This post is just about two years late. Yep. That’s how long it took me to finally grab a copy of 7 Wonders, easily one of the most epic board games in recent history. Released last year, 7 Wonders has already won a Cannes Jury Prize alongside 28 other awards. I’ve been playing this card development game a couple of months after its release but it was only recently I was able to acquire it as I live on the other side of the pond.

7 Wonders is a card development game for 2 to 7 players. It is set in ancient times and each player controls his own civilization that must fight for economic, military or scientific victory. Since there is no one clear path to victory, winning the game entails amassing the most number of points based on the cards that you played. The game is divided into 3 different ages each with 6 turns for a total of 18 in-game turns. A turn consists of playing different cards by paying the resource cost. Your city has the option of buying resources from other adjacent players and rewards are given for building structures, markets, military or contributing to science.

At the end of three ages, all the player points are tallied and the one with the most points win. For instance, a player may decide to take the route of building structures which give him direct influence points that add up at the end of the game. Or, a player can focus on investing in science where every green card adds up exponentially and can really rack up points as you get more combinations. There’s also military conquest which grants victory points at the end of every age. The strategy to 7 Wonders is endless as it highly depends on your choice of city, who are the civilizations adjacent to you and what cards are passed around during the game. Note that you don’t keep cards — your hand is passed around every turn after choosing a single card to play.

7 Wonders is no doubt one of those games with very high replay value and after several games, I still can’t figure out a “best” strategy to winning as there are just too many factors to consider, just like running your own city.

7 Wonders retails between ~USD $30.00 to ~USD $35.00 from Amazon.com.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season 3

It got off to a slow start, but by its midpoint, it became clear that the third season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars had found its groove, thanks to digging deeper into the Star Wars mythology, and delivering some truly epic story lines.

Savage Opress

Undoubtedly the series’ best season to-date, Season 3 gave us the excellent “Savage Opress” story arc, where we learned that Asajj Ventress was one of the Night Sisters of Dathomir, and were introduced to another deadly member of Darth Maul’s bloodline. Then there was the fascinating “Mortis” trilogy, where Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka faced their respective destinies and learned more about the nature of the Force. There’s the big “prison break” story arc that introduced Anakin to his future ally Tarkin for the first time. And the season ended with the triumphant “Trandoshan Hunters” arc, where Ahsoka and some Padawan pals must find a way to escape from a deadly group of aliens who are hunting them for sport — and get a helping hand from Chewbacca. Season 3 also brought about the debut of Quinlan Vos, a popular Jedi character from the Star Wars novels; the Clone Wars debut of Baron Papanoida, George Lucas’ briefly-glimpsed character from Revenge of the Sith; and the return of assassin Aurra Sing.

Asajj Ventress

Many of these three-episode story arcs, when watched at once, work quite well as mini movies. Of course, it wasn’t all a total KO. The obligatory Jar-Jar Binks episode wreaked as usual, and the less that’s said about Ziro the Hutt, the better. There’s some clone-centric eps that fare better at getting us to care about the clones than earlier series episodes. And the first half of the season gets bogged down in too much tiresome politics, with Padme constantly trying to broker peace among warring factions. But no matter. The Savage Opress and Mortis stories kicked the entire series into overdrive with the awesome fight scenes, mythology-rich storytelling, and incredible visuals that fans have been begging for since the show debuted.

Anakin Skywalker on Mortis

Part of the fun of The Clone Wars is in knowing that the show’s producers get to play in the enormous Star Wars sandbox, and zero-in on secondary characters and stories that otherwise would never be used at all. So it’s still fun to see what bits and pieces from the movies they might choose to bring to light (such as the Papanoida character’s episode), or what brand new ideas they might import into the Star Wars universe (Season 2′s “Zillo Beast” is a perfect example of this; it’s essentially “Godzilla on Coruscant”). It’s also worth noting that Season 3 saw a boost in the show’s technical achievements, with a grander scale than it was capable of before. The show also debuted new, more detailed character models for Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka that have softer edges and subtle changes that bring them closer to their Revenge of the Sith appearances (except for Ahsoka, of course, who we assume won’t survive the TV show since she’s not in the movies).

Chewbacca

The number of special features is pared way down from past Blu-ray releases; I remember there was a feature for every single episode in the first season’s set, whereas this set has only a handful. The Blu-ray menus are bare-bones as well, with the same image of “angry Anakin” that’s on the cover art standing in for every menu (earlier discs had clips from the series running on a loop). But these are small quibbles. The bonuses that are there are genuinely interesting — particularly the Savage Opress and Asage Ventress stuff, which we learn was smartly written by George Lucas’ daughter, Katie — though the cheeky “non-feature” for the Mortis story line is nothing but a tease about the questions it raised. The producers seem to have tied their own hands with this one, as they promise that there’s more to come about the issues raised for our characters on Mortis, but there’s no way to talk about these episodes without spoiling what’s to come. I still would have liked to have seen some insights into the visual designs of this world and the Family that lived there, and maybe some insights straight from George Lucas about the nature of the Force; the one thing we do learn is that Lucas pulled some of his original notes about what the Force is and how it works out of mothballs to use for these episodes, so some additional context and background from Lucas himself would have been cool.

In the end, the Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Season 3 collection is short on extras but long on storytelling, and for that reason alone, it’s the series’ first collection that I’m deeming a must-own for anyone who calls themselves a Star Wars fan.

Rage screenshot

Rage is an attempt by the makers of Doom and Quake to step outside of the box and do something unexpected. On that goal, they’ve succeeded, but you’ll never be confused about who made the game.

I wanted to love Rage. I tried hard. I was excited to play it. But my interest waned after the first hour, when I realized how little depth there was beneath its oh-so-flashy surface.

As Id Software’s first brand new IP in fifteen years, Rage is a very intentional step in a new direction for the veteran developer. And it’s about time. Id made its name with the Doom and Quake franchises, but the modern gamer expects a deeper, more customized experience from a triple-A title, with storytelling on par with a big-screen movie.

