Knothole Island contains one new region for Fable 2 expanding the game from thirteen to fourteen regions.  The region contains three new quests and many new items for the player to collect.  Knothole Island does not contain any additional gargoyles or silver keys but it does have its own collectable item, Knothole Island History books of which there are ten to find throughout the region.  Knothole Island also adds one hundred additional achievement points bringing the game total to eleven hundred.  The additional achievement points come in the form of three distinct achievements: fifty points for completing all three Knothole Island themed quests, twenty-five for collecting all ten books and twenty-five for obtaining all of the curiosities in the specialty shop in town.  The village of Knothole Island also has several additional houses and shops in which you are free to invest as well.

I began playing Knothole Island almost as soon as the download became available.  The additional content took me approximately two and a half hours to complete so the size is rather disappointing for the ten dollar price of admission, but for desperate Fable fans it is a highly anticipated addition.

Knothole Island is definitely a beautiful addition to the world of Albion.  My favourite feature of the new content is the innovative weather control system at the center of the plot driving the new quests.  The addition of the weather patterns adds a unique way of expanding the layout of the single region to feel larger.  It also adds more “scenery” than you would normally experience in the single region.  Exploring the Knothole Island region under drought, flood and freezing conditions is very interesting and extremely well done.  The planning that went into the layout of the region is quite impressive.

Each Knothole Island quest involves its own unique dungeon.  The dungeons are not really as impressive as many of the dungeons in the core Fable 2 quests.  The overuse of the lock-disc mechanism as the key to forward momentum at almost every moment within the dungeons is frustrating and boring.  Some additional variety would have been nice.  Some of the lock-disc tasks are extremely simple to figure out but difficult to execute.  Not a fun combination.

Overall the new content is enjoyable and a nice addition to the existing content.  I feel that the new content will work best for players who have not yet completed the main quest in Fable 2 or for players who have not yet started playing Fable 2.  Having the additional content mixed in with the rest of the game would make for a nice break from the rest of the game from time to time and give the player time to make use of the additional items that are only available in Knothole Island.

Playing these quests after having completing Fable 2, though, makes them extremely easy.  The new plot and content does not feel connected to the rest of Albion and almost feels as if you have left the game to go into a separate mini-game somewhere.  This effect is magnified by playing all of Knothole Island at one time without mixing it into the rest of the content.

Knothole Island contains some neat innovations, beautiful scenery and some interesting new content.  The downsides are that it is short, some of the dungeons are tedious and the integration into the Fable 2 universe is not as good as it might have been.  Serious Fable 2 fans definitley want to partake of the content but more casual players may want to save their money until Knothole Island is made part of the standard content (similar to Fable: The Lost Chapters) as it is bound to do in the future.

I am looking forward to additional downloadable content from Lionhead Studios for Fable II.  I really hope that future content will involve expansions to the main storyline or an intersting arc that expands the known Albion regions.

What Fable 2 does incredibly well is blending the storytelling common to linear console RPGs with the freedom and openness of true RPGs.  One aspect of Fable 2 which I did not like and detracted from the openness is that the “open areas” between game regions are only theoretical – you “warp” from region to region and within each region there are carefully designed “paths” so that you cannot just wander and explore unimpeded.  You are stuck within one of thirteen pre-defined regions and within each of those you are blocked and barricades from being able to wander completely freely.  This limits your freedom in the game as you must discover a path leading from each region to the next.  This also cuts down game play time.

Fable 2 does a great job of taking a primary storyline which is mostly linear and weaving it into a player-chosen course of events that allows the player a great amount of freedom within the game while allowing for a strong storyline.  As a player in Fable 2 you get to make a lot of decisions about how your character is going to behave and these decisions not only effect the way in which other characters will react to you but also your appearance (and your dog’s appearance as well.)

The game itself lies almost entirely in the side quests and free play and not within the primary quest.  If you only want to complete the game as quickly as possible you can but if you want to spend a lot of time exploring Albion, the Fable gameworld, finding every hidden treasure and completely all of the extra quests then you are free to do so.  The game really gives you a great degree of latitude.

