So as it turns out, Lionhead did have an announcement to make today. Yay! In addition to the release of a new Video Diary entry, they have also finally given us a release date on the “See the Future” downloadable content for Fable 2.

“See the Future” will be available May 12th on Xbox LIVE for 560 MS Points. In addition, there will be a Multiplayer Unlocked Weekend from May 8 at 12:01 p.m. EST until May 11 at 11:59 a.m. EST, in which gamers who can’t quite justify paying for a Live Gold account can hop on their Silver accounts and play for free.

See the Future will feature new quests, new achievements, and apparently new personas for your four-legged companion. And it’s all coming in less than two weeks. I can’t wait!

Via: Lionhead.com

Apparently, there’s going to be some Fable 2 related news tomorrow. But that’s all they can tell us today over at the Fable 2 Development Blog. Of course, the last time they announced that they were announcing something, it turned out that they that they jumped the gun and couldn’t announce it for another week.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow’s news (if we get to hear it, this time) is related to the See the Future add-on that was revealed earlier this month… like something more specific than “coming in May”.

Read the official announcement of the impending announcement here.

Despite being ridiculously busy at my real job (sadly, I don’t get paid to play games and blog about them…) I finally had a spare moment to download the Knothole Island content for Fable 2.

Priced at 800 MS Points (somewhere in the realm of $10, give or take), it’s a worthwhile expansion that adds new items, new quests, and new achievements to to the game. If you’re looking for another 20 hours of content, you’re not going to find it… but the pack does add some things that players have been clamoring for.

Like, for instance, a weight loss potion. No more hunting down eleven tons of celery after a night of binge-drinking and pie-eating. There are also other appearance altering potions to be had in the Knothole Island shops that affect things like height and scarring. And players who invested in the Limited Edition of the game and have picked up Hal’s armor, may also be interested in a certain item at the Box of Secrets.

As for the three new quests, while you can easily finish them in a single session of gameplay (or maybe I just play too a little too obsessively), they’re entertaining and a little more puzzly than most of the ones in the main game.

But the real appeal of the download, at least for me, having chosen the Needs of the Many option on my first playthrough (which, naturally, was the one character that completed the Gargoyles quest and had the Rammer crossbow… along with all 50 Silver Keys), is the Resurrection Shrine. I won’t spoil it for those few out there that haven’t finished the game, but I was very glad to see that little shrine sitting there on the island.

If you’re like me and Fable 2 was on the top of your games list for 2008, the Knothole Island pack is well worth it to keep the fun going.

Available for Xbox 360, only as a download from Xbox Live, The Lost and the Damned is an add-on for last year’s GTAIV that puts you in the role of Johnny Klebitz, VP of a motorcycle club called The Lost.

GTA4’s first downloadable content will be priced at 1600 MS Points ($19.99) and will be released on February 17th. And of course, it requires that you already have Grand Theft Auto IV. A download code can be pre-ordered now from Amazon.

I know, I know… this game came out over two months ago. It took me this long to get through the damn thing.

I can’t remember seeing a Game Over screen this often since my first attempt at Super Mario Bros. when I was eight (and for some god-forsaken reason, they didn’t add a continue option to Last Remnant, so on Game Over, you have to wait for the title screen to load up, wait for your save to load up, and work your way back to wherever you died).

The Last Remnant, currently available on 360, coming eventually for PS3, is the story of a boy named Rush Sykes, who watches his sister get kidnapped and subsequently heads off on his own to search for her. Along the way, he meets up with the Marquis of a small city called Athlum, and his four generals… and in typical RPG style, they come to see that they have a common enemy and join forces.

Actually, there’s a bit more to it than that. The story really revolves the Remnants… artifacts of great power, controlled by the lords of the land. When a mysterious warrior known only as the Conqueror appears and begins collecting Remnants for his own unknown desires, it sends the entire continent plunging into political turmoil and to the brink of all-out war.

The story, as is usually the case with Square Enix, is great. In fact there are times when it’s very easy to forget that you’re not playing something in the Final Fantasy series… which, as this is intended to be an entirely new IP, may or may not be a good thing. The characters, too, are likable and easy to connect with. Some are even memorable.

Unfortunately, where this game falls short is in the gameplay. I’m not a fan of strategy RPGs to begin with… but Square Enix of late has been creeping just a bit too far into the realm of games-that-play-themselves. It was noticeable in Final Fantasy XII (though, truth be told, I enjoyed that game a lot), and it’s even more prominent in Last Remnant.

