Here's another characteristically disjointed blog post about my recent gaming activities. In case anyone hadn't noticed, my primary Internet activity consists of simply keeping track of my own gaming habits via a small YouTube channel, and any blogging duties will always take a backseat to my incessant video uploading (partly because it's far easier to just record some gameplay and write a quick paragraph or two rather than having to take time out of my busy schedule to actually write anything more in-depth about what I've been playing). With that clarification out of the way, this is what I've been doing since my last GB update;

Witcher 2 ends with a cliffhanger (or, to be precise, a ladybird) but otherwise does a respectable job of clearing up most of the important plot-related questions the player might want answers to at this point. As a whole TW2 leaves me somewhat cold - and the act of playing through it was accompanied by a fair amount of frustration - but I can't argue with the fact that the game's sheer ambition and great atmosphere makes it one of the true must-have titles of 2011. Impressive visuals aside the game was clearly designed from the ground up to work well on consoles, however, as there's absolutely nothing in this third-person dialogue-heavy realtime action RPG which strictly requires a PC or even - which is the most important point for me personally - caters particularly much to the tastes of old school PC RPG fans (i.e. fans of Wizardry, Might & Magic, Ultima and similar classics of the genre).

Now that I've finished both Witcher games once I have to conclude that I'm not exactly the biggest fan of the series and what CD Projekt RED is trying to do in gameplay terms, but the whole choices & consequences aspect is impressive so there are still plenty of reasons to go back and explore the roads not taken during my first playthroughs. An early example is this mini-boss fight in Witcher 1, which I have never seen despite having played the prologue quite a few times now (always went for the other option during the attack on Kaer Morhen).

One of the disadvantages of buying a new computer is that you tend to lose some save files in the process (thank the Gods for Steam Cloud, though!), and this was the case for me with BFBC2. Restarting the game and playing through the missions I had previously finished was accomplished a lot faster than expected, though, and this can in no small part be credited to the fact that a higher frame rate (exceeding 60 FPS most of the time) and better overall performance makes twitch-based shooter gameplay that much easier to handle. BFBC2's strongest feature apart from great sound design is definitely the feel of the core shooting mechanics themselves, and a silk-smooth frame rate is necessary to enjoy such aspects fully.

The new hardware also exposes BFBC2's graphical flaws, however, as its often painfully obvious that the game engine was designed with the current generation of consoles in mind. Still, in the thick of the action you don't have time to study individual textures and pieces of level geometry, and the PC version's anti-aliasing also goes a long way towards providing a smoother presentation.

These 3 minutes, while not bad in and of themselves, capture the full range of emotions at display in the entire Crysis series. CryTek is the new id Software in more ways than one; not only do they push hardware boundaries with each new release - they also seem hilariously incapable of crafting an intelligible story about actual human beings. Crysis 2 is by far the most effective of their games as far as narrative development goes, but it's telling that the only "character" in that game which undertakes a rich, transformative journey throughout the game's storyline is the Nanosuit itself.

Now, I'm the first person to admit that the plot and dialogue of a video game can be absolutely inconsequential as long as the gameplay holds up, but it's interesting and somewhat jarring to see the unparallelled graphical fidelity of the Crysis games exist alongside the outdated action movie clichés which define the game's storytelling. While it's obvious that games have not come a long way in delivering quality narratives, I feel like almost any generic but modern shooter (with the exception of CoD and Gears of War) has at least a bit more drama and psychological realism than what CryTek seems able to muster.

At this point, I have completely lost track of how many times I've restarted Drakensang: The Dark Eye and then quickly abandoned the game in favor of some other, somehow more pressing gaming commitment. To be fair, part of the reason for this is that Radon Labs RPG ran rather poorly on my previous computer, and hopefully the game should be easier to get into on my new rig (then again, the autumn is full of promising releases so who knows how far I'll get this time...).

Once again I've rolled a new character, and this time I tried to keep things simple by choosing a Warrior. Despite having realtime combat, The Dark Eye's pacing is *very* relaxed and clearly rewards a methodical approach. There's no fast travel within the rather area large maps which means that a lot of time is spent slowly traversing the game world, and it's a good thing there are plenty of barrels to destroy along the way and some idyllic high fantasy scenery to look at...

