the last level? Let me just say this flat out: Take your time, do it right, it's designed to kill you.

Missions
One of the game's strong points to me. There are a few main types of missions (Raids, Defense, Convoys, Couriers, and Heavy Metal). Heavy Metal was my favorite, and a great example of the diversity in the game. The basis is just "Kill X amount of Y EDF," where X is a number between 25 and 150, and Y is a vehicle or soldier. Sounds simple, but every one is different. In one you get a rocket turret, in another a tank, in a third a combat walker. They never get old. The same holds for raids, where you go in to either blow up a building or kill all defenders so they can blow it up. In some missions you'll hit an office building, or maybe a garage, or maybe a warehouse type building. Bottom line is while, yes, you can easily solve them all with one well placed theremobolic rocket, you'll need to adapt to the situation as you reach it.

Overall
Overall I'd recommend the game off of Gamefly or used. I'll probably keep playing through (after beating the game they unlock a harder difficulty, and reopen all the missions to replay), so I'm glad to have my own copy. I can easily see this game becoming repetitive to some, and others getting annoyed at the vehicles and their controls, so maybe don't buy it right off.

There's a lot I didn't touch on for brevity's sake, and I need sleep. Salvage that you blow stuff up to get to upgrade your gear for instance. But then, some needs to be left up to the reader to find out.

Oh, and if you're looking for a multiplayer game, keep looking. I've spent a full two minutes in the lobby queue without enough people to start a game.

Game: Metal Gear Solid 4
Developer: Kojima Productions
System: PS3
Difficulty: Solid Normal (3rd highest of 5)

Background
Metal Gear Solid 4 is set in a bleak future where war is a driving force for the world economy. Instead of standing armies, countries turn to Private Military Companies (only referred to as PMCs) to fight their wars, and the game portrays these wars as being purely for business sake. The soldiers are all kept in control by nanomachines running throughout their body, and every piece of equipment is 'tagged' to respond only if an authorized user is using it.

Full review below the cut.

Graphics
By far the strongest suit of the game, the graphics are gorgeous. While not 'life-like' due to a slight anime feel, there are some sunset scenes that are just breath taking. The weapons look good, the way the characters move with their weapons looks even better: Very fluid, tactical motions.

The landscapes were breathtaking in some places. One level is a winter area, and during the course of the mission the snow intensifies and backs off. At some points you can't see a bad guy until you're on top them (and vice versa *grin*), and at others you can see clear across the map. Its very well done and sticks in my mind as perhaps the best level in terms of the graphics.

There are some slight annoyances when the camera just won't pan the right way for you to see around a corner, but I've never seen a game that was perfect with regard to camera controls. I didn't find any clipping problems either, even when eating grenades that I didn't see coming.

Difficulty
The difficulty presented felt right. I really liked that there's two different 'medium' settings, as 'easy'/'medium'/'hard' a lot of times runs into medium being too easy, and hard being too hard (for a first play through). Solid Normal took me the right amount of time for a game, and gave me challenges, but very few places where the challenges were to the point of being frustrating. I'd recommend any experienced gamer start on Solid Normal.

Naked Normal is what my roommate started on, and it appears to be a good "I'm not a newbie" difficulty. You can get away with being fairly unstealthy, yet you can still die if you're very uncareful. I have a feeling the 'easy' setting (I don't know the name since I never bothered to look) will be easy for just about everyone, and that's never fun.

I also like how well the difficulty scales up. I just took a shot at the hardest (that I know of) difficulty (level 5, forget the name) and wow. It appears they scale up not just the damage, but how well the enemies perceive you. I died a few times in the first section, granted I was trying an end run past an APC for fun! There's enough difference between levels to make you want to play all of them (except 'easy') not just skip between.

Gameplay
This isn't a tactical shooter, and to approach it as such will result in some frustration. To appreciate the gameplay you must get into character and get your Ninja on. I enjoyed this much as I did back in Assassin's Creed, but thought that it was also stifling in a few places.

First off the good bits: When you're stealthing around, the game feels right. Its easy to tell how noisy you're being, which way the wind's going (make sure there's no guards down wind if you're going to smoke), and how concealed you are. Once you get on a good roll slinking through a village everything's great. You can distract guards by knocking on walls, get them to poke their heads around corners, and all manner of fun tricks before giving a good hip throw and putting them down.

You don't need any fancy tricks to get by, but if you want to learn them, just go to 'Briefing' under the pause menu and they'll show them all to you. I found this very helpful, and the tricks do increase the gameplay. Rather than put a guard to sleep with your tranq gun, you can just distract him to leave position and walk past. Bingo, no body to have to hide.

The bad part comes after you're discovered and the guards are alerted. Your maximum movement speed stays the same, and there's no sprint. To me this is an issue, a big one, because it severely impacts the player's ability to get away once an alert goes out, thus forcing him to fight his way through at least some number of guards. As you kill more, the alert refreshes (unless you kill all the guards in the area) and more keep popping. I got very frustrated a few times on bigger maps where you couldn't hope to fight your way through the guards because too many would be still coming, and you just have to run. I'm sorry, saunter. In my mind Snake is the best of the best, and as such would know how to run, and to not include that detracts from the immersion.