Rage screenshot

Rage takes place in the future, after an asteroid strikes Earth and wipes out most of its population. The decayed ruins of our society serve as the backdrop for this apocalyptic wasteland, which is now populated with anarchic mutant gangs and hardened human colonies who are just trying to survive. You play as a member of an Ark — cryogenic pods buried deep underground before the asteroid struck, carrying slumbering scientists and whatnot in a plan to repopulate our species, post-cataclysm. Now, years later, you awaken and emerge to find a world that’s nothing like the one you remember.

If this setting sounds familiar, it is; it’s nearly identical to the backstories of both Fallout and Borderlands. What Id brings to this crowded table is an incredible sense of scope, and utterly gorgeous scenery. And of course, the vehicles. (More on that in a minute.) It’s impossible to heap too much praise on the IdTech 5 engine, the new crown jewel of Id Software’s technology library. Not only does Id5 allow for jaw-droppingly beautiful graphics, but it smokes, too. Not once during my time with the game was there so much as a tiny hiccup with the frame rate. Even the high-speed vehicles cause no problem for the rendering engine, allowing the environment to fly by at a supersonic pace without ever losing resolution. It makes for remarkably exhilarating driving when you speed through the sun-soaked wastelands thanks to the engine’s beautiful, fluid motion.

Rage screenshot

Id5 comes with all sorts of fancy bells and whistles that help Rage stand out. Since distant areas on the map are loaded in the background while you play, for example, there are no tedious load times to wait through. The Id5 engine seamlessly transitions from indoor to outdoor environments — and on to racing those glorious vehicles — all as part of one big world, with no “sections” or “levels” divvying things up. It’s a small thing that you might not even notice for a while, but it lends a tremendous sense of realism to the game world.

There are so many good ideas poured into Rage, that it should have been a genre-defining ball-buster. It starts with all the trappings for a great story: interesting characters and locations, cool enemies and fun weapons, and endless potential in those crazy fast vehicle races. But somehow over the course of its 10-ish hour solo campaign, it squanders most of its potential by forgetting what made it so interesting in the first place. All those cool elements are quickly replaced with a standard, level-and-grind mentality that makes for an ultimately hollow experience.

Rage

It’s the gameplay where Rage falls short. Id clearly wanted to create an RPG/shooter, but just couldn’t stop themselves from building a standard dungeon shooter. Missions are repetitive almost immediately, with inactive NPCs sending you out on a vehicle to some nearby location, where you’ll run in and wipe out mutant gang types in order to earn the trust of the locals. There are variations to this formula, of course, but after a while you can’t help feeling like a glorified exterminator who keeps getting called in to take care of a local pest problem.

Weapons give the game a welcome dose of creativity, particularly when you start to customize them. The same goes for vehicles, and the gadgets you can create using found materials. But all of this RPG-style customization has been done before — and sadly, it’s been done a lot better. The most frustrating part is that you never really feel like upgrading your weapons or purchasing more powerful ones give you you much of an edge. The enemies use the same tactics time and again, and your defensive and offensive tools never vary all that much in the amount of damage they do.

Rage screenshot

Rage is meant to be a giant leap outside the box for Id Software, with its vast, sunny outdoor areas and numerous RPG elements. Yet for all the new elements thrown in, Rage maintains that core Id feel. Particularly in the indoor areas, where you proceed from one room to the next while monstrous enemies jump out of hiding and barrel straight toward you (though some are smart enough to use guns and cover). And then there are the indoor hideouts for the mutant gangs, which often contain the standard type of satanic imagery (skulls, pentagrams, etc.) that id uses so frequently. Okay, we get it already: these guys are the black hats. In that way, Rage feels like Doom 3 on LSD. The sights are so beautiful they’re intoxicating, and it’s dressed up with some welcome RPG trappings, but underneath it’s the same old, same old. It’s got plenty of muscle. What it needs is a soul.

Rage is definitely something fresh for Id, but for everyone else, it’s been there, done that. For my money, it is worth playing for its amazing graphics alone; if there’s one thing Id knows how to do, it’s build an incredible game engine. But wait for the price to come down. Sight-seeing isn’t enough to justify a $60 price tag.

If Id really wants to grow and evolve, it needs to find a way to get unstuck from the “dungeon grinding” mindset. That may have worked in the 80s and 90s, but this is the 21st Century, and we expect more from our games.

Gears of War 3 is Epic Games at its best. Having nothing to prove, their task this time out was to provide a satisfying finale to their blockbuster game series, and it shows. With all the pressure off — Gears 3 was a guaranteed success before it was even begun — Epic was able to execute the most confident release of their career.

To that end, you’ll find that every action, every control and button press has been enhanced in all sorts of subtle ways until the entire interface is tweaked to perfection. There are a heap of new weapons to play with, but none of them feel all that necessary; the existing weapons still get the job done just fine.

Gears of War 3 screenshot

Gears 3 finds the COG soldiers of Marcus Fenix’s Delta Squad barely holding on to the embers of a shattered, decimated planet. The Gears series is as bleak as bleak can get, and this hopelessness and tragedy is a feeling Epic has always excelled at hammering home. Two years after the sinking of Jacinto, there are no major cities still standing in which to take refuge or rally the troops, so what little that’s left of humanity is living here and there in clumps of recycled disarray. The COGs aren’t trying to win the war anymore; they’re nearly extinct and just hoping to survive by staying one step ahead of the Locust and the Lambent.

Gears of War 3 screenshot

As much as you’ll recognize Gears‘ trademark duck-and-shoot gameplay, things are different this time out, because the Locust has gone into hiding and your main enemy for much of the game is the Lambent. These unpredictable adversaries don’t value their own existence, so they have no desire to duck behind cover. They’ll just come at you straight-on, lumbering forward like tanks. They also have different moves and tactics; some of them leap out of their enormous stalks, high into the air, before slamming back down to hunt you down.