Since my last blog post sparked some controversy, some clarifications may be in order. None of these are intended to directly answer any specific comments or even convince anyone that I'm not completely crazy - hell, I'm fine with being labelled as insane and wrong-headed as long as people regard my opinions as genuine and sincere, which they most certainly are. My aim here is simply to clarify some fundamental aspects and put the previous post in perspective.

• My blog post expressed a lot of honest, deeply held, even carefully considered opinions - but what it didn't do was really argue for any of them or even specify what my primary concerns were (more on that below). The blog medium being what it is, I primarily wanted an opportunity to express just how baffled I am by the at least partial disconnect between my own personal experience of TW2 and the game's extremely positive reception by reviewers and gamers alike. I believe in truth and objective quality - even in art and video games - more than most people seem to these days, but in all fairness you'd have to conclude that none of the complaints I raised could be seen as having been sufficiently defined, carefully explained or in any way demonstrated to be true. I'm fine with that, since I'm not in the business of writing a review of the game (for now, anyway).

• My criticisms in all likelihood gave the impression of being very general, when in fact I often had something very particular in mind with each complaint. For example, I think that TW2's skill system is "unbalanced" because of how useful Quen is and how difficult the combat (still) is before the player gets some of the early extremely essential abilities. Similarily, the "cluttered" comment refers to the game's inventory interface specifically, not the rest of the game's UI. Those complaints are not controversial or original in and of themselves, but merely stating that the game is "unbalanced" obviously makes it seem as if I was making an overall sweeping assessment of every single skill in the game. I wasn't, but I do believe the specific issues I have with the game's systems and mechanics are major concerns even if they obviously don't constitute everything the game has to offer in terms of skills and balancing. Likewise, despite my reservations about some of the level design and some of the fetch-related assignments, a lot of the of environments are in fact extremely well-designed and quite a few of the side quests are truly memorable. Despite the intentionally impressionistic nature of the original post, that brief text would have benefitted from being more clear on this particular aspect of my criticism.

• Many or most of the specific points of criticism have also been raised by so-called professional reviewers; either in actual reviews or in various podcasts discussions that I've listened to. This primarily means that people who have (unlike me) spent a lot of time and effort on a careful analysis of Witcher 2 have drawn many of the same conclusions as I did. However, at the same time it is equally true that as of yet I haven't heard anyone else bring up my entire laundry list of reservations all at once; nor even seen these objections being described as problematic enough to detract significantly from TW2's potential RPG of the Year status. In other words, despite not being alone in voicing any of these specific complaints, I'm to some extent unique in combining them into one over-arching critical framework (such as it is) and assigning as much weight to them as I do.

• The intent of the blog post was not to directly compare Witcher 2 to Dragon Age 2. It's true that I had more fun with DA2 personally, but that had more to do with individual preferences for things like party-based gameplay and a less action-oriented control system than with my criticism of TW2. There is obviously some kind of overlap between these two aspects, but I'm much more hesistant to unequivocally state that DA2 is better than TW2 than to say that on a subjective, fun-oriented level I personally enjoyed playing through the former game a bit more than I'm currently liking the latter.

• Last but not least, I agree with just about everyone that Witcher 2 is a good game. That was never in question, and shouldn't be, since CD Projekt RED are to be commended for making another good and sizeable RPG. In my opinion the game may have some of the same flaws as plagued the original game and include too many imperfections and idiosynchratic design quirks to be seen as a true classic, but everyone who likes hardcore RPGs and PC gaming in general simply must own at least one copy of this game (even if they don't currently own a computer that can run it). After all, the sustainability of our beloved platform of choice depends on rewarding creativity, ambition and depth and few developers try as hard to deliver just that as CD Projekt RED does. In fact, the main reason why I'm not writing an actual review (apart from the fact that all of my criticisms have, in some form or other, already been mentioned by better writers than me) is that at the moment I'm too damn busy playing the game...