Now, by doing this they make you play stealthy, and I can easily see how over powered the player would be if he could run through most levels (and there were a few I just high-tailed it through, shooting only when the guards had closed in) and shoot willy-nilly.

The really bad part is that some bits are forced to be slow. I don't mean stealthy slow, I mean you have to crawl on your hands and knees because that's the only thing available from all your commands. You have to fight in slow-motion for a few minutes. These parts are maddening.

The worst is a bit traveling through a ship, at first you're just stumbling along, and then, and I couldn't believe this, you fall to your knees. At this point you have to press the triangle button. You fall again. Now you have to crawl, for what feels like a few minutes, spamming the triangle button. This is singly the worst part of the game, and a HORRIBLE decision. I'm young and in decent shape, and not only my thumb, but my wrist, and my arm were sore after that part. It blows my mind that someone thought this was a good idea. Due to how close to the end this part is, I probably won't replay it, but consider the game 'beat' at that point.

Combat
The combat system is decent and it does effectively capture both tactical firefights and stealth operations. However I found that without customizing the main weapons you use, the combat system is very hard to use. That's on purpose, but I've met people who simply never realized they could customize weapons in the game. Believe me, without a fore-grip on a few of the guns, you won't be able to get more than 3 rounds on target before you have to stop firing and this makes the combat system very frustrating.

Now once you do customize the guns, they get fun. I really liked that they took modern guns that are very adaptable and let you put real-life attachments on them. For instance, my M4 in the game ended up with a laser, red-dot sight, fore-grip, and suppressors, allowing me to: Fire at enemies without allowing them to get a good bead on my position; Go full auto and stay on target (for the most part); See what I'm shooting at, and have a nice red-dot scope to look through in FPS mode. The default M4 has a hit-area about the size of a shotgun blast so its very hard to tell exactly what you're aiming at, jumps all over when shooting, and makes you use the iron sights (much smaller picture).

Customizing the guns made the game seem unique to my play style, as I could keep my M4 for silent engagements, a Mk. 17 for when the guards are already alerted, and an XM8 for the underslung grenade launcher in case I faced waves of robots. I was still experimenting on the bets mix by the time the game ended and could easily have kept playing around with it.

The silent combat is fairly straight forward, simply hitting the attack button while near your opponent, but it gets fun with moves like holdin the guy you grabbed as a shield, or using an injector to put them to sleep. Unfortunately I felt that the stealth combat was just... easy. If I got near someone, even a group of guards, I could take them out unarmed.

It should be noted that the boss fights are very fun. There's 5 unique bosses, although I honestly found the first and the last to be much harder than the others. Your style of combat will chance for each boss, and they do feel like true 'boss' fights, much harder than the other encounters in the game. I don't want to spoil any of them so I won't go into any more detail.

Cutscenes
My gripe. This game has a reported 90 minute cutscene, and overall I'd guess easily over 24 hours of 'movie'. The upside is that they let you pause the movies or skip them. The downside, and this is a major oversight, is I've yet to find a way to watch those movies once I've skipped them! To include that much cinematography and essentially force you to watch it if you want the plot info is just wrong. (Please, if I'm just being dumb and can't find it, someone tell me where it is). The cutscenes are gorgeous, but they're also long, unnecessarily so it feels like. There's a few that I saw on my roommate's game that included almost random dialog. Good dialog, but to me it felt 'extra', and that it could have been taken out.

The length overall is also just mind-bloggling. There were whole levels with one save point in them, and then I saved three times for the cut-scenes (once before, once during, once after)!

I didn't watch a single cut-scene other than the ones on my roommate's game, and the final one. It turns out I didn't even see HALF the final one, I walked away when the credits started rolling, came downstairs a while later and there was talking again! It blew my mind!

The upside here is that there's only one case where they give you vital information (I dunno, maybe they give you tips to help on the bosses?) in the cut scenes. Thankfully that one is very short, and in the middle of a level.

Story
Wouldn't know, see above.

Ok, I know some of the story, and that bit seemed ok. Howeve, while they say this game stands on its own, I think you have to know former MSG lore to understand a lot of it. I've never played the previous MSGs, so I felt a bit lost in a few places as my roommate exclaimed: "That's so-and-so!"

Story is important for me deciding I really like a game or not, and sadly in this case I just can't speak to it. While I could have sat through all the videos, I wasn't about to spend unknown amounts of time during fixed amounts of play time watching, rather than playing. If I have an hour for the PS3, I want that hour to be mostly gameplay.

I won't count against MGS4 in the story category, because it was my choice to skip the cutscenes, however many games have managed to drive the story without such heavy cutscenes and only using the cutscenes is definitely a bad choice on the part of the developers.

Political Undertones
These weren't undertones so much as slap-you-in-the-face-tones. From the very first cutscene/newbie zone it was evident what path the writers were going down, though to be honest its the obvious choice for Hollywood/games nowadays. The developers paint a picture of a future where war runs everything, an insinuate that using PMCs at all is a horrendous choice that will lead down the path to the MSG4 future.