Gears of War 3 screenshot

The level design is more balanced than ever, providing just the right mixture of gunplay and brief breathers before the next intense battle begins. And there are some seriously intense fights in Gears 3 – the most vivid and violent of the trilogy. The campaign is a good 10 hours at least, making it the longest of the series. The game’s fuller color palette is a welcome change. Don’t take that to mean Gears has suddenly gone Rainbow Brite; the colors are as muted and high-contrast as ever, you’ll just notice more of them.

Gears of War 3 screenshot

The Gears of War games have always set the high bar for graphics on Xbox 360, and this entry has the best of the bunch, with enormous outdoor vistas and insanely detailed interiors. I can still remember the first time I saw the original Gears running on a high-definition television, way back at E3 (2005, I think). Those eye-popping visuals represented a watershed moment for me, because the level of sharp detail surpassed anything I’d ever seen in a game before — on any platform. Gears 3 sees Epic’s Unreal engine utilized to its maximum potential with the best graphics of any game you’ll play in this generation — and outstanding, gut-crunching audio, too.

Gears of War 3 screenshot

Gears 2 worked hard to mix up the play styles, putting you in lots of different vehicles or gauntlets that had to be run, but Gears 3 takes the variety of level types to grand new heights. That said, a bizarre section early in the game where you play as Cole instead of Marcus left me stymied. By far my least favorite character in the saga, I find Cole’s over-the-top characterization to be painfully clichéd and flat-out annoying. This sequence went on far too long for my taste, and by the time I finally got to play as Marcus again, I was ready for the focus to return to his growling, Jack Bauer-on-steroids persona.

Gears of War 3 screenshot

This Cole-centric sequence was also presented out of order from the rest of the game, showing us how a team commanded by Cole caught up with the rest of Delta at a key moment in a major battle. This marks the first time the series has presented a sequence out of linear order — an interesting development for a series that has never placed much focus on plot. The game experiments with storytelling in other ways too, such as presenting a pair of surrealistic, dream-like flashbacks for two major characters that you get to play through. The first of these was more effective than the second, but both offered a glimpse into the world of Sera before E-Day, and who these characters were back then so that we can appreciate just how much they’ve been changed by the war. There’s one particular set piece a little over halfway through the campaign that delivers drama and emotion in a way so potent that it leaves all other moments of drama attempted by the series in the dust. It’s a genuinely moving piece of tragedy that even the most hardened soldier will be unable to look away from.

Gears of War 3 screenshot

The addition of female COGs is long overdue, and adds a much-needed balance to Delta Squad. Anya — who until now has been nothing but Delta’s radio voice, delivering news from HQ — finally dons some armor and joins in the fight, along with a British-accented woman named Sam, who has eyes for tormented widower Dom. The women bring a kind of companionship and inner strength to the group dynamic that you didn’t know was missing, and are more than capable of handling themselves in a fight. Twig-like Anya has even gotten a size upgrade so that she and Sam can match up to the COG men’s caricature-like proportions. (By the way, is there a reason COG soldiers are giant bricks of meat? I mean, I understand it’s probably just a stylistic choice by Epic, but you can’t watch these hulked-out guys interact with ordinary civilians or even just the new female COGs, without taking note of the dramatic, and rather silly, contrast in size. This has always bugged me about the series. Are these guys genetically modified when they enlist? What’s the deal?)

Gears of War 3 screenshot

Steve Jablonsky’s movie-worthy orchestral score tops even his outstanding work for the second game, and I’ve always appreciated that he goes in a musical direction more “epic action” than “sorrowful survival.” Downcast music would be enough to send the whole game into a downward spiral of depression, but Jablonsky’s score is so good I’d play the last two games again just to listen to it.

Hardcore fans will notice that the fate of the latest Carmine brother — a running gag of sorts in the series, and voted on this time by the fans as to his survival or death — is teased repeatedly. I’m not going to spoil it, but I tell you this much: you’ll have to wait until the very end to find out if he lives or if he takes a dirt nap beside his brothers.

Gears of War 3 screenshot

The ending provides a surprisingly poignant, appropriately understated coda that leaves you fulfilled, with long-awaited revelations delivered at long last. But I won’t pretend that there aren’t questions that remain unanswered. (If you’re hoping for an explanation as to why the Locust Queen is so human in appearance, you’re gonna be disappointed.)

In addition to the campaign, you’re going to find plenty to love about the revamped multiplayer modes. Epic really took its time designing these new modes, taking note of the shortcomings of past games’ multiplayer successes and failures, and creating smart solutions. The ingenious new “Horde 2.0″ is the headliner, and it’s surely destined to win over the faithful with its clever new take on tower defense. A number of robust additions to the online modes of play, such as the leveling and matchmaking systems, are designed to put Gears of War‘s popularity on the same level as Halo or Call of Duty.

Gears of War 3 is a highly polished gaming experience that’s executed as close to perfect as any game may ever achieve. It’s a must-have.

I can’t help comparing Deus Ex: Human Revolution to its progenitor, the original Deus Ex. Because playing through the vast, complex game, it’s clear that new studio Eidos Montreal was studying the first game very closely.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is set in the year 2027, a time when “augmentations” — sophisticated machine parts that replace and work better than normal human body parts, like ultra high-tech prostheses  – have become normal in modern society, though only those who can afford them are able to have augmentations. Then there’s the drugs; a special medication is required for everyone who has “augs,” to keep their bodies from rejecting the foreign objects. Fail to afford the pricey meds, and your body could literally fall apart. Plus, there are parts of society who are strongly opposed to augmentations. The world is a powder keg, and it’s ready to go off.

