A game of luck, chance or aggrivation?
Today I have them and let me tell you, if I had to choose between getting threse three games for free or saving myself the five minute drive and the gas to get them free, I would have stayed home today. The games are without a doubt interesting, look very pretty and have a well thought out set of rules. The games themselves one could say isn't the actual problem, you see when I was being told of the pub games i thought 21, black jack and poker. Games of chance and of skill, but instead three games of complete luck and zero skill is what I got. Now I know there are people out there that within a few days will have thousands of gold and every single unlockable out there, and to you very lucky people good for you. unlike those few though I was born with very bad luck. So you can guess my experience with this game. Let me give you a low down on the three games though just for good measure.
Tower - This game by look resembles Spider Solitare, but isn't the same game by any means. This is problem the most skill based, if you want to call it that, game of the three. Basically the dealer plays out the deck to build a tower (actually it's a pyramid) the rules are simple and the system is simple, this is a numerics kind of game. You go by rows of preceeding increments (i.e, row one 2 cards, row two 3 cards, etc etc) You don't want to let two cards of the same vaule on seperate rows touch. So if you have a 4 card on row 2, you dont want a 4 card on row three to touch. If it does it bursts into flames and you lose the points for the card, the only way to avoid this is to be delt a 'hero' card. Only four exsist in a deck, though a deck can contain from 6 to 10 1-7 sets. If a Hero is present in a row where a number matches, he 'protects' that row. Heros are worth no points but make up for it by doing this task. The end result of this mix makes for a dull but playable Casino style game, again though if you get on a 'hot' streak for more than about two deals, you'll soon find all your cards exploding in flames and losing everything. You could find a way to make small profit, but I found that after about 10 minutes of playing I was doing well to break even and stay at 100 gold, which is the starting amount.
Keystone - This game has the potential to be really fun, but sadly all that potential goes right out the window within about 5 minutes. First off Keystone is just the name of the game, like Poker. Within keystone lie around 3 different modes of play, best of all the basic Keystne style is already slightly complicated, but to move onto bloodstone is just dizzying. The tutorial explains everything perfectly, but there is so much to take in it left me with a small headache. Afterwards though I realized that the basic Keystone isn't that hard to understand, within about ten minutes of messing around with the game I realized what everything meant and did. The game is basically Roulette with a new look, if you work out the math system the game uses, it really is generally the same game. And just like the Casino game Roulette, you have zero chance of walking away with any winnings. I quickly found that no matter what your bet, you will 90% of the time roll the exact opposite. If you put your money of a high roll, you will roll low. You bet on a low roll you will roll high, you bet on a odd number roll you get a even and if you bet on even you roll low. It got to the point after about 20 minutes that I would place a bet in the game and then write down what I figured the game would do just to see. 4 out of 5 times I ended up being right, if i bet in the game for a low roll on odds I would get a high roll on even. This really isn't a game of chance, just a game of you lose. Still if you are one of the pre-mentioned lucky people I talked about THIS could be serious fun. As for the rest of us, it's just a screaming match waiting to happen.
Last of this trifecta from hell is - Spinnerbox. This is a total joke, it's just a slot machine with 3 to 6 slots. There really isn't any more explination of that, it is just in the shape of a triangle instead of a rectangle. The only difference is with a slot machine if you get two or more symbols that match and connect you get something for it usually, with spinnerbox I a many times got matching symbols that connect (almost always with this was a top to bottom right) and the game just took my money and continued like it never happened. At first I believed that maybe only certain symbols counted, but I found that if I got the SAME symbols (a cow for instance) that matched top to bottom left or bottom left to bottom right that the machine would pay out, but a top to bottom right never did. It doesn't matter anyway, because for about every 30 dollars you lose you'll win about 10.
Overall - I really had my hopes on this, i figured the games would be skill based to start. A lot like in the previous fable, my personal favorite being the pick which item(s) were not here before. Where they would show you some statues together and then cover them and then show you the same set of statues but with one or two new ones thrown in. That took skill, not just blind luck. Heck I would have settled for darts or pool, but these 'pub' games are obviously true Casino games because the ONLY winner with these games is the person taking your money, NOT YOU. If your only interest is to get these games to make some money for your character, forget it. Just wait for the game to be released and grind out your cash the old fashioned way because this will not only frustrate you and waste your time, you'll have nothing to show for it come October. If you are a fan of Casino games though and are used to losing constantly then feel free, these games are right up your alley. The most upsetting fact to these though was upon going through the games winnings i found that you could win more than money for Fable 2, you could win Sabers, guns, tattoos, hair styles and more. I hope dearly that they can be found in the final game or are quite useless, because many will never even be aware of their exsistence other wise. Final words - This would have been quite the release, but is done in by luck herself. If these were games of skill then this would be great, fantastic even. OR if these games generally gave you good rolls and deals this would still be fun, but sadly it's neither. These games tend to 90% of the time give you bad card deals and horrible dice rolls, meaning you will almost ALWAYS lose, and I doubt you'll ever walk away with winning.
Important - Taking a closer look into the game it appears you can take out loans from the bank and get yourself into debt. This implies to me that if you play this game and then apply it to Fable 2 you can actually start the game in debt with people already angry at you. Or so the menu implies when you look at the bank tab in options... this is a puzzling feature. Why would ANYONE upload data onto a new or even old game that has debt on it? My first instinct would be to delete this game entirely from my 360 before starting Fable 2 just to make sure I don't get debt... these pub games are horrible, the only way to make them worse is to punish you further for playing them by giving you debt when you begin Fable 2.