My feelings on that idea aside, I would have been ok with it as an undertone, I could see this in much of the story I did get to see and I don't play my games to be preached to. For me, video games are a nice escape, a make believe place much like when I read and in this place I like to get away from the real issues I get to see every day. Could I have seen this coming before I bought the game? Maybe, and that's why I never got Army of Two, however this was a present and I didn't do any research before I got it.

Will the political dabblings affect my score for the game? No, because gamers can make up their own minds about what's right and what's wrong, and I know many agree with the way PMCs/the government are portrayed in the game.

Down Time
This game does recreate one bit of the military very effectively, hurry up and wait. Thanks to the gorgeous graphics in cutscenes and phone calls, as well as just being a freaking big game, there's a lot of loading. For starters, you have to install the game in 5 portions. The upside is it has a "small" disk footprint, only about 4GB. The big downside is every act must be installed. This takes 3 minutes each time, and if you're on one act, and a friend's on another, you'll have to install it each time you start up.

There's also nice loading before every cutscene and phone call. Not severe, but noticeable, especially when so much of the game is cutscenes already.

Multiplayer
Yes, there is multiplayer, Metal Gear Online. I decided to install it (another install) and test it out, only to find that I'd have to create two more IDs, besides my Playstation ID, to play! I can't see a good reason for that to be the case, so I won't waste my time on this, and instead keep on keeping on in Resistance 2.

Replayability
This looks like it has decent to good replay value. There were more than one bits where I thought "You know, I'll bet I could do that without tipping off any guards" and actually wanted to go back and replay that little bit to get better.

Besides the fun of certain missions (there's one that had me howling in laughter and glee) it also appears to have decent replayability for single player. If what the game says is true, you get back the gear you had at the end of the mission when you would get your initial gear at the beginning. I've not yet had a chance to test this out, but if true it'll be what's required to get through the harder difficulties.

Scoring
Many, many, many critics gave this game very good scores, 95% and higher, and while I can see where they get that number, I think its inflated value.

Remember, my scale goes from a 0 ("Are you KIDDING ME?!?!") to 5 ("Literally nothing could be changed."), and I'm not basing this on any franchise coolness.

Graphics: 5/5 - Hands down, excellent. If you don't have a high-def, take the PS3 over to a friend's, your eyes will thank you.

Difficulty: 4/5 - Well planned out.

Gameplay: 3.5/5 - When you can stay stealthy its a great game. Once you turn tactical Snake is found lacking. As for the triangle mashing and slow-motion gameplay, I could have done without.

Combat: 4/5 - Gun customization really takes the combat system somewhere fun. I'd like to see a bit more work done to control of the unarmed combat, it felt like flailing in some cases. It'd also be nice to make the guard's hand to hand have more counters.

Cut Scenes: 2.5/5 - No gamer should have to watch more video than have game time, period. If this was, say, an interactive DVD it'd be great, but with only 19 hours of gameplay on the second hardest difficulty, and easily over 20 hours of video it is simply too much. Gorgeous, but too much.

Story: Unrated.

Politics: Unrated.

Multiplayer: Unrated due to nonsense requirements.

Replayability: A tentative 3/5. If you really can get your gear in harder difficulties, this would be a HUGE boon. I'd be much more likely to replay through on the highest difficulty if I had the guns I set up in the 3rd highest difficulty still with me. However, the thought of reinstalling each act all the time makes me want to go play something else.

Down Time: 2/5 - I can forgive loading before and after cutscenes, even if it takes 10-20 seconds. To need to install 5 times, and separately for each act really impacts my desire to go back and play through other acts again.

Overall: 3.5/5 (70%) - Not only is this about the score I wanted to give it after putting the game down, its what my above scores work out to be! How's that for a good call?!

Conclusion
This was a fun game, I'll say that first off, and a good game. I really enjoyed it the first time through, and it felt unique to me. I found I could just keep writing about the game, there's so much to talk about, which is good. However there are a few decisions the developers should not have made: Requiring button mashing at an unbelievable rate; Cutscenes taking up my time; Too much loading. These detract from the game in a very noticeable way, and this is why I feel the other game reviews are inflated. I don't see how a good, unbiased, game reviewer could overlook these.

Bottom line: Get this game if you want a movie with a game inside of it. Otherwise, be prepared to hurry up and wait for the fun to start!

The Hacking Minigame
Scattered across the Wastes, whether in museums, house, or random places that just happen to have turrets nearby, you'll stumble across old computer terminals. These may be useless systems that just contain a random citizen's poetry about the current situation, or control the turret system you're about to walk into, or do anything in between. Some of the terminals are just open, these are almost always of the useless 'poetry' variety. Most, however, are password protected which gives you two ways to get inside of them. Ok, possibly three if there's a "D - none of the above" choice, Such as just blowing up the turret you want stopped.

The easiest way to get in is searching the surrounding area for a password. Yes, just like in real life, the denizens of the Wastes write down their password, and stick it in their desk (or in their pocket, or corpse...). I chuckled a little bit the first time I found one of these in a desk.

The normal way to break in to the terminal is the hacking minigame. I've seen a few of these over time, ranging from simple "Guess the password" Flash games, to HBH and Hack This Site, and this was probably the simplest one that captures the feel of real hacking.