Adam Jensen is a former cop who lost his job after an operation went badly, and now he works as head of security for an augmentation hardware manufacturer called Sarif Industries. The story begins when Sarif is attacked by mercenaries with an unknown agenda, on the eve of a major breakthrough by Sarif’s scientists. Jensen is mortally wounded in the fight, so his employer has him outfitted with state-of-the-art augmentations to save his life. A slick opening credits sequence shows us this.

When Jensen returns to work six months later, he’s plopped right into the middle of a conspiracy involving the people who attacked Sarif Industries — a conspiracy that will test his new abilities and force him to question everything he knows. Figuring into this techno-noir/conspiracy thriller is an even deeper mystery regarding Jensen’s own past.

When it released in 2000, Deus Ex was hailed as a visionary masterpiece by legendary game maker Warren Spector, because it mixed FPS and RPG elements into a brand new concoction, and then added in a story that scratched many a gamer’s itch with a globe-trotting adventure and conspiracies galore. Its trademark was how it allowed players to play the game any way they wanted: you could go into every situation guns blazing, or you could use stealth and operate entirely from the shadows. Every scenario had multiple solutions, which gave the game tremendous replayability.

Human Revolution works overtime to replicate the magic formula that made the first game so appealing, and it succeeds. Every single thing about the game — the physics of the objects, the way people and things move, the music, the voices — is almost slavishly loyal to the original Deus Ex. It couldn’t feel any more like the first game if it had been an HD remake. I’m absolutely certain that Mr. Spector would not only approve, but would be impressed at Eidos’ devotion to the paradigm he created.

Eleven years is a long time in computer terms, and the years of advancements allowed Human Revolution‘s creators to give their protagonist far more detail and cooler abilities. Instead of sneaking up behind a bad guy and popping them on the head with a heavy object, Jensen sneaks up and performs a cool “finishing move” (think Batman’s takedowns in Arkham Asylum) to either knock out or kill his prey. He’s got some very fancy hardware, too, including retractable sword blades that come out of his arms. The augmentations in the first game were made up of nano-technology, but since Human Revolution is a prequel, the augs are of the traditional, mechanical kind. Jensen’s strength, speed, sight, resilience, and much more can be improved via augmentations, which give the game its role-playing elements.

The level design oozes style and atmosphere, though the outdoor areas are far more compelling than the indoors. Particularly Shanghai, the second of three metro areas you’ll visit in the game, for which the designers pulled out all the stops. This oriental megalopolis is reimagined as two futuristic cities “stacked” on top of each other, with both equal in size. So when you’re outside in the Lower City, you can look up and see the underside of the Upper City’s man-made “ground” high above. The size and scope of it is a marvel to behold, and the other two cities (Detroit and Montreal) can’t help but feel kind of bland by comparison.

The game’s much-talked-about black & gold color scheme is still an odd choice, though I can appreciate the developers’ desire to give the game a distinctive aesthetic. Nearly everything in the game glows with a diffuse yellow, which feels peculiar at first, but you barely notice it after a while. Other components of the game, such as the musical score and the voice acting, are very strong overall, though Jensen’s gloomy voice sounds as if it was created specifically to remind players of the gravelly, monotone voice of the first game’s JC Denton. Like so many other elements of the game (if I didn’t know better, I would think the music is the exact same soundtrack from the first game), the developers shot for nostalgia with their protagonist. Gamers will have to decide for themselves if this was a good idea or not. One area where Human Revolution falls woefully short is in its facial animations, which are downright robotic. These characters aren’t capable of emoting at all, which feels ancient by today’s standards.

Speaking of characters, there are a ton of ‘em, just like in the original game, so it can be a challenge to keep track of who’s who. That said, I found the storyline this time, despite its complexity, to be much easier to understand this time around; I remember Deus Ex‘s story being rather convoluted and hard to follow. Another difference I noticed is how there are fewer interactive objects in this game. The original game offered players a staggering amount of interactivity with the game world; it seemed that there wasn’t a single object that couldn’t be manipulated or played with. Human Revolution has functioning sinks and toilets, and some boxes and heavier objects that can be lifted (once you have the necessary augmentations), but that’s about it, other than mission-specific items and stuff that can be hacked like computers and alarms.

Hacking is still a prominent part of the Deus Ex world, but Eidos Montreal came up with its own twist on this test of logic and speed. It gets more engaging as you unlock better augmentations to help with the hacking, but I never got so confident with it that it was something I looked forward to. Dialog trees also return, although they’re much more strategic in this game, having genuine impact on the events that unfold. There’s even an augmentation that lets you emit pheromones to influence and persuade others.

There are three main bosses to defeat — one for each city Jensen visits — and I found these to be almost impossibly hard, even on the medium difficulty setting. The long load times (usually upwards of fifteen seconds) made the boss fights all the more frustrating, as a quick defeat means twiddling your thumbs through that blasted load screen over and over. The rest of the game, whether you’re using combat or stealth, is well balanced, and has some truly ingenious levels to defeat. Enemies aren’t the smartest ever, but neither are they stupid. The mixture of weapons and augmentations feels second nature after a while, and thoughtful management of your inventory is a must.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a smart, confident rebirth of a long-missed franchise that’s both lovingly crafted and a lot of fun to play. The game’s ending ties nicely into something longtime gamers will remember from the first game, but there’s still plenty of story left between the two games that Eidos could choose to tell. And major studios these days rarely put huge amounts of money and time into creating games of this size without the intention of re-using all of those assets to continue the franchise with sequels. If Eidos can keep the quality bar this high while making improvements on the formula, then I await Deus Ex 4 with baited breath.

How else can you satiate the anticipation for Dragon Age 2 than to sit back and watch this one hour play-through with commentary. The Dragon Age franchise is this generation’s Baldur’s Gate and I’m a bit disappointed in how its sequel has turned the combat into pretty much a standard hack and slash. Yeah, there is a tactical view and perhaps you can find a good reason to pause the game during combat, but from the initial demo I do have to say that the game’s been made more suitable for arcade-style players, perhaps for the benefit of the console market.