My Fable 2 experience lasted approximately 38 hours.  I tend to be a slow player taking the time to explore, take in the view, interact with the locals and to complete as much of the “side” game as possible.  In 38 hours I completed the main quest and all quests that were completable (some always remain open for you to do again and some reoccur from time to time) and that were not evil (I was playing a “good” character.)  I even completed the entire gargoyle quest which is rather time consuming.

One of the complaints that I have heard about Fable 2 is that it is very short and in truth, it is.  The main storyline could be rushed through and the side quests ignored so that the game could most likely be completed in around ten to twelve hours.  Even with extensive time spent doing all possible quests, jobs and more it is hard to imagine that the game would ever be stretched to more than fifty hours at the most and that is a very high number for this game.  The upside is that there is some replay value in the game because of the variety of choices that you get to make as you play.  My wife watched me play the majority of the game and is still interested in playing it herself with a very different character making completely different choices.

The graphics is Fable 2 are very good and really take advantage of the XBOX 360.  However, because of the limited draw distance and the large amount of “backdrop” versus true, far off locations to which you can walk I found that this game was much less likely to find me walking to a great vantage point and staring off into the distance exploring the landscape and enjoying the view which I often do in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion or Dragon Quest VIII.  But the graphics were still very good and enjoyable and did a great job of pulling you into the game.

One of my favourite aspects of Fable 2’s extensive gameplay is the option to invest in real estate.  This is an aspect of the game that I expect is ignored or partially ignored by most people who play the game but I found it to be very enjoyable.  You are able to save up and buy houses and businesses.  A house you may choose to rent out to earn some money or you can leave the house empty and move into it yourself.  You can keep a single house for yourself or have several all over Albion.  Sleeping in different houses provide different bonuses to your character so they can be used strategically as well.  Some quests only become available when the player owns certain properties and others can be simplified by owning the right house or business.  Some properties only become available to buy (or only exist at all) after certain quests have been completed (or possibly completed in a certain way since there are multiple outcomes in the game.)

Houses can be increased in value by upgraded furnishing as well (all homes are sold furnihed in Fable 2.)  This adds yet another area of the game in which a player can choose to focus or to completely ignore.

Sidequests vary from the very short and simple (stopping a hand of slavers and freeing some slaves) to extremely long and intertwined with the main storyline (Gargoyles or The Archeologist.)  Some can be played over and over and some can only happen once and may require waiting for the main quest to advance before more parts of them become available.  My favourite quest was Gargoyles which required carefully exploring the realm going into all of the nooks and crannies that might otherwise remain unexplored and forcing you to explore the scenary and to appreciate a lot of the extra work that went into the game that is often missed by people rushing through it.  Gargoyles alone probably took me more time to complete than the main quest did.  It is a very long quest.

Fable 2 also offers a jobs system allowing the character, Sparrow, to earn a living by working as a blacksmith, woodchopper, bartender, bounty hunter, etc.  As you improve in your job you can make more and more money allowing you to buy better equipment, potions, food, books, real estate, etc.   The jobs are basically very simple mini-games that are highly repetitive to make the money earned really feel as if you are earning the money.  They can be quite time consuming and several hours could be added to the game if the player is really dedicated to earning a lot of money in this manner and wants to master several of the jobs.

Fable 2 also includes highly detailed character interactions with just about any person that you will encounter throughout the game.  Depending on what you do throughout the game will change how people perceive you.  You have a range of expressions that you can “perform” to make people like, dislike, fear you, etc.  Make the right people fall in love with you and marriage becomes an option.  Children are also an option.  You can buy your spouse a house and raise children in it for special family bonuses although be prepared as your family will need a generous allowance to be able to live well.

Some characters that you will encounter can be convinced to give you free gifts if they like, fear or respect you enough.  Having characters like you might reduce the price of goods if that characters owns a shop at which you shop.