When you open up a locked terminal, you'll see a screen like the following:

At the top you see 'Attempts Left', this starts at 4 most of the time, and counts down. If you ever use all your attempts, the computer is locked down, and unless you have a special skill you're out for good.

Below that is a bunch of plaintext and garbage. This is supposedly a recovered password file, and its up to you to figure out what's the correct password. You do this like Mastermind, you pick a plaintext string, and it'll tell you how many letters are correct, and in the correct spot. If the password was Grapes, and I clicked on Kitten I'd get back 1/6. Statistically this becomes very hard once you get up to hard terminals that have 8 characters and a bunch of choices. The way to make it easier is to look through the garbage for hints. Anytime you find matching braces, parenthesis, or brackets, you select the first one and it'll either remove a dud string, or replenish your allowance. Unlike the plaintext words, you must mouse over the first character in one of these garbage strings to see the whole thing highlighted. On my old TV this was a lesson in squinting and frustration, trying to pick out the parens from braces.

Once you correctly input the password, the computer is forever open to you (and you get 44 experience, regardless of level!).

The Reality
The reason I liked this minigame, is its darn close to reality. Not in the actual skills used, but through the sifting through of a bunch of garbage, trying to figure out what's valuable and what's just another corrupted file. You have to sit there, be patient, and keep trying. In some cases you have to cancel your attempt because you're about to lock the system, and start all over again. Sure, when script kiddies can just release a botnet these factors are mitigated, but at the heart of it all, it comes down to noticing the little things (oh, look, an old Apache install), having to piece things together (Hmm, they plugged all the holes in Apache, but I noticed there's .php pages, maybe mod_php is old), and hoping you're going after a user that's careless enough to leave their password laying on the desk.

And of course, there's always the ability to bypass getting into the system, and simply pick the lock on the safe, or destroy a turret or two and forget about the system.

Note: I will keep this as spoiler free as possible, however if you really don't want to learn anything, walk away now. I will give basic geographical/plot background information, and some limited meta information about endings, nothing about the endings themselves.

The Setting
The background of Fallout 3 (FO3 from here on out) is set in the DC area, in 2277, 200 years after nuclear war ravaged our country, and the world. However it is not a pure futuristic setting, the story takes life as it was in the 1950s, and says "What if this is how we stayed". So you have a juxtaposition of 1950s technology and culture with the knowledge that you're hundreds of years in the future. In some places those differences are obvious, maybe a computer file dated in the future, but the computer is just a terminal connected to something the size of a room.

Everyone that has survived has done it one of two ways. The nicest is they were in Vaults at the time of the attack, bomb shelters designed to be communities. This is where you come from, Vault 101. Those not lucky enough to be in Vaults, or those who left after the attacks lived in the wild, or ad hoc communities together. If you're lucky, these 'wild' people you interact with are human.

As far as the physical setting goes, I felt they nailed DC. Having grown up in this area I know it fairly well, and there were many times wandering around the Wastes when I'd stumble across a place I knew, or a street I actually recognized. Its cool. More than being recognizable, its different enough to be the future. There's, for instance, buildings all the way up to where the Cherry Blossoms should be, and an aircraft carrier that came into port.

As far as graphics go, they're what you'd expect from Bethesda. On the high-def TV I just got they're downright gorgeous for sweeping landscapes. If you stand on the steps of the Capital around Sunset, and look south to the Washington Monument, it's pretty. On the other hand, wandering around the Wastes at midnight and realizing you're in the middle of a minefield, just as scary as the previous scene was beautiful. But no matter what you look at its missing that exactness, something just feels off,since the landscapes are just so big and the GPUs are just so finite.

Initial Reactions
I liked the start of the game a lot. The character creation is pretty decent, tied in with the story. From the get go, you're making decisions that affect your character, which is something I like. While you are somewhat protected for the first bit, you can set the tone for your character already... there's no specific 'newbie time' where you're just learning controls and that's it. Actually, I suppose there is, but it gets drawn out through this time when you can affect your character.

I did feel just a bit overwhelmed stepping out of the Vault initially, when I caught a glimpse of how big the Wastes are.

The Grind
However, once we got into a grind, mainly doing side quests or just exploring to steal as much as we could and sell back in town, I felt a bit bored. The quests themselves are pretty good, the usual "Run around and do X, Y, and Z," types (I won't enumerate the full types of the quests, just so no one feels cheated) but with good writing, some humor, and a freaking HUGE area to explore.

Honestly, the worst part was filling up my inventory every 20-30 minutes. In a well populated area this would happen more like every 10 minutes. Even with a follower (Yer the man, Cheron!), which I believe more than doubles your capacity, this would happen to us. When it happened, we'd have to get out of combat, back out of whatever dungeon or building we were in to get back to the Wastes, fast travel back to a town and sell the stuff off. This worked decently well in the beginning, but by the end I was bringing in a good 4,000 caps (the currency is bottle caps) per run, and unable to sell it all in one town. In fact, I'd go between three towns and barely clear my inventory. Even then I was stopping by my house and dropping a lot of parts off. This started to wear on me the last few days I was playing and I started just not clearing my corpses, nor searching for items that weren't obvious while I was exploring.