In any case, if you’ve got an hour to spare, grab some popcorn and soda and buffer this video now.

I’m not ashamed to say that I adored Fable II with all my being. It was a giddy, blind love — a wholehearted willingness to look past the game’s blemishes and blunders (multiplayer, I’m glaring at you) and just enjoy all the things it got right. The thrilling fights, the wide-open world with near-infinite possibilities, the visible changes to the avatar based on your moral decisions, the terrific voice work, that beloved canine companion.

Fable III ups the stakes by taking everything that worked in II and making it even better, and ditching the stuff that didn’t work at all. The RPG elements are simplified by replacing tedious menus with an in-game hub where your avatar can physically manipulate your weapon choices, appearance, and more. Leveling up takes place in a dream-like “Road to Rule” world, where you again physically interact with your selections. This new form of managing your game feels more tangible and realistic. Gameplay itself has been dumbed-down a bit too, which some will appreciate and others will loathe. But most importantly, multiplayer has been fixed.

A full generation has passed in the realm of Albion, where the Hero King — your character in Fable II — has passed away and his oldest son, Logan, has assumed the throne. Logan is a cruel man with a lust for power that doesn’t care who he steps on to build his empire, enforcing child labor and a virtual police state. You play the role of his younger sibling (a brother or sister, depending on what you choose) who sets out on a mission to start a revolution and take the throne. Whether you do this through noble or nasty means is up to you, and doesn’t affect all that much about the story other than the way your character is treated by his or her subjects.

But that’s just the first half of the game. After becoming king or queen, you’re faced with a whole new set of challenges, not the least of which revolve around fulfilling or reneging on the promises you made with various factions to secure your new office. There’s also (spoiler alert!) a dark threat looming over Albion that, as ruler, it’s your responsibility to prepare for. The moral choices only become more complicated when you know that the survival of your entire kingdom is at stake. (Hot tip: start buying up property as soon as the game starts giving you money.)

Albion has changed since the second game, with the onset of industry and complex machinery. Guns are more widespread as a viable weapon of choice, but you still have the option of using blades and magic as well. Your weapons change in appearance as much as you do, based on the choices you make and experiences you have. You’ll visit some familiar locations from the second game and it’s a kick getting to see how much they’ve changed, while there’s also a whole slew of new locales as well. Fable III benefits greatly from new lighting effects and a beefed-up graphics engine; at times some of Albion’s vistas are just breathtaking.

No expense was spared by studio Lionhead in crafting the game and its world; highbrow thespians and comedians provide most of the voices. It’s impossible to overstate the gravitas of having great voice actors to read your lines; the likes of John Cleese, Michael Fassbender, Simon Pegg, Ben Kingsley, and the great Bernard Hill make the drama far more dramatic and relatable.

Sadly, most of the old glitches are still present in this third entry in the series. There’s still plenty of clipping issues throughout, and numerous times where you or your dog just get stuck in odd little spots. The dog doesn’t seem quite as intelligent this time out, though it’s nice that he doesn’t have to die in this game. There are other issues as well… for example, the balance of power between the player and AI opponents often seems swayed too strongly in your direction, particularly when you use magic.

But with so much gameplay available, endless side quests, and an utterly gorgeous world to explore at your leisure, it’s hard to dislike Fable III. Things have changed in both good ways and bad, but ultimately you’ll find that it’s entirely worthy of a third trip to the land of Albion.

Follow @FGgamer on Twitter for the latest gaming news.

The historic, real-life tale of Spartacus is not new to Hollywood. But neither history nor Hollywood have ever seen anything quite like Starz’ Spartacus: Blood & Sand. It is something wholly new, using bits of other well-known formulas in creative and clever new ways that adds up to something far greater than the sum of its parts. At times stubbornly beholden to history, and at others wildly veering from it, Spartacus nonetheless introduces us to the familiar slave who eventually rose to lead an incredible rebellion against the Roman Empire.

Sensible move, though it can be a pain to piece together a decent selection of opinions when the connection is poor.

Enter Google — fresh from adding fading effects to the main search page — offering “Favourite Places on Google”.

Each chosen venue will now display a QR code in its window, which you can snap a photo of with the camera on your phone and then quickly get information and reviews from Google’s central repository.

Most phones can scan these codes, provided they have the relevant application or OS on board.

Yes, you could just type the name of the establishment into your mobile browser, but that defeats the object. You don’t want to be standing around outside looking like an idiot for too long.

Would you use this service or continue to take a Google-free chance that you might get a bad meal?

Via

LeapFish, a multi-dimensional search engine that combines the best of the web in a single search, recently announced the release of its new click-free search interface that delivers search results as you type. The brand new search engine that captures not just relevancy but also the variety of the web, now offers one of the world’s fastest search services with instantaneous results as each character of a search term is entered.

LeapFish is an all-in-one time saver that eliminates clicks and keystrokes coupled with a nimble search application that allows you to modify search characters and get instantaneous results on-the-fly.

LeapFish pushes search to 2.0 and states “out with the search button.” LeapFish’s revolutionary new click free search interface gives life to a fast, fluid and dynamic search experience that extracts the variety of data from major online destinations such as Google, YouTube, Ebay and others in a single search query. Consolidating a knowledge base of relevancy and variety from major online authorities, LeapFish effectively renders more comprehensive results than those returned by its providers.

Editor’s note: This is a sponsored review written upon request by LeapFish.

The information will be revealed in next week’s E3 Media and Business Summit in Los Angeles, California.

First off will be The Last Remnant, a timed exclusive for the Xbox 360. It is expected to be released this coming winter with a later release date for the PS3 that is yet to be announced. There is also the Xbox 360-exclusive Infinite Discovery and Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Final Fantasy fans will be disappointed to know that there may not be any announcements of news coming regarding Final Fantasy XIII as no mention has been made about it. But I’m hoping that this is just some form of diversionary tactic and they will actually give FF news as their coup de grace.