One of the most interesting aspects of Fable 2 is your trusty dog.  Your dog joins you while on your very first quest component and remains with you throughout your adventure although you will need to take care of him, reward him, play with him, give him treats, etc.  Eventually your dog will aid you in some quests, find you buried treasure, warn you of impending attack, help finish off wounded enemies and more.  No matter how many people like or dislike you, whether you are good or evil, corrupt or pure your dog is always your faithful companion helping and sometimes guiding you along.  Strangers might even walk up to your dog and talk to him.

Like most XBOX 360 games, Fable 2 uses achievements which interact with systems external to the game itself.  Achievements are viewable on your XBOX Live account and add to your overall gamer score.  The achievement system also encourages you to try a lot of tasks within Fable 2 that might easily be ignored otherwise such as attempting a long-distance chicken kick to earn the “Chicken Kicker” achievement.  Attempting to obtain all achievements will definitely increase game play time but generally add relatively little to the game’s enjoyment.

A new feature of Fable 2 that did not exist in the original title is the “golden path” – a sparkly yellow line which appears to help lead you to your next task.  This system works amazingly well.  You use your quest/jobs menu to tell the game which quest or job you would like to currently pursue and the game will guide you to your next location as long as it is in an area or a region in which you have been previously.  This helps speed the game along while reducing pointless wandering but can lead to missing hidden items because it is so easy to ignore anything that is off of the main path.  This feature can be disabled but, overall, is pretty enjoyable.

Action within Fable 2 is simple and straightforward.  Three control buttons are assigned for battle so there is always a dedicated “swing melee weapong”, “fire missile weapon” and “cast readied spell” button available for use.  This makes battles fast and easy and not unnecessarily complicated.  This lowers the barrier of entry as there are many people who find the battle systems in RPGs overly complicated.  Sparrow is updated through the use of better weapons but armor is non-existent in the game which allows for upgrading without the large time spent investigating armor and weapon options common to other RPGs.  Fable 2 really focuses on the gameplay and character interactions and development and minimizes stats and equipment systems making them simple and straightforward.

Stat development in Fable 2 happens through a unique experience gaining system where experience is gained through strength (melee), skill (missile and speed) and will (magic) areas plus a general experience pool.  Then the player can select how experience points will be spend within each area.  It is very easy to learn and get using right away.  I really like the experience system because it allows for a certain amount of player choice in development whenever enough points are accumulated but also skews development towards areas which the player uses in actual combat.  Ergo, if a player always uses their melee weapon then experience will be accumulated in that area primarily.  So to grow in all areas a player needs to utilize different combat methods.

While the initial game is rather short with roughly ~40 hours of gameplay depending on play style there is also downloadable content planned for Fable 2 which, at the time of this writing, is due to arrive in January, 2009.  The first bit of downloadable content, the Knothole Island expansion, is expected to add one new region to Albion taking the world from 13 to 14 total regions and adding three additional complete quests to the game along with new characters with whom to interact.  How much extra content will be available in the expansion waits to be seen.  It could be as low as about two hours of extra gameplay or as much as about ten.  I will review the expansion as soon as it is available.  There are rumors that there will be expansions to the Gargoyle quest and Silver keys achievement but nothing has been confirmed.

Hopefully, in the future, additional downloadable areas will become available.  Fable 2 has a lot of potentially to be a great platform for continuing gameplay.

Fable 2 offers so many different ways to enjoy the game that I think that a very wide variety of people will find it a lot of fun even though few people generally enjoy RPGs.

For those wondering, I completed Fable 2 having found all Gargoyles and achieving both Mayor and King.

I really did not want to get up this morning to head down to the office so that I could work but it had to be done.  The sun is really out today and it is gorgeous outside.  We are still buried in snow from the two big snowfalls this weekend, but it is so pretty.  Exactly what you want for Christmas week.