It actually got to the point that, when I had four or more unions on the field during a boss battle, I could give my initial set of orders and walk away, sometimes for upwards of five minutes… which I ended up doing quite a lot, because watching the same battle animations over and over gets really boring after the first few hours. The battles themselves were obscenely long, too… One of them (which was basically a mini boss) had so much HP it took me almost two hours to whittle it down to the point that it was at critical status.

And then it killed me in one round, and I had to start over.

That wasn’t exactly a one-time occurrence, either. It seems like victory is often dependent on luck over skill. Case in point… one battle, the first attack hit every member of my party with Curse, which has about a 50/50 shot at KOing any given member every round. All four unions immediately had their leaders KOed, at which point I could no longer take any action for the remainder of the battle… which lasted two or three more rounds.

On my second attempt, the boss never even cast Curse until he was a sword-poke away from dying himself.

So overall, how did it rate?

Story - 10/10
The story is a good one, and lets face it… when you play an RPG of any sub-genre, story is what you’re primarily in it for.

Characters - 9/10
Good, solid characters, a none of whom are in the mold of Square Enix’s usual angst-ridden fare. In fact the main protagonist is so upbeat, it’s almost comical at times. The voice work, too, is better than average.

Battle System - 1/10
I don’t think I can stress enough how much I disliked how battles worked in this game… largely because there was almost nothing for me to DO during battle. When you’re outnumbered 2 to 1 on the field, it’s a LONG time between command inputs. Beyond that, I’m no expert in strategy, and maybe I just never really grasped the finer nuances of party make-up, but it really never seemed to matter much who was in my active party or how they were positioned. The most important characters were always the leaders, and the others were just there to boost the HP pool and and take a swing at the monster that was trying to eat us all.

Technical Polish - 5/10
Visually, it’s a beautiful game. It really is… but it’s very, very slow. Battle animations lag and loading screens are all over the place. At first, I thought it was just me, but I’ve seen other gamers online commenting about it as well.

Replayability - 2/10
If I ever dig this one out again, it will probably be to do the sidequests I missed the first time through.

Overall - 5.5
Despite a plot that I really felt myself getting into, the frustration level of The Last Remnant will probably deter many traditional RPG fans from even bothering to finish it. The battle system is governed more by luck than by skill, and the sheer length of the battles (especially throughout the second disc) make it stretch on to the point that you just don’t care anymore after awhile.

Halo Wars is a strategy game based on the Halo universe. In campaign mode, players will command the armies of the UNSC warship “Spirit of Fire,” consisting of familiar and new UNSC units in its initial encounters against the Covenant, an alien coalition threatening to obliterate mankind. Halo Wars will immerse gamers in an early period of the Halo universe, allowing them to experience events leading up to the first Halo game.

Halo Wars is scheduled for a March 3, 2009 release, and will be available for XBOX 360 as Limited and Standard editions. The limited edition features the Mythic Map Pack, consisting of three new multiplayer maps, Halo Wars: Genesis (a graphic novel chronicling the first campaign against the Covenant), the Honor Guard Wraith in-game vehicle, six leader cards, and the Spirit of Fire Patch, which allows you to start the game as a Spirit of Fire crew member.

This morning (well actually last night) brings good news for Fable II fans. Lionhead Studios announced that mid-December will see the release of the first major piece of downloadable content for the game. And what is it, you may ask?

For a mere 800 Points, you can pick up the Knothole Island pack, and face the trials of the three shrines to save the island and it’s people. Also available around that time will be a free pack that will allow players to co-op on Knothole Island.

Nifty! ^_^

About time… I’ve already bought up most of Albion, changed my gender, murdered another husband, and spent the night in a creepy nightmare realm at this point. I’m running out of quests.

Amazon is having a games day over in the GoldBox. It’s looking like it’s going to be an XBOX 360 kind of day this time around.

The deal of the day is Midnight Club: Los Angeles for $39.99. The day’s first lightning deal is Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for $29.98 (50% off the current list price). Five more deals will be making themselves known throughout the day.

Also, if you’re in the market for a new 360 Elite, today’s offer in Amazon’s Video Games Countdown to Black Friday is a free copy of The Last Remnant and 4000 Live Point card when you buy the 360 holiday bundle (which comes with Lego Star Wars and Kung Fu Panda) for $399.99.

I picked up my copy of The Last Remnant last night after work, and (after taking care of my cats, who wouldn’t let me near my 360 until they were fed) played until the wee small hours of the morning… which ought to make having to spend the next nine hours in the office a lot of fun.

So… first impressions.

