Fable: The gritty and trying-to-be-serious chapters. Okay, a simplification, but close.

User Rating: 7.5 | Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning PC
So mortals crashed a world, upset the immortals that lived there, some immortals decided to mess around with bad juju and attack the mortals, and one of the slain mortals comes back to life through technomagic and able to mess up everything as he/she is no longer bound by fate. That's the gist of the story as far as I can tell. While it's got great potential, it more feels like you're just given a license to run amok and slaughter at will. You're on a quest, to kick the butt of the bad immortals and make the world more to your liking. You do so with flashy combat moves that involve a lot of dodging and moving around while usually pretty heavily outnumbered, or against a boss you have to hit a hundred times while if they get 3 or so good hits on you you're toast. Hmmm... sounds like another game? Fable? Nah, it hasn't got the "open world" which includes jump points, nor little circular ripples in the water to indicate loot, nor the very console-ish combat system, nor the non-harmable villagers unless you choose for you to be able to hurt them, nor... ahhh who am I kidding, the only things missing are the old sparkling line to the objective and the guns. Oh, and the dog. Now I'm sad :( And marriages and family, but meh, you're a hero for crying out loud.

Which is not to say that's a bad thing, however the combat can get annoying at times, and the camera can sometimes be a real pain in the neck, as you're trying to attack one target and the game goes after another, usually one perpendicular to the one you wanted. The combat is flashy and makes you feel like a badass, and the reckoning mode which acts like a powered-up bullet time in which you do more damage and can finish it with a powerful cinematic blow is nice, though the delay in bringing up exactly which button you're supposed to be hitting to power up the cinematic blow and get more xp out of the reckoning mode has a weird delay in popping up, which can make getting the full xp bonus more difficult than it should be for no discernable reason. The maps feel semi-recycled, nowhere near as bad as the abysmal bioware game we shall not mention but still enough to give you regular bouts of deja vu. The houses in particular start to feel very familiar very fast. The story is not that fleshed out and you get the feeling that there's a lot on offer, but only the surface is skimmed. Conversations with most of the characters, while fully voiced, really aren't that engaging, nor informative.

This game calls itself an RPG, but it's an action RPG, like Fable and Diablo, and so should be taken as such. Personally it's hard to immerse in this game, but loading it up, bashing around for 2 hours or so then quitting and coming back to it later means that slowly there is progression in the game. It's somewhat of a shame as you feel there is a lot in this game's world, but hopefully the sequels will expand on the lore and the interactions and keep the fun part of slaughtering a forest full of creatures as enjoyable as it is now.