Work was, as you can well imagine, extremely slow this morning.  Christmas week might as well be a holiday between the freeze, the holiday itself and the weather.  And this year Christmas Eve, Christmas and Boxing Day all occur during the week so we only have two days of the entire week that are not some form of a holiday.  Most everyone is probably on vacation all week.

Our schedule for this week, we think, goes as follows.  We are leaving Peekskill to travel to Frankfort tomorrow (Tuesday) after work so we will be arriving pretty late in the evening.  Then Christmas Eve (Wednesday) and Christmas in Frankfort.  This will be our first Christmas together that Dominica and I are not traveling from my parents’ house to Dominica’s parents’ house late on Christmas Eve.

Then my father will be coming out to Frankfort on either Saturday or Sunday to spend a day with the family.  Most likely on Sunday but we are not yet sure.  I think that I am heading back to Peekskill with Oreo on Sunday night.  Oreo and I will be alone in Peekskill for three days and will then return to Frankfort early on Thursday morning (which is a holiday for me) to pick up Dominica and Liesl and to drive them back to Peekskill.  In theory that will coincide with the Ralstons driving down to Peekskill on Thursday.  They are coming down to visit for the weekend.  I will need to leave before them since with my driving to and from Frankfort my drive is longer than theirs but not by too much.  Only by an hour or two.

The time alone at the house should work well.  Three days for Oreo and I to attempt to get caught up on cleaning and unpacking (and probably enough time to complete Fable 2.)  That will make a real difference around this place.  There is additional stuff that will need to be unpacked too since dad is going to bring a large carload with him out to Frankfort that Oreo and I will then haul down to Peekskill and attempt to put away before Dominica and Liesl arrive.

Work was very slow today; it was great.  I spent a lot of the day hanging out in the living room with Dominica, Liesl and Oreo.  I popped in Fable 2 and completed it!  Today was really my final chance to have any hope of completing Fable 2 before we leave for a week and being so close to the end I didn’t want to leave it.  Dominica seemed to enjoy watching the story unfold as it got towards the end of the game.

Altogether it took me approximately 38 hours of gameplay to “finish” Fable 2.  In a game like this there is no clear ending but I decided my ending happened when the main plot line finished, all “completable” quests were finished (including those that cannot be finished under after the main quest is done and those that only appear after the main quest is done), achieved mayor and king status and completed the search for all of the gargoyles.

I still have some ongoing things that I could do if I was really bored but nothing that will add anything to my game experience except, perhaps, to track down every last silver key in the game.  There are fifty and I completed the game with only forty of them which means that there is one final awesome treasure that I did not get.  But it is just a treasure to get for the sake of being very complete.  There are several achievements for which I could spend time pursuing as well but that does not interest me very much.  I played the real meat of the game and was extremely thorough in doing that.

I am excited that there is a downloadable “expansion pack” for Fable 2, called Knothole Island, that was supposed to release today (I finished right on time) but has been pushed back until January to give the team time to complete it.  That expansion is supposed to add one new region to the game (the main game has thirteen) and three additional quests which, I expect, will add four to five hours of gameplay but that is totally a guess.  It might be much more or less.  I really hope that there is something similar to the gargoyles included.  Both Dominica and I had a great time hunting down all of the gargoyles.

I wrapped up the game in the middle of the afternoon.  We got to relax for a little while.  There is a lot of stuff that needed to be done today, though, including some last minute Christmas shopping online (we are now all done), packing for tomorrow, laundry, dishes, etc.  We seem to be in pretty good shape for tomorrow.

After Dominica, Oreo and Liesl went to bed around one thirty I went down to the basement and did some work that really can only be completed when I am the only person awake.  Both Liesl and Oreo need my attention so often that there is no way to get anything extra completed (including getting SGL updated.)  So I worked until a quarter after four in the morning.  I got some good work done, though, and I feel good about the way that I spent the time.  I am working very hard to remain productive while still spending tons of time with Liesl and trying not to neglect Oreo and keeping Dominica company upstairs.  Having a laptop in the living room all of the time is really helping.  We use that constantly all day long.

Savanna at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge 2007 from Scott Miller on Vimeo.

I finally got Dominica and my first video from our trip to Walt Disney World in 2007 posted up no Vimeo.  I have been meaning to get this done for forever and just have not gotten around to it.  Now that there will be baby videos coming soon it is rather important that I eliminate any potential video processing backlog and get things completed.

This video was shot using our Canon Elura 60 camcorder from the balcony of our hotel room at the Animal Kingdom Lodge where we stayed for a weekend early last year.  If you have a good video player on your computer such as VLC you can download the original 640×480 video in h.264 (m4v) also from Vimeo.  Original h.264 video of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge.  This version should play beautifully on AppleTV as well and is available via the vlog feed for our subscribers.

Dominica, Liesl and Oreo slept in until around ten.  I was in the living room playing some Fable 2 on the XBOX 360 while I had some quiet time to myself.  Today is my relaxing day for the week and I am taking advantage of it.

I spent the bulk of the day playing Fable 2.  What an awesome game.  I am so glad that Dominica decided that we needed to get that as our one game for the XBOX 360 for “Christmas” as a gift to each other.  I am over halfway through the game now playing as the boy and going for “good and pure”.  Dominica is only about an hour or so into the game and is playing as the girl and has decided to go for “evil and corrupt” so that she can get as different of a storyline as possible from mine as she has watched so much of the game as I have played it.

Dominica spent most of the day shopping and surfing the web from the laptop that we have set up in the living room.  Christmas is always a busy shopping time.  We are so thankful that we live in an era when Christmas shopping is an online affair.  There is no way that we could handle going out to the stores looking for things.  We would go crazy.  It would have to be me doing it all as Dominica can’t go out shopping.  We learned that lesson from the grocery store a few days ago, and the grocery store doesn’t have crazy Christmas crowds.

We were both very thankful that today got to be a “do nothing” day for the most part.  Liesl was a little fussy today but not horribly, and today we began switching her over to cloth diapers.  Cloth diapers are cheaper, better for the environment and better for preventing diaper rash and/or contact dermatitis – which I had as a child.  Liesl has a little bit of diaper rash at this point and so Dominica felt that it was the best time to start switching her over before it got any worse.

We did several loads of laundry and two loads of dishes today plus hand cleaning.  We generate so much stuff that needs to be cleaned every day around here I just can’t believe it.  And several loads of garbage too.

This afternoon Oreo started acting strangely.  We first noticed that something was wrong when he went down to the basement all by himself to get away from us.  He wasn’t acting funny beyond that so we didn’t think much of it.  As the day wore on, though, he started spending more time away from is in the basement and started acting more sluggish and sickly.

I took Oreo out for a walk and he didn’t even make it past the front walk before he was sick twice.  Hopefully this is nothing more than a stomach ache.  I brought him back inside and offered him dinner or a bone and he wanted neither.  I went down to the basement (which is when I managed to get the videos uploaded to Vimeo) and spent a few hours with him while he just lay on his pillow feeling sick.

Later in the evening I forced him to go on a little walk just to make sure that “everything was working” since he hadn’t been eating.  Everything was working (you can work out the details there for yourself) and as soon as he was done I scooped him up and ran him back to the house because it is so cold outside and he is so weak.  So at least we believe that there is no blockage and it appears that he just doesn’t feel well like he has a doggy flu.  He went to bed as usual and seemed to be about the same so we will watch him through the night and judge how he is doing in the morning.

We are not aware of him having eaten anything strange in the last twenty four hours.  He was very happy, alert and perky when I took him on his long morning walk around the top of the hill.  He seemed to be in better than usual spirits, in fact.  He was extremely energetic and after his walk demanded his breakfast and then made me play fetch with him for half an hour or more.  It was surprising how healthy he seemed.  I know that he was still feeling okay at two thirty when Dominica and I had our lunch because he cleaned our dishes in the kitchen (we had mac and cheese for lunch.)

The only possibility for him getting into something that he should not have, as I think about it, was on our morning walk he was spending some time sniffing under a boulder (we have a lot of those here) and with his nose burried in some leaves it is possible that he ate something in there of which I was not aware.  I did not think that he did but looking back it is theoretically possible.

We will just have to wait and see tomorrow.  We were all off to bed around midnight.

The job today for Dominica’s dad and I is to get out to Buy Buy Baby and get the swing replaced that doesn’t work.  The one that we have plays music and we can hear the motor running but it doesn’t make the swing swing at all.  Luckily the shipping label is still on the box so we shouldn’t have any problem returning it.

We left to go to Buy Buy Baby around noonish, just after having eaten lunch, and made it all of the way to the Taconic Parkway before discovering that the car adapter for the GPS unit was smashed and useless.  So the GPS ran out of juice and we had no idea how to get down to where we needed to go in Scarsdale.  So we turned around and just made a trip to the Crompond, NY post office.

The Crompond post office was actually a great find.  It is closer to us than the Peekskill post office and loads more convenient.  It is a little country post office with just a single person working.  Very handy for normal things.  We stopped in there and sent off two boxes of stuff.  One box of video games heading to Texas for our nieces and one box of camera supplies to Dominica’s cousin.  This was my Nikon 5005 SLR that I used to take a thousand or two images (mostly slide and monochrome print) over the years.  I bought the camera around the time that I was seventeen and it was the camera that I used when I was doing sports and covers for the newspaper.  It is sad to see it leave but I am happy that someone will get some use out of it.  I have been on all digital for years now and know that I will never use a film camera again.  If we were to keep it it would just be a waste.

At home we gathered directions to Buy Buy Baby in Scarsdale from Google Maps and headed out again at around two in the afternoon.  It took almost an hour to get there but the trip is incredibly simple and I could do it again without any directions without any problem.

The exchange at Buy Buy Baby was incredibly simple.  It was just a fast exchange and we were in and out of the store in under five minutes.  I have never been in a Buy Buy Baby before but it is really nice.  It is the baby store chain owned and operated by Bed, Bath and Beyond and it is laid out just like a BB&B.

It was four when we got back to Peekskill.  Then we set up the papasan swing and tried it out.  Liesl loves it.  She also really likes nature sounds, which it makes.  We have been having her sleep with our Timex clock radio with nature sounds running all of the time.

This evening we had a fire in the fireplace.  Liesl’s first fire!  She will likely be having a lot of these over the years much as I did growing up.  My parents had a fireplace in the living room of the old farm house and then a fireplace in the living room of the new house that they built on the farm.  Then, when I was off at college, dad installed the fireplace from the old farmhouse into the basement of the new house.

We put on Transformers which just arrived from Amazon on BluRay.  It is our second BluRay movie.  It was cute.  Nothing amazing but a decent movie.  Dominica has seen it before.  This was my first time seeing it.  It is a very popular title first on HD-DVD and then on BluRay once HD-DVD died out.

Dominica went to bed really early around nine and her parents went to bed around ten.  Liesl was very happy in her new swing so I stayed up with her to let Dominica get as much sleep as possible.  She was so happy in the swing that I ended up staying up until three thirty in the morning letting her sleep!

I spent my quiet baby time in the living room next to Liesl playing Fable 2 on the XBOX 360.  Getting that amount of time to play it solid allowed me to make some significant advances in the game.  This is the most that I have gotten to play the game yet.  So far I really like it.

Fable 2 is a fantasy action console role playing game (Fantasy JRPG) with many aspects brought in from adventure gaming.  The graphics on the 360 are astounding.  Possibly the best of this style that I have yet seen on a console.  Quite impressive.

For my first impression, I manage to play Fable 2 for approximately two hours and made it through the “tutorial” section of the game.  The game does a great job of making the introduction to the game simple and fun and introduces new control concepts in an almost transparent manner so that the game begins immediately and goes straight into the story with the player able to begin taking part right away.