The End
So I got to an ending tonight. I say 'an' because like all good RPGs, there's more than one. FO3 has, according to the developers over 240 endings (I'm not responsible for spoilers from following that link. Take my word for it if you don't want to know). This is possible because of how they do the ending, which I really liked. I also found at least one other choice just before the ending that is sort of another way to end it... I created about 5 saved games just from recognizing the spots where I'd have a game-deciding choice and saving just before I did, will go back and replay them all the other way sometime next week.

The one question I have about the endings is if you can keep playing after getting to it. The ending I chose resulted in seeing the Main Menu again, so I'm very interested to know if I can keep playing after a better choice, or if we've got another Fable on our hands.

EDIT: I've googled around, and it looks like there's going to be a downloadable pack that will allow you to play after the main quest is done. So make sure you have good saves if you think you're anywhere near the end!

Balthazar
I went a different route for my character than I normally do (Snarky). This guy was Balthazar, who I aligned heavily with one town where my house was, and played every other interaction to my benefit. If this required being nice, I was nice, and if it required ruthlessness, I did that as well. In most cases I would help out those who needed it, then clean out their houses while they're out celebrating.

The two noble causes in Balthazar's life are his father and his country. Anytime anyone spoke poorly of my father, they were dealt with immediately, and swiftly. In the grander scheme, any time I could work a "for the good of the nation" into a quest, I'd do it. Anything designed to better the lives of the American citizens was carried out, though in a few cases that requires some heavy thinking to sort out who really wanted what for whom.

The Morals
And that brings me to the morals in this game. One interesting thing is that anytime you steal, even if you're not caught, you lose Karma. This means that by the end of the game, even though I only had 5 pick pockets, my Karma was the lowest possible level. People were almost spitting on me in the streets. If you want to play a good, or neutral, character, you'll either have to never steal, or make sure you pick up every possible 'helping' quest there is.

Beyond this obvious moral lesson, the ending of the game raises excellent moral questions. To a certain degree I saw them coming throughout the game, but I was actually struggling with my ending because I really wasn't sure if I was on the "Good guys" side. While I dislike games that preach on certain points (the favorite right now is privatized warfare... I'm looking at you Metal Gear Solid 4) and use it as a political platform, I still enjoyed the mental exercise these endings required.

The Scoring
So, how would I rate this game?

Graphics: 4/5. Clearly above par, but due to system constraints they're not going to look lifelike.

Plot: 5/5. I enjoyed it, I really did. Especially towards the end if you work on just playing the main story line its great.

Gameplay: 4/5. The controls are ok, but certain things, like the fast weapon switch, just don't feel very snappy. Of course, I was able to pick the controller up the first time and know where everything was, points to them for not changing something that's not broken. Gameplay throughout the game is very linear in difficulty, there's no new tricks to pick up after the start (that I can remember).

Repetitiveness: 3/5. As I mentioned above, the game can get good and repetitive. Go to X, clear out whatever you find, go sell. My problem with non-linear games is I get lost just trying to discover everything and bring everything out, someone more focused might not find this an issue.

Ending: 5/5. Why rate the ending? Because this is why you played the game! To have a game (*coughFablecough*) be exceptionally good gameplay, and then have a very anti-climatic ending ruins any fun you may have had. Conversely, a mediocre game with an excellent ending will leave you thinking the world of it. This one was well done, enough to make up for the repetitiveness around the middle.

RPG: 5/5. Its a good, solid RPG. Simple enough to pick right up and have an idea where you want your character to go, but complex enough that you could replay 5 or 6 times with unique builds easily. Googling for Fallout Characters should show you some examples of what people have made, everything from a Freddie Krugar specializing in Melee weapons, to paladins who refuse to use firearms, to pyromaniacs bent on making everything explode. I initially gave this a 4, but changed my mind because I can't think of the last RPG I enjoyed to this extent.

Stability: 3/5. Maybe my biggest complaint. I believe I hung my PS3 a good three or four times in FO3. While this has happened with other games, it might have been once in Resistance 2, to happen multiple times to a game is just wrong. I had to do hard reboots but flipping the power switch in back for at least two of these hangs. This irks me because the other 8ish games I've owned haven't given me problems (other than R2 once... maybe), and I feel that since everyone's on the same platform, it should be easy to test for these things ahead of time. That said, I've logged a good amount of time in FO3 straight, and heat may have been a factor, I'm unsure. Also, the glitches weren't reproducible, so they could be things that legitimately were missed by QA.

Overall: 4/5. While it might start to drag in the center, pushing on to the ending is more than worth it. Its missing the 5 here because I feel a 5 should leave me feeling "Nothing could possibly be changed here", and there's a few things that could be changed in FO3. The stability is the other major issues preventing a 5.

All in All
If you have a PS3, and you enjoy RPGs, buy it. Maybe do GameFly if you're unsure, but I feel like this will be a keeper, and I'll play through another character (going to *try* for a pure good character, probably have to make him/her really naive to pull that off, but oh well) next summerish.

My surgery was scheduled for this past Tuesday, but I had a friend coming in last weekend for a concert and gaming. What's a boy to do? I took the noble way out, and holed up all weekend with the PS3, new Magic (the Gathering) decks, and a new (to me) game called Gloom in order to feel as good as possible for the concert. I have to say, this game is a winner.

