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 bothexpansions. 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.

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 bothexpansions. 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.

Nice blog duder. I also picked up Fable 3 during the Steam sale and, even with it's shortcomings (of which there are many), I've been playing through the campaign with a friend and it's a rather enjoyable cooperative experience.

@benjaebe: I don't play games online myself, but it's good to hear that they at least made some improvements to the supposedly lackluster co-op elements in Fable 2.