In Fable 2 you choose to play either Sparrow or Rose, who are brother and sister.  Unlike many RPGs, you do not spend a lot of time customizing your character at the beginning of the game.  You simply choose to play the boy or the girl and from there your character is modified by the decisions that you make within the game.  I like this approach as it lends itself to better story telling and makes the growth of your character more natural.

Fable 2 is an action RPG but the action is handled in a very fun, smooth way that I think will appeal to a lot of players.  I really appreciate the ease of having your melee weapon readied under the X button, ranged weapon under the Y and a magic attack under B.  This method is very quick to learn, easy to use under pressure and not so complicated as to make the game not fun for those of us who tend to prefer our RPG’s without an action element while still providing a lot of fun for those who do.  I really like the blend.

Overall, my first two hours with Fable 2 were completely enjoyable.  It is not often that I am this thrilled with a video game the first time that I have played it.  I am very excited to spend some time just exploring the game world, Albion.  The Fable series is known for having a short main plot with extensive potential side quests, missions and projects.  I’m sure that in Fable 2 I will be looking for opportunities to spend as much time in the game world as possible.

One feature that I really appreciate is the integrated “cut scene” system.  I have not yet seen a game using this particular innovation and it is a great way of handling traditional cut scenes.  The way that it works is that the scenes themselves are built into the game world and rendered just like the regular game.  When you approach an area with a “cut scene” you get a little symbol telling you that a “cut scene” is available.  You can choose to watch the scene with the use of one of the left buttons.  As long as you hold the button the camera zooms in on the action in which you should be interested.  As soon as you no longer want to watch simply release the button and the action continues from your normal perspective.  It works beautifully.

In many ways, Fable 2 appears to play a lot like a more traditional adventure game with a strong, integrated plot.  Character development, from a skills and spells perspective, is much less central to the game than in a more traditional RPG.  From my initial perspective, the game seems a lot more focused on real, engaging gameplay than on game mechanics that bog down so many otherwise entertaining titles.  Fable 2 has enough story line and little enough interruption that my wife, Dominica, even enjoys just watching me play.

The voice acting is quite good as well.  Much of the beginning of the game has constant narration which really provides the feeling that you are playing a movie.  The mix of narration, voice acting and the integrated cut scenes really pulls you into the game.

My first impression is that this is an extremely interesting RPG title for the XBOX 360 and has justified the intense anticipation which it has garnered recently.  If you are looking for an innovative and enjoyable RPG on the console platform definitely check out Fable 2.  I hope to review it again when I have completed the game.

Both Dominica and I decided to get up at eight thirty.  We had set no alarm so that we could just sleep in and relax.  That felt great.  Oreo was quite happy as well. He really need some extra sleep time to give his leg time to heal.  He slept almost all day yesterday and did not get up all night long last night.

I am working this morning but it is a light morning.  No projects or anything, just the basic support stuff as needed until lunchtime.  Nice relaxing day.

Dominica went out shopping at Kohl’s for their Veteran’s Day sale to get stuff for the house like towels.  There are a lot of little things that we need.  We’ve never owned a house with two furnished bedrooms before and have never had three whole bathrooms.

I actually worked a moderatly long day today putting in about six hours of time sitting at my desk.  Not a rough day by any means.  But having a “day off” is an awfully relative term for me.  It doesn’t mean what it means for most people.

Around three this afternoon I stopped working, after Dominica was back, and we set off to go to Jefferson Valley in Yorktown Heights for the first time to do some shopping out there in the big shopping center.  Our destination today is Babies ‘R’ Us to get some of our last minute and highly critical baby furniture.

We placed our order for the crib and the glider (rocking chair that won’t cut off a finger or puppy paw) and they should be in the store in under two weeks. Most likely not before the little one arrives but very soon thereafter.  We can easily make due for that long without.  The crib is a large and very nice black distressed bass wood (Solid veneer!  Almost like real wood!  Am I the only person who remembers furniture made from actual wood?) and really matches the hall table turned changing table and the basement television stand and entertainment buffet.  It fits our theme well.