Gloom is made by Atlas Games, a company that makes some fun and compact games, such as Lunch Money that are easily portable, and yet very engrossing. What intrigued me as I was reading the back of the box in a good local game store were the card design and feel of the game.

The cards are clear. That's right, clear. The image on the back of the box shows this:

(feel free to ignore the creepy clown, he's but one of 20 characters)

Every character has a portrait in the center, and some flavor text in various places (name, title, flavor). Each Modifier (What's that?! More later) card has flavor text (name, flavor text), modifiers in one or more of three locations (all on the left), optional rules, and an optional story icon. In the sample picture above, the top top card is an untimely death, but the Modifier card under it has a -10 modifier in the middle spot, see it? It also has a bat as the story icon (this is just a generic 'beast').

Basically the game revolves around stacking Modifiers on top of Characters (you control a whole family, the winner is whichever family has the lowest self-worth). Because the cards are clear you'll see Modifiers or story icons from all the cards below unless you play a card that has something in the same spot. The goal is to eventually kill off your Characters using Untimely Death cards when the have the lowest self-worth possible, hence the name, Gloom.

The fun part is the feel of the game. Knowing just the above the game seems, well, depressing, but it is simply hysterical. Yes, you can play just by tossing cards around like you might in Magic, but the whole point of the game is to tell the sad story of a certain family. Think of it like a good Poe story, if Poe was Dave Berry. In the rules it encourages you to tell more of the story as you play Modifiers and Untimely Deaths, kind of like the old campfire game of everyone adding a sentence to a story, since you can play cards on anyone's Characters. The fun bit here is the usual 'punish' on another player of hurting their character is flipped on its head. So you'll hear "Angel was unhappy since she got beat up by bums, but then she met the man of her dreams and got blessed by the church." "Nooooooo! Why?! I didn't do ANYTHING to you!".

The stories get fun. A friend who's holed up with me since his car is in the shop and has been for weeks was playing purely based on building good story lines. It doesn't get wins but I was dieing laughing at bits of it. For example (card names in italics):

Player 1 (owner of Grogar): "Grogar, the half alive Teddy Bear, went on a trip last week. He went to see his family in Africa, but forgot to bring his water purification tablets. Ever since he's been distressed by dysentery." (-25 total Modifier, -15 on top, and -10 in the middle).

Player 2: "Grogar was horribly distress by this disease, especially when he heard it affected his whole family back home as well. However, when his much-removed uncle, Jimmy, finally succombed to the disease, he left Grogar the family land, all of Egypt! Grogar really landed a legacy." (+15 total modifier, +15 in the center... which wipes out the -10 from above).

Player 3: "After Grogar landed his legacy. he became the talk of the town! A cute young teddy bear named Jenny introduced herself, and not three months later they were wondrously well wed!" (+20 total modifier, 0 on top which wipes out the -15 from Player 1's card, +20 on bottom).

Now in one turn Grogar has gone from being worth -25 (a decent score, all 5 members being worth that is -100 total. My wins usually come around -110 to -130) to +35, a rotten score. Thankfully there's very very few ways to kill off a Character while they have positive self worth, but it'll still take a few turns for Grogar to go back to getting points for his player. More importantly, we now know Grogar has land in Africa, and a newly wed wife, which lets us play an abundance of negative cards and stay within the story!

Overall, my two friends and I have really enjoyed this game. We played 4-5 games last weekend, and I've done 2-3 since then, way more than we played with the Magic decks we all bought. The games can take a while, the three player games lasted about an hour apiece using all five Characters in the families. I'd have to rate it a 4/5 for myself.

Why does it warrant a 4/5?

• It is unique, its not a rip-off of another idea (aka another CCG, or based off a computer game or movie).
• I still get a kick out of the clear cards, they look and feel darn cool. The humor is to die for (pun intended).
• The box is small, easily tossed into a bag, mayhaps even a purse (I don't own one, so I wouldn't know) to have if you're planning on waiting somewhere, or for a picnic.
• Its a smaller game company, I really like supporting companies like SJ Games, Atlas, etc over mass-producing places like Hasbro. The games feel more unique, and usually have a bit more 'flair'.

So why not a 5/5?

• After a few games we could tell what card the opponent would play just by listening to the story, a few more cards would be very welcome. There are add-on packs, and I may pick them up just to get a little more randomness.
• With even a 3 player game we got through the deck one and a half times before the end of the first game, so its something you can expect to happen.
• It comes in a box, not a tin. This is very common, and I dislike it. See box rant below.
• I feel a 5/5 is for games that make me sit back and think "Wow, am I lucky I experienced that. nothing better could be done." You know, like the movie Torque.

Box Rant:
Recently I've become very irked at games that are packaged in cardboard boxes, not tins. For a big game, this makes a bit of sense, such as Munchkin. Big box, can be made of study cardboard, in two parts like a normal box + top. However, for small games that are Chez Geek sized (and Gloom is the same size) or smaller, where the box is one cardboard box with flaps that need to close over the cards, this is not a good solution. It works fine when the cards are in their shrink wrap, but after one game they're a tad bigger, and the flaps never close correctly. They'll get bent, or let cards slide out, or not fit the rules, its just not a good solution, its a hack. Hacks, while clever, aren't right for long term solutions.

