![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Because I'm years behind everyone else on the gaming curve (partially because of being broke for awhile and partially because of World of Warcraft eating up all my gaming time) I've finally gotten around to playing both Fable and Jade Empire.
I started Fable first and about halfway through the game my husband bought me a copy of Jade Empire. I think that playing them pretty much at the same time was pretty interesting. I think it made me more uncharitible to Fable and more charitable to Jade Empire than I would have been.
I have to say that Fable blows. I was already disliking the damn game even before I got to play Jade Empire. It's one of those games that's clearly ported over from a console, because it seemed like the game designers couldn't be arsed to design a system to play on a keyboard that wasn't completely slapdash, retarded and awkward. Sure you could bind keys, but only to a point, which ended up with my 1-8 buttons being automatically hotkeyed by the game's programing to retarded things like farting and manly arm pumping expressions and not so useful things like... oh say... a fireball spell. After playing a game like World of Warcraft where hotkeying and interface changing is so freaking easy it was too painful to stand.
Another annoying thing was how you couldn't save during a mission. Since I admittedly suck ass at playing games like this, it was a real annoyance. Some of those missions take quite awhile to complete, and it really sucks to get just to the end, die and then have to start back at the beginning and lose 45 minutes of playing time.
But really, that could have been forgiven if everything else hadn't sucked ass. I admit that unlike a game like World of Warcraft where I basically just like to hit stuff while I chat with my friends, I play games like Fable for story and plot. And Fable just fails so utterly horribly in that regard.
I honestly don't get the hype about this game and why so many people declared it to be the most awesome thing ever. The story is a completely generic fantasy standard and the npc's are boring as hell. And for some reason they felt the need to try and include romance in the game which basically boiled down to stalking someone, getting the right haircut and outfit and giving them gifts. And while sure, it was entertaining for awhile to have a wife and house in every town - they were all the same and goddamn were their voices annoying.
Combine all those things together and that's why I abandoned it halfway through for Jade Empire. I don't think I'll ever go back to finishing the damn thing.
Jade Empire on the other hand was great in a lot of ways and not so hot in other ways, but overall, far more fun (especially when compared to Fable). I loved the setting of ancient China and the game design was truly different and beautiful. Just running around and looking at stuff was fun because it was so damn pretty. I also thought that while they fell back on the standard plot of "You are the chosen one with a twist (tm)" that Bioware seems to put in every damn game, it was done pretty well and different enough to keep my interest.
The fighting was pretty fun too as there are so many different styles to learn - almost too many to keep track of really. Still, the way they were animated was awesome, and it was pretty cool to see your little avatar open up a can of kung fu whupass on enemies.
The coolest thing for me though was the music, which I thought was absolutely fantastic and totally gets you into the setting and mood the minute you hear it.
Unfortunately a lot of the NPC followers were either annoying or shallow or both. I found both Dawn Star and Silk Fox irritating, one for being so damn sweet and sugary the other for being so "omg I'm a spoiled princess." They could have both been interesting if they'd been given a bit of dimension, but as it was, I couldn't take the Silk Fox romance as an open palm female, she was just too freaking annoying. I'm going to try a play through as a closed palm dude, and see if making them my bitches that improves them any.
And Sky as a female love interest - oh man. He's okay, but there's so much wrong that could have been made right if a bit more care and effort went into making him. He's like Onasi light without the sexy voice. Don't get me wrong, I like Cam Clarke, but the dude has been in so many cartoons (most recently that I've seen - Clifford the Big Red Dog on PBS that my son loves where he voices the snooty dog) that you can't help but make inappropriate associations every time he says something. Plus his voice is just not that sexy. Combine that with cliched romance dialogue and it just doesn't work.
I also found it kind of disturbing that he was like "Oh my wife died but that was okay because I got my daughter. But then my daughter bit it, but now that's okay because I have you." He's just so caviler about it that I never really bought into the angst in his backstory, which could have been interesting, but just falls totally flat.
On the other hand, I did like pretty much everyone else. Sagacious Zu's angst seemed pretty real to me, Little Flower was a really neat character and combat concept, and I found Henpecked Hu, Black Whirlwind and Kang all pretty entertaining (although I was totally disappointed that we never got to meet Hu's wife). Even Master Li as the villain was pretty well done. I really would have liked to take more than one of them along at a time to see them interact with each other and the environment the way your party members do in K1 and K2. I would have also liked to see more segments where you play just them without the main character as well, because those were pretty fun.
My only other real complaint is that the game is super short. I would have loved to see more to it.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and now I'm dying to find a way to justify buying an XBox 360. I'm really hoping Mass Effect will come out for the PC someday because it sounds so fun. I figure two years after you guys have enjoyed it, I'll get a shot at playing it too lol.