On the superficial side of things, the graphics are not the greatest, and characters have a strange stiffness to them when they walk. I don’t particularly care, but some people might, and it is a little odd coming from a developer like Square Enix who seem to be head over heels in love with gorgeous animation. Load times are a little long, but I’ve seen worse.

The voice acting, though, is significantly better than most games I’ve played lately, and the music has a decidedly nostalgic a touch of old school mixed in with the modern.

Delving deeper, story-wise, I’m not that far in… but I’m intrigued. The characters, too, are likable (or hateable, depending on which side they’re on). Rush Sykes, our protagonist, is your average acts-before-he-thinks kind of kid who, at this point anyway, shows none of the brooding, angsty-ness so common to many of Square Enix’s heroes, nor a reluctance to act (in fact I’ve counted at least four times now that he’s acted without much regard to anything other than achieving his goal of rescuing his sister).

In terms of gameplay, I remain undecided at this point. The Union battle system puts the game into some strange limbo between Final Fantasy XII’s turn-based, random encounter-less system and a strategy RPG. For the early enemies, quite frankly, it seems like overkill… but I think I can see how it might become a lot more interesting (and challenging) later in the game. I was a little overwhelmed at first at the sheer amount of information presented during battle, but I think I’m getting the hang of it.

After approximately 5 hours of gameplay, I can tell you that I do want to play more. Look for a full review once I’ve had the chance to do so.

Fable II is a game I’d been looking forward to for months. I hadn’t had the opportunity to play the original, since I went with PS2 last generation and couldn’t afford multiple consoles on a part-time hardware store cashier’s salary (hurray for full-time employment!), but I picked it up a few months before the sequel’s release and was impressed. The same can be said for Fable II.

Half of Fable II’s (and it’s predecessor’s) charm is the many, many, many things you can do in the game that are completely unrelated to the main story. Thus far, I have:

-Gotten married
-Had a child
-Had an affair with the neighbor and caught an STD
-Married the neighbor
-Been divorced and had my child taken away from me for marrying the neighbor
-Been divorced by my second husband for not paying enough attention to him
-Married and had another child, then killed my husband and had the kid taken away
-Hooked up with a prostitute and then married her
-Bought most of the gypsy camp
-Bought several shops and jacked up the prices
-Slaughtered a village
-Went on a treasure hunt
-Freed some slaves
-Killed a family and then bought their house at a discount
-Commissioned statues of myself
-Done community service
-Become something of a kleptomaniac (Stealing is fun. And profitable.)

Well, anyway, you get the idea. Probably 3/4 of the time I’ve logged in the game has had nothing to do with the main quest. It’s addictive, and it’s fun. The original Fable had a lot of random stuff to do, but they really went all out in Fable II.

Overall, Fable II is awesome. A few minor things, though…

First and foremost, the main quest feels short, especially in comparison to the amount of time you spend running around doing random sidequests and other activities… which is not necessarily a flaw, but still seems odd for an RPG of this scale. The story that is there isn’t the strongest plot, either, but it is entertaining.

Second, the stats. Now, I realize that it’s just a numbers game, and you have to figure out the system, but really… I spend literally DAYS running around the countryside, swimming across lakes, and hacking evil creatures, townspeople, and cute fuzzy bunnies to pieces, but eat a few pies and suddenly my avatar is a freaking whale? WTF?

On the whole, though, Fable II was worth every penny I spent on it, and has the bonus of having a ridiculous amount of replay value.

So how do things break down?

Story - 7/10
The main story is weak and short, but does hold your interest. It would have been nice if it had gone a little deeper, but considering the sheer amount of other stuff in the game, it’s understandable why they cut back on plot.

Characters - 7/10
The characters are about on par with the story. Aside from your own avatar, it’s hard to connect with any of them, and the principles in main story have an annoying habit of constantly thinking out loud and blatantly explaining their motivations.

Gameplay - 8.5/10
With the exception of the Will powers (which I’m still having some difficulty learning to use effectively in battle), the controls are excellent. Switching between sword and gun works extremely well, and even the dog occasionally comes in handy. The menu is a bit laggy, though, and I really wish they’d thrown in a better map system, as I have a horrible sense of direction and a tendency to get lost very easily.

Replayability - 10/10
There is just so much to do in this game, that it’s hard not to want to experiment. My current avatar has maxxed out on the evil side of things. I think next time, I’ll try to be good.

Overall - 8.5/10
This is a great game that’s easy to put way too much time into. It does have a few flaws, but for the most part they’re easy to ignore. And the music is just awesome, by the way.