The real solution here is tins. Make a tin the same size as that cardboard box and it'll hold its shape. It'll hold the cards. It'll snap closed so you're absolutely sure no cards are falling out in your backpack. Tins work. I'm sure they're not used because of a price issue, but I'm always more inclined to buy a tined game than a boxed one. My hack to fix their hack is ziplock bags. All of my game cards, for all of my games, live in plastic ziplock bags. I know they're not coming out.

Plot: I won't spoil the surprise, somehow it remained one for me even after reading a few reviews. The basic plot ties into the Third Crusade, with Saladin fighting King Richard (more or less). The historical context here is that assassins rose into being during this time as a means of fighting back, with the word assassin coming from the Arabic "hashashin", meaning, well... hashish addicts. Specifically a Muslim sect during the Crusades that may have controlled their assassins with drugs and promises of heaven. Others that don't want to acknowledge possible negative connotations of the word claim it to have come from the leader's name "Hassan" (where Hassansin would be a follower of Hassan). In any case neither word is used in Arabic for assassin any more, so I don't think it should have any charged feelings either way.

The only reason I point out the etymological root of the word is because at one point your character is told that the Crusaders "Control their killers with magic herbs" and had to laugh. In most other respects, however, the designers did an amazing job with the plot.

The game does attempt to address some religious and political ideas but, with one exception, its nothing excessively in your face. The exception somewhat ruins the plot, so I'll hold my tongue further.

4/5

Cut scenes: I enjoyed each and every cut scene in the game, and boy are there a lot! Around the first 45 minutes I started getting bored until I realized I could control the camera and minimal assassin movement which means that you can be your own director! Walk in, announce a kill, and during the ensuing conversation pretend you're in the Godfather. Another great touch is being able to change camera angles on the more important scripted 'boss' conversations, where you can get close ups of the guy speaking, or the innocent victim he's about to kill. Really gives it a good cinematic feel.

All I could ask for is, well, an option to skip them just in case they do get a bit long.

4/5

Graphics: I absolutely loved the graphics in the game. Assassin's Creed has clearly upped the ante for games in the coming year, giving both superb sweeping vistas and decent indoor areas (though indoors wasn't emphasized). The first time I climbed the Citadel in Acre and looked out over the city it hit me just how much work went into this game. It actually reminded me of my time in Tunisia, captured quite nicely in my TV. Running around Jerusalam gave me the same feel, while standing on the Dome of the Rock. Add to that the nice little particle graphics they add in when you find flags, or save citizens, and you'll be wowed no matter what game ya come from.

The combat graphics aren't great as well. When your character performs a kill combo or a reversal it jumps into a cinematic mode and shows one of a dozen (maybe more) moves being performed. As late as the 7th assassination (of 9) I was seeing new moves.

I came into the game assuming the cut scenes I'd seen weren't in game footage, but was greatly surprised to see the whole game looks that way!

5/5

Gameplay: I'll start by saying I really liked the control system. The first five minutes of button bashing made me think I'd make a mistake purchasing the game, but after familiarization (the tutorial is required, but extremely helpful) the controls felt natural. What they boil down to is the four buttons on the 'shape' pad. Triangle controls your head, Circle your open hand, Square your weapon hand, and X your feet. So in the context of walking, Circle is a gentle push to move people out of your way, Square shanks someone, and X makes you blend into the crowd and go unnoticed. When you move into conspicuous mode, those turn into a tackle, uber-shank, and sprint, respectively.

Once you get used to those controls, it makes it pretty easily to do exactly what you want to, such as slink along a rooftop, drop down into a group of guards assaulting a citizen, and shank two of them before they realize what's going on. Along those lines, the combat is very fun. Its fairly easy once you get down all the moves, but by the time you do that a fight can easily pull 10 guards at a time. While its easy to win, if you miss a break and let them get around you its also easy to lose. The combat feels very fluid, and using the short sword gives you a very nice whirling dervish look.

As far as replaying the game goes, I just "hurriedly" (took me a good week and a half doing it hurriedly) played through a lot of this game and yet still have a lot to go back and do. For one, each area has flags hidden in it, hundreds of them, and I've got, oh 50 total. Another fun thing to find is a large number of Templars that you need to kill. Finally, if you didn't do full investigations the first time, you need to go back and actually complete all the annoying flag finding missions for informers. Also its just darn fun running through Jerusalem and seeing how many guards I can get on me. Its like making my own action movie.

5/5

Openendedness (oh yes, that's a word... now): On the one hand you're forced to follow an approximate order of assassinations. However that's a very small hand, as most assassinations let you chose which city to do first. More than that, you can jump between cities if you like, and do the investigations as you want (each investigation being 3 of 6 missions consisting of pickpocketing, interrogations, eavesdropping, or informer assignments). I never once felt like I was forced into a path to chose, nor felt the game 'stop'. After an initial 10-15 second loading period, the entire city was at my disposal and by the end that equals a large area. I could run all over the city I was working in and only have to stop when 50 guards kill me--- erm, when I decide to.