I started Fable first and about halfway through the game my husband bought me a copy of Jade Empire. I think that playing them pretty much at the same time was pretty interesting. I think it made me more uncharitible to Fable and more charitable to Jade Empire than I would have been.
I have to say that Fable blows. I was already disliking the damn game even before I got to play Jade Empire. It's one of those games that's clearly ported over from a console, because it seemed like the game designers couldn't be arsed to design a system to play on a keyboard that wasn't completely slapdash, retarded and awkward. Sure you could bind keys, but only to a point, which ended up with my 1-8 buttons being automatically hotkeyed by the game's programing to retarded things like farting and manly arm pumping expressions and not so useful things like... oh say... a fireball spell. After playing a game like World of Warcraft where hotkeying and interface changing is so freaking easy it was too painful to stand.
Another annoying thing was how you couldn't save during a mission. Since I admittedly suck ass at playing games like this, it was a real annoyance. Some of those missions take quite awhile to complete, and it really sucks to get just to the end, die and then have to start back at the beginning and lose 45 minutes of playing time.
But really, that could have been forgiven if everything else hadn't sucked ass. I admit that unlike a game like World of Warcraft where I basically just like to hit stuff while I chat with my friends, I play games like Fable for story and plot. And Fable just fails so utterly horribly in that regard.
I honestly don't get the hype about this game and why so many people declared it to be the most awesome thing ever. The story is a completely generic fantasy standard and the npc's are boring as hell. And for some reason they felt the need to try and include romance in the game which basically boiled down to stalking someone, getting the right haircut and outfit and giving them gifts. And while sure, it was entertaining for awhile to have a wife and house in every town - they were all the same and goddamn were their voices annoying.
Combine all those things together and that's why I abandoned it halfway through for Jade Empire. I don't think I'll ever go back to finishing the damn thing.
Jade Empire on the other hand was great in a lot of ways and not so hot in other ways, but overall, far more fun (especially when compared to Fable). I loved the setting of ancient China and the game design was truly different and beautiful. Just running around and looking at stuff was fun because it was so damn pretty. I also thought that while they fell back on the standard plot of "You are the chosen one with a twist (tm)" that Bioware seems to put in every damn game, it was done pretty well and different enough to keep my interest.
The fighting was pretty fun too as there are so many different styles to learn - almost too many to keep track of really. Still, the way they were animated was awesome, and it was pretty cool to see your little avatar open up a can of kung fu whupass on enemies.
The coolest thing for me though was the music, which I thought was absolutely fantastic and totally gets you into the setting and mood the minute you hear it.
Unfortunately a lot of the NPC followers were either annoying or shallow or both. I found both Dawn Star and Silk Fox irritating, one for being so damn sweet and sugary the other for being so "omg I'm a spoiled princess." They could have both been interesting if they'd been given a bit of dimension, but as it was, I couldn't take the Silk Fox romance as an open palm female, she was just too freaking annoying. I'm going to try a play through as a closed palm dude, and see if making them my bitches that improves them any.
And Sky as a female love interest - oh man. He's okay, but there's so much wrong that could have been made right if a bit more care and effort went into making him. He's like Onasi light without the sexy voice. Don't get me wrong, I like Cam Clarke, but the dude has been in so many cartoons (most recently that I've seen - Clifford the Big Red Dog on PBS that my son loves where he voices the snooty dog) that you can't help but make inappropriate associations every time he says something. Plus his voice is just not that sexy. Combine that with cliched romance dialogue and it just doesn't work.
I also found it kind of disturbing that he was like "Oh my wife died but that was okay because I got my daughter. But then my daughter bit it, but now that's okay because I have you." He's just so caviler about it that I never really bought into the angst in his backstory, which could have been interesting, but just falls totally flat.
On the other hand, I did like pretty much everyone else. Sagacious Zu's angst seemed pretty real to me, Little Flower was a really neat character and combat concept, and I found Henpecked Hu, Black Whirlwind and Kang all pretty entertaining (although I was totally disappointed that we never got to meet Hu's wife). Even Master Li as the villain was pretty well done. I really would have liked to take more than one of them along at a time to see them interact with each other and the environment the way your party members do in K1 and K2. I would have also liked to see more segments where you play just them without the main character as well, because those were pretty fun.
My only other real complaint is that the game is super short. I would have loved to see more to it.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and now I'm dying to find a way to justify buying an XBox 360. I'm really hoping Mass Effect will come out for the PC someday because it sounds so fun. I figure two years after you guys have enjoyed it, I'll get a shot at playing it too lol.
Tags: