How my rating system works

After hearing some pretty intense debates about rating systems, how metacritic and all those other sites do it, I'm not going to do grades or numbers. Instead it's going to be pretty simple. I'll type "Bottom Line" then my recommendation. It could be: go watch it, go play it, go rent it, go read it, stay far, far away from it like it's a nuclear reactor melting down.

Fable: The Lost Chapters for the PC

I'm betting pretty much every gamer out there has heard of Fable, Peter Molyneux's hyped up series. I remember back in 2003, poring over articles up the game, how you could do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. Yeah, not so much.

If you're looking for something to compare this game to, think GTA set in Dark Ages England with magic. That's essentially what they were going for. More specifically, think San Andreas, where you could affect how your character looked to a high degree.

Anyway, the game opens with you as a child in your home village, on the day of your older sister's birthday. After you get some gold for doing various tasks for people, you give her a present and, oh shit, bandits raid the village! Burning, pillaging, possibly raping, everyone! Your mom and sister are tortured, and your dad is killed. You hide, and then a Hero from the Guild (Oh the originality) shows up and teleports you away. Turns out, you're hero material! How lucky. From this point on, the game introduces you to the gameplay:melee combat, ranged combat, and magic or Will as it's called in Fable's world.

The gameplay is pretty simple, but it is fun. If you aim right with your bow or crossbow, you can take an enemy's head off. My only problems with the combat were how you changed spells and blocking. Changing spells depended on your mouse's middle button, as did blocking. It probably is that my mouse wheel is crappy, but changing spells was a pain so I just changed the hotkey. The blocking was more of an issue as I had to press the button in ever so precisely.

Molyneux made a lot of promises for the game and didn't deliver on all of them. For one thing, the game world just seems so...small. Much of it is just paths, there aren't that many open areas at all. Also, your way is often blocked by gates that open up after you reach a certain point in the main storyline.

The story is decent. But you're not really playing Fable for that, are you? It progresses with "Quest Cards" which are just missions that you can do whenever you want. The other, bigger problem, I had with the game is the side missions. They don't respawn. There aren't that many of them.

The alignment system was touted to be very prevalent in Fable but, it's really not. You can do anything, and your actions affect a good/evil meter. If you're full good, you get a halo and your hands glow if you stand still. If you're full evil, you get two little retarded ass horns. Wow. I feel like a real bad ass with this two tumors growing out of my forehead. Based on whether your good or evil, NPCs will either follow you around or run away. Great. Being good/evil has no affect on the choices you make, it just depends on what you want to do at the time.

Another thing that annoyed me, is that I couldn't kill NPCs in towns. They just wouldn't die no matter how many times I hit them. Not very sandbox.

However, as of now, Fable: The Lost Chapters, for PC mind you is $20. That's fantastic. For Mac, it's $50. Rip-off. That $20 price tag helps with quite a few of these issues. And despite the complaints above, I had a really fun time with the game. If you enjoy Monty Python humor, the NPCs won't disappoint. This game was fully worth the $20 and I enjoyed the time I spent playing it.

Bottom Line: Buy it for PC. You'll enjoy yourself.

Vantage Point

Sounds pretty cool doesn't it? Seeing an event from different points of view, the event of the President being shot no less, would seem to be a good action flick at least. Too bad the movie doesn't deliver.

The problem lies within the execution of the "different points of view." The first 3 or 4 characters' sequences are all pretty much the exact same events with a few personal scenes thrown in. This makes the first half hour of the movie pretty boring. I fell asleep while watching it.

The action does pick up after that part, but frankly, it's too little too late.

Bottom line: Rent this. Buy it only if you find it for a ridiculously cheap price, which is all I would pay for this movie anyway.