There, again, is an exception that might be a plot ruiner, but at the end of the game I forgave all of it.

4/5

Ending: I loved this ending. At one point this afternoon I jumped up and said in a not so calm voice "Heck yea!" It was an appropriate ending, it fir the period well, and man are the fights leading up to it epic. I said before that knowing all the fighting moves makes fights 'easy', and for the most part this held true. Of course with the numbers you're up against, its darn easy to die quickly as well if you let them start landing blows. And with the final boss fight I died at least three times before getting him, and the fourth was darn close. And then, just before the credits, a lovely plot twist that actually had me come back and do some scenery watching for 10 minutes.

4/5

In the end, this is a game I recommend for anyone that enjoys a little sword play. Its only Single Player, but it does that so well I have to forgive it. You won't be disappointed with this game, even at $50.

(Slight Spoiler warning... nothing end-game)

Overall I'm extremely enjoying this game. The basic game play is rather straightforward, yet there's so many smaller bits to it that you can learn and improve with. For instance there's just one 'swing' attack, but if you hold the mouse button to attack it performs a more powerful swing attack. If you sneak before attacking (unseen, of course) you get a damage multiplier on tops of that normal attack also. Another example would be vampirism, during the Dark Brotherhood quest line you're given the option of becoming a vampire. If you chose to do so, you gain more abilities. These abilities get stronger the longer you go without feeding, but at the same time your weakness to sunlight and fire also is increased. Part of the game that's there but which you never have to play with if you don't want to.

Speaking of the Dark Brotherhood, this quest line has sucked me in the farthest of all the ones I'm doing. The Dark Brotherhood is a group of assassins who serve the 'Night Mother' and live in small groups in each town. They'll kill anyone for the right blood price. Your job as you rise through the ranks is to take more and more important hits. I spent a while last night playing through a quest for them that I thought was brilliant writing.

It starts with being given a contract to go to a party. The guests each think there's a hidden chest of gold, and agreed to be locked inside until one finds it. Obviously, there's no gold and your job is to kill them, having been given the key by the doorman before being locked inside with everyone else. As you work through the crowd, you can see they each have opinions of each other that you can play off of. If you play it right it becomes a really good horror movie, with the people getting more and more scared, and playing off their fears. Finally I had it down to two, had them completely trusting me, and had picked two that really didn't like each other, as soon as I talked to them one ran upstairs, the other grabbed a sword and ran up behind her. Of course as soon as he came down I slew him for daring to kill a woman, and completed my contract. I've left a lot out because its a quest you really have to experience yourself, but it is simply amazing writing.

The main quest line is decent as well, however I'm doing the Dark Brotherhood first to get the nice bonuses and because its simply easier to pick up one quest at a time.

Final rating? Buy this game!

Game: Quao - The Ultimate Dictatorship Game
Publisher: Wiggity Bang Games, LLC
Players: 3-6 (We had 4)
Length: About half an hour - a full hour, if I recall correctly
Price: $9.95, extremely cheap for this good of a game

Quick Synopsis: This game is what would happen if World War II (the war) met up with Bullshit (the game) or President, udder (heh heh) chaos. Bullshit is a game where you have to get rid of all your cards (aka a Shedding game) without being called out for lying. President is a game where you have to get rid of all your cards, and some players are in a more advantageous position than others. World War II was a crazy time with people making weird rules, alliances, and generally just running amok if they could. In Quao there's one person who knows the special rules (a made up example could be 'No one can say Rumpelstiltskin'), and the rest just know certain rules/cards in play (such as 'At the start of every turn you must make an animal sound and say what it eats). If either type of rule is violated, Quao makes that offender draw a card. The goal is to get rid of your whole hand, whoever does becomes Quao next round. A game consists of 5 rounds, the winner of the 5th wins the game, of course by that time there's 4 Quao rules, and perhaps 10 other special rules in play, so it gets crazy.

Thoughts: This was a really fun game once you got past the 'these rules don't make any sense' aspect of the first 5 minutes. Thankfully it appears they anticipated that period, and included a 'Sample Game' section in the rules that gives you the guts to jump in and figure out that the rules aren't that bad. We ended up getting really paranoid about what the Quao rules where (none of us looked at them ahead of time) and at least I guessed at it and was completely off base. This led to everyone else knowing one major one except for me, and me going a tad bit crazy trying not to break it... of course I ended up breaking it more in the process. That paranoia really captures the idea of a dictatorship, I was scared for my card's life! In the end this becomes an amazing beginner's game, knowing the cards only makes it not fun for the regular players, the newbies can pick it up quickly (it took us a whole 1 round to get going, 1/5 of a game and we were playing like pros) and it'll all be new and funny to them.

Complaints: I want to see a booster pack. By the end of our third game we knew most of the regular rule cards, and about 4 major Quao rules, just with normal turn over of Quao, not looking through them. Barring that, just sell me a deck of blank cards and I'll write them myself (Draw a card!). I feel like 40-50 more white cards, and a nice stack of 25-30 rule cards would do the trick. This game is too good to have me get tired of it quickly so get me more cards!

Overall (Completely arbitrary and non-comparable) Rating: Extremely fun, just too dang short!