Witcher 2 is by no means a bad game, but at this point - after having played through Chapter 1 and substantial parts of Chapter 2 - I'm this close to declaring it one of the most overrated RPG to have been released in quite some time. TW2 has been almost universally acclaimed as the triumphant return of an entire genre from the only developer in the whole wide world which supposedly still cares about cutting edge PC development, but in my opinion there are just too many blatant flaws in CD Projekt RED's ambitious dark fantasy adventure to make this anything more than yet another cool, quirky Eastern European-developed title, which is most certainly worth getting for fans of the genre but can't seriously be considered to be successful enough to reach the status of a modern classic.

That in and of itself should be seen as a fairly respectable recommendation, but there's no denying that any list of TW2's shortcomings can get awfully long. It would, at the very least, have to include things like an unbalanced skill system (resulting in extremely uneven difficulty), stupid boss fights with one-hit kills and QTEs*, sluggish combat controls, confusing maze-like level design with lots of bland corridors, a needlessly cluttered interface, plenty of boring fetch assignments, imprecise quest markers and logs, a poorly introduced game world as well as longwinded dialogue which never manages to imbue the game's wooden characters with enough life to make the player fully invested in The Witcher's byzantine storyline with all its unpronounceable factions, vaguely defined nation states and morally reprehensible kings and queens.

Despite its undeniably good looks, Witcher 2 feels like an anachronistic and somewhat misguided release which neither has the tactical nature of classic roleplaying games nor tries hard enough to learn from more accessible (if arguably also a lot less ambitious) RPGs released in recent years. I still enjoy playing this game for what it does right in terms graphics, atmosphere, player choice etc., but so far that other deeply flawed RPG, Dragon Age 2, remains my own favorite mainstream entry in this genre in 2011.

How about a brand new Deus Ex-inspired FPS/RPG hybrid with fast-paced shooter action, a ton of stats and skill-related customization options as well as a grim, stylized sci-fi aesthetics? And four-player co-op for the entire campaign? Well, somehow obscure French independent developer Streum On Studios have managed to release precisely that game, and it's available on Steam right now for the pleasingly midrange price point of around 18€.

As one might expect in the case of a small team developing a hugely ambitious title like this, E.Y.E. does not feature the most technically impressive, accessible or polished gameplay you're likely to experience in a 2011 game, but my initial impression from the very first hour or so is that this is a promising product from a team which clearly knows exactly what fans of PC games like Deus Ex really want from their FPS/RPG hybrids. While its absurdly over-dimensioned maps, awkward text-heavy dialogue and somewhat obtuse character development system will not charm everyone, if you're into this type of game this could be well worth a look.

Read some cautiously optimistic coverage of the game from Rock Paper Shotgun's Jim Rossignol here

In most cases my interest in anything remotely puzzle-related is almost nonexistent; which is why I didn't feel any particular need to rush out and get Valve's latest and predictably overhyped game when it came out earlier this year. However, after getting Portal 2 during the Steam sale I have to admit that the game is just as impressive as everyone keeps saying it is, and already easily a contender for Game of The Year.

Given the generally poor quality of both the writing and the voice acting in most video games, it's refreshing to see just what can actually be accomplished when some remarkably good and genuinely funny writing is combined with a really professional voice cast (including British writer and comedian Stephen Merchant, opera singer (!) Ellen McLain and American actor J K Simmons). Erik Wolpaw's wonderful script is further accompanied by a significantly more expansive level design which, to a much greater extent than the slightly overrated first game, manages to comprehensively communicate a sense of place.

Or *places*, to be more precise. For whereas Portal 1 consisted mostly of hermetically sealed environments sprinkled with vague hints of the masterplan behind all those bloody test chambers, the sequel uses the gradual breakdown of Glados' perfect world as an opportunity to put the player in a perilously liminal place which only barely holds together, in which interesting information about the larger game world is constantly divulged and where it's possible to literally take a peek behind the backdrops much more frequently. Thematically speaking, the first game in the series was something of a one-trick pony which - and I realize I'm almost alone in this opinion - somehow managed to overstay its admittedly brief welcome and didn't give a sense that there was anything compelling to discover beyond its' one big idea. By contrast, Portal 2 is determined from the get-go to substantially flesh out its own fictional universe while constantly introducing new gameplay elements, defying the player's expectations and moving further and further away from the traditional test chamber with all its inherent limitations.