Square will also reveal more details about its upcoming Nintendo DS games, including Final Fantasy IV, Dragon Quest IV, and Chrono Trigger. The PSPS will have Star Ocean: First Departure and Star Ocean: Second Evolution–both revamped versions of the franchise’s first two games. More information will also be given about the company’s first foray into the iPod– Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes.

This week Yatzee, who is possibly the world’s funniest game reviewer, decided to pick up the latest version of Brawl and review it, giving a lot of focus to the multiplayer part, which, should be the most important part of this game, but ends up being not as fun when they realize they had to previously unlock a lot of the game content.

Personally I don’t think that the game is bad, but there are some really wrong aspects about some multiplayer games, like this one, which Yatzee bluntly put out. Still, I think he could have mentioned the soundtrack, which is probably the most varied one yet (in terms of different musicians) and is what I was looking to forward to hear, or hear about.

There are a few shows debuting this season that seem to be targeted to the geek crowd.  One such program is the CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory.  I took a look at the pilot episode (which is available as a free download on iTunes now), and reviewed it over on our sister site TV Jab.

Here’s an excerpt:

Many comedies aim for the lowest common denominator, so many viewers with half a brain find themselves scratching their heads and wondering, “How is this funny?”  So I have to give kudos to Theory…it goes in the opposite direction. 

The problem is, it goes too far.

Click here for the review.

Because it is a simple matter for a OS X user to increase the width of their browser on a case by case basis there is never a need to stretch to full screen. The button that most Windows people assume will expand a window to full screen instead, in OS X, expands or contracts to the documents dimensions. In the case of a browser it expands and contracts to the width of the web page.

In windows, there is no easy way to contract a window view. So, rather than jumping back and forth between window sizes a Windows person would just go full screen and stay there.

So in this case, the Mac user would be used to multitasking, with the slew of windows visible on the desktop, overlapping, and sometimes just peeking from behind the foreground window. The Windows user, on the other hand, tends to work solely on the current window visible in the foreground.

I’m both a Mac and Windows user, and I usually work on my Mac and Windows laptops side by side (each with their particular purposes). I’ve reached the point where I no longer get confused when I switch across the Mac and Windows interfaces. And guess what. I don’t usually maximize my Windows! Even before I started using a Mac, I never got used to maximizing. I always preferred having my Windows overlapping, with some peeking just behind the active window I’m currently working on.

A Workflow Issue

Yes, it’s a workflow issue. Having a window maximized has advantages, since this lets the user focus on the single task at hand. But having all your windows–or parts thereof–visible at all times (let’s not even mention Exposé) can also help in seeing the bigger picture.

Still, one has to consider that the human brain was not designed for multitasking. So it’s a question of productivity. Do you work (or play) better when you have a good grasp of the overall picture? Or do you need to be constantly focused on one thing?

Perhaps more interesting and intriguing with the restiffbard.com article is the reader discussion that ensues. There’s the Mac camp, and there’s the Windows camp, and there are the people that see things more objectively. Going beyond the My-OS-is-better-than-your-OS arguments, though, it’s really a matter of how effectively the machine can interface with the human. Both sides have advantages. And considering that Windows still has majority share in the world’s consumer OS market, how effective a UI may no longer be inherent in the operating system’s design. The Mac cult may argue about their’s being superior. But in the end, It’s about preference. It’s about user adoption. This is why some people still find it difficult to switch across platforms.

What about you? What’s your OS and what’s your preference in dealing with window sizes?

I’d like to write the first entry in what may turn into a series, however I haven’t decided yet. My first victim is going to be GoDaddy. I’ve never liked GoDaddy. They suck…..hard. Anybody who uses them knows that there administration system is crappy, and the signup process for a domain name is ridiculous because of the amount of advertising that is done along the way. They do nothing but sell sell sell all the way during your purchase. It’s ridiculous. I decided to document the whole GoDaddy experience a little better so people can see what it’s like.

#1. HomePage

What a beautiful homepage(not!). Definitely built for the first time visitor to the site to show off all their wonderful features(because you won’t find about them at all through a domain purchase). It’s loaded with tons of blurbs about their various services and such. Let’s login to an account so we can see the wonderful new interface they present to their regular users.

#2. After Login

Wait a minute….I thought I logged in. Oh that’s right, I did. What do you know, I’m still bombarded with useless advertisements. The page is pretty much the exact same as before. No sight of anything remotely useful to someone who needs to modify their existing domain name information. Anyway, I came to register a domain, so that’s what I’m going to do. Let’s run a little search and see what we come up with.

#3. After Search

Good news for me, MYREGISTRARSUCKS.com is available, just what I wanted to hear. I can get the .net, .org and several other variations with just the click of a button. And oh goody, .info and .us are on sale! And just in case that wasn’t the domain I wanted, they came up with about 1,000 other variations of the domain name. Let’s buy this puppy, it should only take a couple of seconds.

#4. After Continue from Search

Wow, what a great offer they on this page, they will offer me the .biz, the .net, and the .info all for only an additional $16.00. That would save me 41%! There is nothing to this page other than to offer me this great deal. I think I’ll pass.

#5. After Continue from Crappy Sales Page

What a joy, options for me to choose from! What do you know, registration length is automatically set to 2 years, I get to change that to one. Also set to automatically renew and automatically bill me each year, set that to manual. It is set to standard registration instead of deluxe, so I don’t have to change anything there. Although, they care about me, so they want me to know that the standard registration leaves my information available to the public through a WHOIS search. This “exposes you to an untold number of potential problems – and yes, it can happen to YOU”. I’m glad they warned me, because I wanted to pay and extra $8.95 so no one could get my information and they could make an extra $8.94 in profit. On to the checkout preferences…..Automatically selected is the option to “Show me exclusive offers that will help me get the most from my domain. Gotta click over to the “Quick Checkout” option, then we can wrap this thing up in a page or 2, right? All that should be left is for me to enter the credit card info.

