An Excursion in Albion, or Vacationing Without Leaving the Couch in Fable 2

I've yet to play the first Fable, so I jumped into Fable 2 entirely cold with few expectations and a low expectation that I would play much of it. Just to recap for those that don't entirely follow my opinion-drenched blog: I'm not much of a fan of RPGs, I suck at simulation games, I generally find the entire fantasy genre boring. Action RPGs tend to be better for me, but fantasy ARPGs still tend to push me towards a "point of apathy". The Zelda series is a perfect example: I've enjoyed the opening gameplay of several Zelda games, most particularly Ocarina of Time, but inevitably I get sick of the repetitive dungeons and the weak storyline fails to keep my interest and I give up. [1] To have Fable 2 described to me as Zelda melded with a dash of The Sims and a storyline involving choices of morality [2] against a backdrop of fate [3] did not give me much hope for sustaining interest in the game for the full storyline...

Cutting to the chase: I got seduced by Fable 2 and it was a wild love affair of late night gaming sessions. I completed all of the "good" quests and the storyline with my first character, have a second character about half-way through the storyline tackling all of the "evil" stuff and started a tertiary character...

The specific reason for my wild love of the game mostly boils down to the "virtual geography". If you read enough of my words that might not be all that surprising to some, as I've mentioned that as one of my reasons thus far for preferring Saint's Row to GTA. Fable 2's Albion is the most alive world that I've yet encountered in ...

Albums of the Moment: Squeeze-bot's Eponymous Debut and Nightmare Revisited

Squeeze-bot is a Louisville area band that I've not yet seen live, but after reading about them and listening to their debut CD on CD Baby (and then again at ear X-tacy) I've become something of fan, mostly because it falls into my love of the eclectic. This debut album is almost entirely covers and generally I'm rarely excited by cover bands, but both the wide variety of covers and eclectic nature of the band serve to make something wilder and weirder than "just a cover band". On the album you find covers of everything from jazz/blues to rock, by a band consisting of drums, tuba, banjo and accordian. Most of the songs manage to leap a bit further from the realm of "just rock covers by a bizarre polka band" into something subtler and more profound, at times flirting with the same sort of creative reinvention seen in the jazz works of rock-influenced trios like The Bad Plus and Esbjörn Svensson Trio.

I also found Nightmare Revisited a fun Halloween-themed album. Just as a I'm rarely excited by cover bands, I find most "Inspired By" albums not all that inspired, but this collection of works based upon The Nightmare Before Christmas exhibits some awesome works that show both an appreciation for the source material and some fun "stunt casting". Particularly noteworthy stand outs for me are DeVotchKa's wild "old world" Overture, The Polyphonic Spree's "if Nightmare were a rock opera" Town Meeting Scene, and Korn's Kidnap the Sandy Claws which always seems to elicit grins, as it is completely faithful to the original song and yet invariably a Korn song (as if the original may have been written with Korn in mind).