And then we have the actual puzzles themselves, which so far have been as cleverly crafted as ever and supported by a nice, impressively smooth learning curve. Puzzles are always going to involve a certain level of frustration for me since I'm inherently lazy (...or maybe it's just that I get up at 05.30 most days of the week and don't feel like straining my tired brain too much when I come home after work), and have thus never fully appreciated the intellectual ordeal of figuring out the solutions. But the combination of my strong interest in the story, writing and characters and the general thrill of finding out what lies just behind the next corner is definitely enough to keep me going. As always in Portal, though, the cake to lie ratio is statistically unfair...

In many ways, Dead Space 2 is the game Resident Evil 5 (or even RE4) should have been; i.e. a truly atmospheric survival horror experience which also happens to be a very solid third-person action game with well thought out mechanics which appropriately emphasize the protagonist's desperate struggle against overwhelming odds. Some people have complained that DS2 is not actually scary as such, but on the whole I've personally found it to be a rather unsettling experience which oscillates effectively between a nerve-wrecking sense of foreboding on the one hand and pulse-quickening terror (admittedly of the cheesy, monster closet variety) on the other.

Even more importantly, this particular Space isn't quite as Dead as one might think since Clarke is often in direct contact with fellow survivors, and the interactions with these additional unfortunate souls makes the player much more emotionally invested in the story. This is further facilitated by Visceral Games' somewhat controversial decision to do away altogether with the "silent protagonist" convention which characterized the first game. It's actually quite refreshing to hear Isaac Clarke talk with other people and discuss mission objectives; not the least because it gives the character some much-needed agency after the essentially drone-like state he was in for much of Dead Space 1.

In strictly narrative terms, Dead Space 2 is a slightly more ambitious take on the traditional horror story while still having both feet firmly planted in familiar genre territory. The "dead girlfriend" plot device was a rather contrived one-trick pony in DS1, but once DS2 gets going it takes the basic idea into some twisted but also unexpectedly poignant new directions. I haven't finished the game yet, but it's a testament to the improved storytelling that I really want to see how it all ends.

EDIT: I've now finished the game. The ending was fairly predictable but with a few clever parts and it opens up some interesting possibilites for the next entry in this series.

With the exception of a few quirky first-person shooters like Crysis 1 and Metro 2033, Blue Byte's Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom is the first of the relatively recent big budget games I've bought which has "PC" written all over it. This is a deliberately paced, mouse-dependent, menu-heavy, graphics-intense, old school realtime strategy game of the kind which can only really exist and find an audience on the personal computer. Better yet, it's an unexpectedly good sequel to one of my favorite strategy classics of all time (Settlers 2). Despite some notable innovations and streamlining attempts the fundamental gameplay of Settlers 7 sticks close enough to the time-honored conventions of the series that the nostalgia center of my brain gets activated.

The highly impressive new visuals only sweeten the deal, and given the sheer amount of detailed and advanced effects available on maxed settings this might just be the single best-looking strategy game I've ever seen. At least compared to other strategy series, graphics actually have some real gameplay implications here since the simple pleasure of passively watching your tiny little computerized people go about their business in an ever-growing settlement has always been such an important part of the Settlers experience.

I think it's fair to say that anyone who has ever owned an Atari 2600 will have a hard time not falling in love with the sheer retro bliss that is Bit Trip Runner and Bit Trip Beat. These titles from California-based developer Gaijin Games perfectly capture a certain unmistakable visual style from our beloved platform while adding a new layer of slick and distinctly modern (or at least Rez-like) rhythm-based gameplay on top of what would otherwise be some fairly traditional side-scrolling action. Thus, like most good retro-style releases these days the cleverly designed BTR and BTB succeed in both having their cake and eating it by simultaneously evoking a bygone era (or several, since the games have some strong 8-bit console influences as well) without slavishly anchoring the experience in mere nostalgia or obviously outdated mechanics.