#6. Trying to Checkout

Another special limited time offer. I’m sure this special offer will be going away any day now because it’s so special. I can keep my personal information private for only $4.99 a year instead of the normal $8.99. I feel honored and blessed to have this option given to me, but once again, I’ll pass. Nothing to this page other than the special limited time offer. So let’s continue to the checkout….

#7. Still Trying to Checkout

Wonderful, I get to review my order. Let’s see, 1 year(I can change it to 2 or more very easily if I was mistaken). I can change it to private for only an extra $4.99 a year in case I changed my mind from the first 5 times they offered it to me. $8.95 for the domain, plus and extra $.25 for the ICANN fee. It would’ve taken out of their profit to just roll this into the domain name cost apparently. A nice fee of $9.20 for 1 year of domain registration. So let’s finally checkout now!

#8. Finally Entering Information

Hooray! A screen that’s actually useful to me. I can enter my personal and billing information with not a sales pitch in site(other than the standard ads on top). Let’s enter that info and get it done with.

#9. Security Check

Thank you, Bob Parsons for putting a security checkpoint here. “The access code you see an additional security process GoDaddy.com has developed to protect you” Thank goodness, I wouldn’t want a bot to come in and purchase a domain name, then I just wouldn’t feel safe shopping for domain names here anymore. Thank you again Bob Parsons for leaving this personal note here letting me know how much you care about me personally. I feel safe, I feel secure.

#10. And I’m Spent

We’re done, finally! It only took going through 10 pages and about 50 different pitches to get the domain name I wanted. I do need to hurry though, because the “clock is ticking” and they’ve got tons(in fact, a whole pageful) of special prices that expire in just 30 minutes. I better jump on these before they expire

Alternatives

The only registrar I use is NameCheap(this is not an affiliate link, I benefit in no way by you using them). Their administration system is simple and it doesn’t bombard you while trying to make a simple purchase. If anybody has any further suggestions, I’d love to hear them and I’m sure everyone else would too.

To sum it up, I Jacob Gower, think GoDaddy is a terrible registrar. They suck, hard. I highly do not recommend them. If you want to spread the word on this, link to this article with “GoDaddy” as the link text. That should get this page bumped up in Google when people search for their name. If you’d like to read more on GoDaddy’s terrible suckage, I’ve made a small list of the many articles out there:

• GoDaddy Sucks #1
• GoDaddy Sucks #2
• GoDaddy Sucks #3
• GoDaddy Sucks #4
• GoDaddy Sucks #5

The first episode of Damashitaa! Powerpuff Girls Z (“Take off! Powerpuff Girls Z”) premiered in Japan a few weeks ago and it didn’t take long for the thing to hit the internet for the whole world to see. So far, the only version available is the Raw Japanese version (no fansubs, yet), but luckily, I’m rather good with the Japanese language, so I had no trouble understanding it. Additionally, the plots and dialogue aren’t particularly complicated, so in all honesty, it’s not hard to follow even if you can’t speak Japanese.

Opening Sequence

Episode #1

Ending Sequence

The episodes follow the same format as the American cartoon series; they’re about 8 minutes in length. Several gags from the American series make the transition; the Mayor being an incompetant boob, Ms. Bellum’s face never being seen, the overall lack of seriousness, etc. Some changes have been made on a more than visual level. Professor Utonium now has a son who helps him around the lab, the hotline (that clown-faced telephone) has been replaced by a robot dog named “Peach” who alerts the Powerpuff Girls of danger by activating their belt-buckles with a sonic howl. The episodes still end with the heart-motiff, though the Powerpuff Girls give us a good bye message instead of a narrator.

And here’s a look at the character-redesigns for the Rogues Gallery.

Front Row: Big Billy, Grubber, Mojo Jojo, Princess, Li’l Arturo, Ace and Him

Back Row: Sedusa, the Rowdy Ruff Boys, Fuzzy Lumpkins, Snake, Abra Cadavar.

I only take issue with a few of the redesigns. Abra Cadavar isn’t much of a zombie anymore and just what the Hell is Snake wearing!? Fuzzy Lumpkins has undergone practically no change what-so-ever, which is cool. The Rowdy Ruff Boys look great, and check out Sedusa’s rack. Princess’ afro is startling, while Him has a marrionette/puppet-thing going, which may or may not work. Mojo Jojo just looks hardcore (though he’s still just as goofy as ever in the actual show). The Gangreen Gang, for the most part, look just fine. Overall, I like most of their redesigns.

As far as the plot of episode 1 is concerned, it was really just a “Hey, meet the Powerpuff Girls…again!” sorta introduction. Mojo Jojo kidnaps a bunch of kindergartners and steals their candy. Peach alerts the Powerpuff Girls (high school students, now) and they head off to stop him. But, of course, nothing’s ever that cut and dry when the Powerpuff Girls are concerned. They arrive and sign autographs for the captured children. Mojo tries to give them his autograph but the kids just cry. Mojo and the PPG fight it out, but run low on energy. So everybody in the show has an ice cream break with their favorite flavor listed in katakana at the bottom of the screen. Refreshed, they kick Mojo’s butt and send him packing.

Like I said, not very complicated or clever in the plot-department, but again, this episode really just serves as an introduction piece. I’m sure it’ll pick up once we see some more villains. The jokes are quirky but in a very Japanese fashion. Japanese quirkiness and American quirkiness are two very different things. But hey, we had a talking dog in our version, they have a talking fish. Go figure.

Anyway, the show is kinda “eh” right now. I think I’ll like it a lot more when/if it hits American TV, providing they dub it with the voice actors from the American series.

This must be what Inspector Gadget would say if he had Yahoo! Widgets–formerly known as Konfabulator–installed on his system. But, alas! It’s Google that uses the term “gadgets” to call its, err, widgets, with its own collection of applets called Google Gadgets, part of the Google Desktop Search.

Somewhat confusing, eh?

You’re probably aware of these two nifty ways to make our lives more cluttered than they already are, but for the benefit of non-ForeverGeek regulars or non-geeks (n00bs!), here’s a brief history and a comparison between the two.

Yahoo! Widgets

In 2003 Konfabulator, a startup, released a paid software that consisted of cool standalone applets that did all sorts of stuff from telling the time, to monitoring stock market prices, to displaying your iCal calendar. This was originally for the Mac OS, and then a Windows port was released late 2004. Apparently, Apple also had plans for a widget system built-in to its then-upcoming Tiger variant of OS X, which was called Dashboard. Tiger was released early 2005, along with Dashboard, amid controversy that Dashboard was a rip-off of Konfabulator.

Mid-2005, Yahoo! acquired the startup, and then offered Konfabulator as freeware, both for Mac OS X and Windows. Everyone’s happy. The Konfabulator people get their millions (okay, speculating here), Apple users get a choice between Dashboard and Konfabulator, Windows users get to utter theirs oohs and ahhs over the OS X-like tools they can leave cluttered around their desktops, and for everyone else, finally, cross-platform apps that actually work!

Yahoo! later had the great idea of renaming Konfabultaor to (surprise!) the Yahoo! Widget Engine.

Google Gadgets

Google Gadgets are a recent addition to the Google Desktop Search package. Google Desktop Search is a local, desktop-based search technology made available to the public by Google in late 2004. This software basically indexes a user’s local files and dcuments for keywords, which would then appear on relevant searches when one does a local query.

Google Desktop featured a new addition in version 2, the gadgets-precursor, Sidebar panels, which had the ability to display and aggregate bits of information from other sites. Version 3 improved on the search aspect of Desktop, as the search could span several computers owned by a Google account.

Need I mention that Google Desktop Search was also subject to controversy because of privacy issues?

Google Gadgets, as it is now known, debuted with the release of Google Desktop 4 just this month. Functionality-wise Gadgets is similar to its previous Sidebar plugins incarnation, doing anything that the old Sidebar plugins did. Hey, it looks very much like the Sidebar we know all too well. Ah, the power of re-branding.

How they fare against each other

Having been a Konfabulator fan since it came out free, and being an avid Google user (junkie, if you will), I can say I’ve tried both Yahoo Widgets and Google Gadgets, and I’m quite in favor of one over the other. Here are some areas of comparison.

Aesthetics

Google Desktop Sidebar

Yahoo! Widgets

Yahoo! Widgets will blow Google Gadgets away if the battle were only in the Aesthetics arena. Yes, Google goes for the minimalist approach, but Yahoo! Widgets are more visually appealing. You have to understand that these are desktop objects and you won’t necessarily have speed or bandwidth considerations to worry about. Translucency works for me too, especially since I sometimes choose to have some Widgets (like clock and CPU monitor) hover over main applications. My Gadgets only stay on the sidebar, though. I can detach them, but they’d remain regular windows hidden from view. So great styling is good. Yahoo! gets the point here.

Functionality. Both Widgets and Gadgets offer a strong suite of free third-party applications that offer anything from productivity tools to time-wasting oddities. Widgets, having been in the market longer, has an advantage in terms of the number of applets one can download and install. However, Google Gadgets’ parent application, Google Desktop Search extends the functionality well over the perceived productivity increases that Widgets! can give, because users can search for information within their local computers, and across other computers they own. Yahoo! Widget Engine only serves as that–a Widget engine.

So it’s a tie in this area.

Ease of use. Both require the base applications to be installed before applets can be installed and run. However, with Widgets, the .widget files become executable applications in themselves, while with Google, you have to go through an installation process each time you download a new Gadget. You can store Yahoo! Widgets anywhere and activate that widget just be executing the file–sort of like the elegance of the Mac OS X’s application structure (all files under one folder, and an app can run from anywhere its folder structures are stored) versus Windows’ clunky install-files-in-various places methodology. Yahoo! gets the point on this one.

Interface. Google goes for the simple-but-usable approach. But Konfabulator pulled off all stops to make it the interface as elegant (and as OS X-like?) as possible. You can run Widgets and have the applets float just about anywhere you like, whether on top of other windows, underneath, as regular Windows, or hidden until called for.

Widgets’ heads-up-display (HUD, formerly known as Konsposé, actually a play on Mac’s “Exposé” functionality) shows you all your running and background Widgets at a press of a button. Gadgets can only be docked on the Google Desktop Sidebar, and you’d have to select them one by one to display.

Yahoo! gets the point on this one, too.

My conclusion

So for me, I would go all out for Yahoo! Widgets if only I weren’t overly dependent on Google applications in my everyday life (I use Gmail, Gtalk, Gcalendar, Gnotebook, G everything, and the only Yahoo! services I use are YM and Flickr). So I usually run both, system resources permitting. I tend to use Widgets more frequently, as they are more easily accessible. But really, after the novelty has worn out, these usually tend to serve only as eye candy, unless you have some compulsive need to have your information available on hand all the time.

Considering that both Yahoo! Widget Engine and Google Desktop Search are quite the memory- and resource-hogs, I usually relegate these for working on my dekstop. On my laptop, where every bit of extra system resource is precious, I’d rather use my Web browser to access all of these information otherwise also accessible via Widgets or Gadgets (hey, isn’t Firefox a resource hog, too? Exactly!).

Here’s a review of Google Gadgets from PC World. And here’s one on Yahoo! Widgets from Softpedia.

The test PC equipped with Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 was an average of 0.5% faster than the same hardware with Service Pack 2 installed. The percentage difference between faster and slower is insignificantly small. Less than 2 or 3 percent in some benchmarks could be dismissed by most but when gamers are looking to squeeze every extra frame out of their machines…it may count.