The glider is very comfy.  It is a microfiber light cream colour upholstery on an ebony (solid veneer, I suspect) frame.  We are going to be putting that into our bedroom in the north west corner for rocking the baby and reading.  It will also be a decent place from which to watch television in our bedroom once we have a monitor installed up there which we hope to have before the end of the year.

We picked up a number of small, incidental items while we were there as well.  Dominica got the Toys ‘R’ Us store credit card which gave us 10% off of everything (almost $90 in savings) plus allowed us to defer our payment for six months!  That’s awesome.  We were not expecting that.

We decided to take advantage of the savings and deferment and went ahead and picked up our Christmas present to each other, for which we had already budgeted, which was a 60GB XBOX 360.  They did not have a very large game selection at Toys ‘R’ Us but they did have Fable 2 which Dominica decided that she really wanted so we went ahead and picked that up on the discount.  The system itself game with Lego Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda games.  Dominica is very excited about Indiana Jones whcih is very funny as she would never have bought the game herself.

We already own Shenmue 2 for the original XBOX (which will play on the 360) and Enchanted Arms for the 360 that we bought when we thought that we would have access to a 360 at Eleven80 along with a pink controller that I got for Dominica last Christmas when we were sure that we were getting an XBOX 360 very, very soon and a memory card (also from Eleven80.)  So on our first day we own far more for the 360 than we do for the PS3. Overall, we are expecting the 360 to be a much more serious gaming platform than the PS3 which is much more of a media platform.  The PS3 does BluRay but the 360 regularly gets 1080p out of its games.  We haven’t seen that yet on the PS3.

On the way home we stopped at Dunkin Donuts for pumpkin spice coffee and decided to stop into Villarinas, a gourmet deli and pasta shop next door to DD, to see what they offered.  The big item is fresh, homemade pasta.  Awesome, can’t buy that just anywhere.  So we picked up some pumpkin ravioli and their own roasted red pepper cream sauce and headed for home.

I hooked up the 360 and Dominica made dinner – pumpkin ravioli in roasted red pepper cream sauce.  Dinner was amazing.  The takeout fresh pasta was just as good as the best pasta that you get in a very expensive restaurant at about the same price as dinner at McDonald’s.  This is going to be one of the serious perks of living in Peekskill.

After we ate dinner, Dominica eagerly sat down at the XBOX 360 and fired up Lego Indiana Jones.  She had acted like she might be casually interested in the game but now that we have it and she can actually play it it turns out that she is really excited about it.  So I set to work walking Oreo and continuing to unpack.

I did some work in the basement and some cleaning for about an hour while Dominica played her new game.  She really liked it.  Then it was time for our first venture into our new attic.  I was up there for a minute during the house inspection but now it is empty and it is time to begin filling it.

The attic trip went pretty well.  I hauled myself up to the rafters and Dominica handed up tons of boxes (empty compressed packing boxes as well as empty boxes from stuff for which we want to keep the boxes) as well as some furniture bits that we do not anticipate needing to have around the new house.  We have been staging stuff to be placed into the attic for two weeks so we had quite a bit ready to go.  It was a very productive trip and it cleared up a bunch of space in the nursery so that Dominica can work in there again.

I also carried all of the large, plastic “under the bed” containers up from the dining room to the bedroom tonight.  Those were taking up a large amount of space in the main living area.  The plan is to have Dominica put as many clothes into them that we need only infrequently and then to store them under the bed, again, as we did in Newark.  It is a really useful use of the space under the queen bed that we have.

Once we got as much work done as we could reasonably do this evening, around ten o’clock, I decided that I was going to get to do something fun before going to bed.  So I fired up the 360 and played almost two hours of Fable 2 – which was awesome.  That is a great game.  Dominica and Oreo snuggled up on the loveseat and watched me play.

I played until almost midnight.  Then it was definitely time for bed.  Have to be up at six tomorrow to get down to Wall Street.