The well-received stand-alone expansion to Radon Labs' old school RPG Drakensang has a very curious release history outside of its German-speaking continental homelands. To the best of my knowledge, the English version first became available through various North American digital download stores (strictly region-locked to keep us filthy Europeans out, by the way) and only later came to the UK. Now it finally appears to have reached other parts of the non-Germanic world as a proper domestic release rather than being imported from various other places...

...or has it? For the longest time, River of Time was listed as "To Be Released" on only one of the major Swedish online stores for games, music and movies. Since the price was a mere € 5 I strongly suspected that they didn't actually know anything about the game and whether it would come out here at all. Still, I "pre-ordered" it just in case it would eventually show up and, sure enough, today it finally arrived in my mailbox without warning. However, the same online retailer has now labelled the game "Temporarily Out of Stock"...which in this context usually means it's never going to be available for purchase from that store ever again. And as far as I can see the game has still not been made available for purchase to European customers on Steam, GamersGate or similar services.

The whole thing is just plain weird, and with that kind of publishing "support" it's perhaps no wonder that classic-style RPGs from non-indie developers are few and far between...

There's been quite a bit of talk about Dungeons of Dredmor in indie RPG circles during the past year or so (yes, the name is "Dredmor", not Dreadmore or Dredmoor), and now this cartoonish roguelike has finally been released for the surprisingly low price of around € 5 (on Steam).

The actual gameplay is highly reminiscent of most modern loot-heavy dungeon crawlers like Diablo and Torchlight, but retains the classic roguelike conventions of turn-based gameplay (i.e. nothing happens if the player doesn't make a move) combined with grid-based movement in cardinal directions only. The skill system lets the player choose freely from a list of abilities which then effectively becomes a custom-made class and determines the available progression paths during level-ups. Even the first few screens in the game are absolutely littered with loot, and luckily the item descriptions are often well-written and funny, in a Fallout sort of way. Basic melee combat consists of a whole lot of clicking and kiting, as is par for the course in this genre. I've yet to try out the magic system but my first impression of the game is that it's got a distinctive visual style and charming personality which could make it stand out even in this crowded genre. Dredmor's appeal might be interestingly diverse, too, given its rather accessible, casual-esque looks and decidedly old school roots (although the same could of course be said for many similar games, especially those currently available on various iThingies).

Buy Dungeons of Dredmor here:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/98800/

Developers official website:

http://www.gaslampgames.com

There are many ways in which the deeply flawed Duke Nukem Forever fails to live up to the legacy of its legendary predecessor, but perhaps the most baffling issue is that the developers somehow managed to completely misunderstand the fundamental nature of Duke Nukem 3D's shooter design.

DNF partly succeeds in being an "old school" shooter and, as such, has a lot of similarities to games like Doom, Painkiller, Serious Sam and Necrovision. That's all fine in and of itself, but this retro vibe has virtually nothing to do with the original game that started this particular shooter series. For while Duke Nukem 3D certainly qualifies as an old game by now, it was never particularly old school to begin with. Indeed, because of the ambitious ways in which DN3D experimented with truly realistic environments, advanced scripted events and interactivity, it's much more accurate to characterize Duke Nukem 3D as the Half-Life of its time; i.e. an unusually sophisticated, mechanically complex and forward-thinking first person action game. That DN3D also happened to have a juvenile main character - who constituted an anachronistic throwback to a bygone era even back in 1996 - was always somewhat misleading given the sheer complexity and, yes, maturity of the game's overall design.

Anyway, regardless of what the classic Duke Nukem shooter actually was or wasn't, DNF must still be judged on its own merits. And when viewed as the most jarringly old-fashioned FPS to be released in 2011, the game kinda works. Perhaps you need to be a complete arcade shooter junkie and rabid anti-CoD/Halo fanatic like me to appreciate this at all, but I find the basic gameplay of Duke Nukem Forever to be solid enough and reasonably entertaining. However, it should immediately be said that there are some real missteps along the way, some more unforgivable than others. As one might have been expected given the patchwork of partly overlapping development cycles the game has gone through, the pacing is all over the place and the graphics are strangely colorless and washed-out. One gets the sense that a lot of blur was smeared on top of the visuals simply to disguise the sometimes shockingly low polygon count on both character models and backgrounds. Another more specific but no less notable issue is that the otherwise bland Hive level features some of the most despicable misogynist filth ever seen in a mainstream video game (...let's just say that the fact that the abducted women on the alien ship are passive victims deprived of all human agency is only the beginning of all that DNF does so offensively wrong in that section).

In spite of these significant problems, I feel like the core shooter mechanics get the job done and that most of the arena-like firefights constitute passable action entertainment. Even the awkward mini-games generally manage to provide some much-needed variation, and the way in which messing around with objects in the world (everything from microwave ovens to flipper tables etc.) increases the player's maximum health is a simple but effective method to encourage exploration.

Still, most of DNF's novelty value undeniably comes from the fact that it's a release which strictly speaking shouldn't even exist; and includes all sorts weird design quirks which you're guaranteed not to see in any other shooter released this year. At its core this is a game which tries very hard to be a bland and unremarkable FPS, but never quite manages to stay cohesive or even coherent enough to deserve the stamp of normalcy it so desperately desires. It's a weird experience, for sure, and hard to recommend to anyone. Still, for me at least it's all curiously compelling, somehow...

I've bought a ton of games during the ongoing Steam summer sale, and here are a few early thoughts on some of those titles. Purchased games which are missing from the rather random selection of games featured below are STALKER: Clear Sky, The Last Remnant, New Vegas DLC and Heroes of Might & Magic V including both expansions. Games I owned on other platforms/services but decided to get on Steam (to make re-installations easier, if nothing else) include Dragon Age Origins: Ultimate, Fallout 3 GOTY and Alpha Protocol.

Dead Rising 2 is a game rife with intriguing contradictions. For starters, it's a deceptively simplistic third-person action game with some unabashedly (even potentially off-putting) hardcore RPG elements hardwired into its fundamental design structure. The game's story is also an intentionally silly and satiric take on the survival horror genre (replete with ridiculous side characters and hammy dialogue), which nonetheless features an unexpectedly emotional central conflict about a father's desperate attempts to save his daughter from a zombie apocalypse.

DR2 can perhaps be best described as some sort of non-randomized "roguelike" and, as with many games in that weird subgenre, the game is at its core heavily stats-driven and encourages the player to start over all the way from the beginning many times to get the most out of the game's content. All accumulated XP carries over from one attempted playthrough to another, meaning that the game gets progressively easier the more times you play it. Further reinforcing the Groundhog Day mentality required to enjoy this game is that everything in the game is timed; meaning that you'll often find completing main quests and side quests to be mutually exclusive tasks. The game's emphasis is clearly on meticulous exploration and clever risk management but also the constant crafting of new weapons (another of DR2's fairly advanced RPG mechanics) in order to make combat easier and more rewarding in terms of XP bonuses. Last but not least, the comically bloody and visceral combat is as fun as it is over the top, constantly encouraging experimentation and a challenging the player to come up with new gruesome ways to defeat his or her enemies.

Even though it doesn't stray very far from what Capcom did with the original game (which I never played), DR2 is a fascinating and addictive experience and also an unusual game in that the PC port of this otherwise clearly console-focused title also happens to be the best version available, primarily due to significantly shorter load times than on 360/PS3 (and better graphics don't exactly hurt, either).

American- or European-developed games which attempt to realistically represent non-Western environments are few and far between, and arguably the most compelling aspect of IO Interactive's gratuitously violent third-person shooter Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days is its meticulous recreation of the mob turfs and seedy back alleys of Shanghai, the most populous city in China. The sweat shops, rundown apartment buildings and little neon-suffused stores all have an uncommon, sometimes depressing authenticity to them which makes KL2 a more memorable experience than the basic gameplay mechanics would seem to indicate.

The actual shooter controls feel somewhat loose and weightless and the cover system is far from perfect, but what KL2 lacks in precision and polish it makes up for (to some extent, anyway) with breakneck pacing and unusually challenging grunt combat. A single enemy with guns ablazing can be more than enough to finish off protagonist Kane even on Normal difficulty, and this combined with the generally shoddy quality of the firearms in the game increases the importance of not getting flanked and to avoid backing yourself into a corner from where there's no escape route.

Much has been made of the unusual visual style of KL2, but the wobbly camcorder-esque aesthetics are fairly inconsequential once you get used to them. However, there is a chilly crispness to these "digitalized" graphics which thankfully enhances the sense of place and realistic feel of the environments rather than, say, obscure them in layers of grainy post-processing as one might perhaps have feared.

I consider myself to be a reasonably hardcore PC RPG gamer. I also happen to think that the unabashedly streamlined and accessible Xbox-exclusive action RPG Fable 2 is one of the very best realtime roleplaying games of the current hardware generation. The moral choices Lionhead presented the player with may have been simplistic and the game's various "challenges" (whether it be combat or puzzles) remained extremely easy throughout the entire story mode. But Fable 2's vibrant storybook art design, anarchical humor, playful interactivity, flexible skill trees and responsive combat controls were genuinely satisfying and a welcome break from the lifeless dark fantasy tropes and stale mechanics of most of what passes for "RPGs" these days. By not taking itself too seriously and not being afraid to veer towards the fairy tale end of the fantasy spectrum, Fable 2 showed some old school mentality amidst the wealth of breadcrumbs and assists which were clearly meant to introduce a new generation to RPG gaming.

Sadly, Fable 3 has not been nearly as well-received even by fans of the series. Most of the criticism seem to center around a few very peculiar structural design flaws relating to the end game in particular, as well as an unnecessarily heavy-handed narrative with some rather arbitrary and forced moral dilemmas. It's a pity that Lionhead weren't able to continue to improve and polish the refreshing gameplay formula from Fable 2 (which in terms of quality was miles ahead of the generic and ultimately forgettable Fable 1), but as someone who really enjoyed visiting the endearing world of Albion I want to give Fable 3 a try regardless, and when the game was 50% off as part of Steam's daily summer sale deals I decided to get it.

From the first few hours of gameplay it's very clear that Fable 3 is (surprise!) a somewhat lazy console port: as the controls are a bit sluggish and the textures feel rather low-res and muddy when viewed in 1920*1080. Still, the trademark Albion atmosphere manages to shine through (especially in the awesome soundtrack) and the addictive if supremely irrelevant character customization is likewise intact. Combat difficulty has supposedly been increased for the PC version (...cuz we ain't no noobs!!!), but I found the tutorial dungeon to be drag on for a little too long with an absurd amount of combat. In general, though, what I've seen so far does make me look foward to explore the world, complete silly quests, engage in various stupid mini-games, find hidden treasures and make my companion dog look as embarrassing as caninely possible.

As promised, CryTek has now released its PC-only graphics enhancement pack for Crysis 2 consisting of both a DirectX 11-enabling patch (which adds a whole slew of new advanced features) as well as a collection of high-res textures weighing in at around 2 GB.

During the admittedly short time I've spent with the updated version so far I didn't experience a particularly big difference in the subjective minute-to-minute experience of playing the game. That being said, the more obvious and trendy new visual additions such as tessellation and displacement maps do of course give the environments a more life-like, three-dimensional feel whenever you stop for a moment to admire the scenery (which, due to the game's linear design if nothing else, happens far less often than in Crysis 1). Realistically irregular brick walls and cracked, rain-soaked pavements are the most noticeably improved surfaces seen in this particular video, but I'm sure there are other effects (such as lighting and reflections) which deserve mentioning as well.

And to be fair, some of the old textures *did* look pretty bad up close - which was perhaps most evident in the in-game cutscenes during which the player character gets knocked to the ground - and I imagine if I replayed the same scenes now those issues would all be sorted out. In the thick of the shooter action, however, many of these graphical improvements seem a bit too subtle to make a practical, tangible difference to the player. Still, since I haven't finished Crysis 2 yet (partly because I've been busy with its forward-thinking predecessor) it's nice to know that I'll be able to play through rest of the game with these enhanced visuals switched on.

On a side note, neither the DX11 or hi-res patch appears to have had any effect on the game's performance on my GTX 580-powered rig (by comparison, the similarily high-end-oriented "uber sampling" mode in Witcher 2 reduces my frame rate considerably if activated).