I found out last night that my boss is traveling to Los Angeles today.  So I am covering a little more than I had been planning on this morning.  He is working from there so I am only covering extra while he is traveling, but it is a very busy morning.

I did everything that I could this morning to streamline the system upgrade process.  It is a rather manual process with a lot of steps, a lot of checks and a lot that can go wrong coupled with several reboots which, of course, cause the process to take forever as you wait for the machines to cycle through over and over again.

Dominica spent the morning cleaning after Liesl went down for a nap around a quarter after ten.  She got a ton of cleaning done in the upstairs.  The basement really cannot be helped much, though.

Susan arrived at half past noon.  She had been in the complex for a while but had a really hard time finding our house as the street is mismarked and the three people in the complex to whom she spoke had never heard of our road.  So she just drove around for a while looking for us.

We visited for a little while and she got to meet Liesl who was just waking up from a nice, long nap.  Then the five of us drove out to Grandma’s on Crompond for lunch.  I am still getting the bagel and lox platter almost every time that we go there.  I love it.  And, of course, we all got pie for dessert.  You are not allowed to eat at Grandma’s without getting pie.

Susan left Peekskill shortly after we returned from lunch.  Surprisingly it was around four thirty already by that point.  My how the day flew by!

I watched Liesl and Oreo while dad and Dominica went out to Home Depot to do shopping for the stuff that we need to do the painting tomorrow.  They picked up paint and paint supplies and a new, high-velocity fan to use in the living room.  Our living room gets almost no airflow and it gets very warm in there even when the house is below seventy degrees.  It is a real problem that the few areas of the house that we constantly use – the master bedroom and the living room – are always very, very warm and the parts that we seldom use – bathrooms, the kitchen, etc. – are really cold.  So the air conditioning works really hard just to keep the house livable even when it should not have to do so at all.

This evening we worked on running the CAT6 cabling from the wiring closet, which is located under our stairs, into the living room so that we can hook up our entertainment systems, the Sony PS3 and XBOX 360, directly to Gigabit Ethernet rather than having the PS3 connect over very slow 802.11b wireless and the XBOX be left with no connection at all as it is wired only.  Our original plan was to run this cable through the basement and drill through the floor to run it upstairs but after some research that dad did on the position of the walls we decided that it was far simpler and better, and required no modifications, to snake it directly from the cabling closet through existing holes in the floor and come out at the top of the stairs.  Doing it this way also cuts about eighteen feet of cable length off of the run making it more reliable and less costly as CAT6 cable is definitely not cheap.

Our original plan, back in April, was to run four or five long CAT6 runs up to the living room, but after much thought and discussion we realized how much better it would be to move the Apple AirPort Extreme wireless access point from the basement to the living room giving us better WiFi on the upper levels and out on the deck as well as providing three GigE ports in the living room directly next to the PS3 and XBOX 360.  It gives us one or two fewer physical connections that we would have had with the original plan but it saves money and a lot of effort and provides us with greatly improved wireless coverage.  It also moves more equipment out of the wiring closet which has no ventilation.  Right now the closet door is left open to allow it to cool but that is far from ideal.  Once the wireless is out, which generates more than its fair share of heat, the next big item to leave is the Netgear SC101 SAN device that we plan to have ready for dad to take with him this weekend.  That will leave nothing but the cable modem (bridge), firewall and switch in the wiring closet along with the associated battery unit – none of which generate very much heat at all.  So once we are down to just those we should be able to close the door there making the whole situation far less intrusive.

Running the cable proved to be really easy.  The hard part, that I was really dreading, was finishing the cable by putting the RJ45 ends onto it as we are building our own cables so that we can control the length and run them through the walls.  Dominica has always been good at building cables and got right to work on this.  She managed to get the cable right the first time.  We plugged it in and it just worked!  Awesome.

We moved the Apple AirPort Extreme up to the living room and plugged it in.  We got a GigE connection straight away.  Now the real tests – to see what will happen when we plug in the PS3 and the XBOX 360.

First we tried the PS3.  It connected and got its GigE connection via the wired interface.  We connected to MediaTomb and tried watching some movies.  It was awesome.  Our UPnP connected movies started instantly – none of the wait time that we had when using the wireless.  No buffering needed. Even really high bitrate media started instantly and played perfectly.  Movies looked awesome.  The movie list loaded instantly.  This is going to be awesome.  We will be watching everything this way for sure from now on.  People are going to love this.

We tried watching some PlayOn media from NetFlix and it did appear to work just slightly better than before but still has the same problems that it always did.  We are pretty sure that those problems are actually with the PS3 itself and not with PlayOn or NetFlix but it has been hard to tell.

After verifying that the PS3 would work wonderfully with the new setup we switched to the XBOX 360.  I ran the system updates as the box has not been turned on in quite some time.  We tested the PlayOn connection, which worked instantly, and discovered that almost all of the problems that we have been having with watching things on the PS3 were the PS3 and not the fault of PlayOn or NetFlix.  Suddenly everything just works!  We are very excited.  The unfortunate thing is that our MediaTomb server does not support the proprietary format of the XBOX 360 for streaming so we cannot use it for that yet.  So the PS3 will continue to handle our “in house” media and the XBOX 360 will handle the PlayOn stuff from NetFlix, Hulu, CBS and Amazon VOD.

We watched several episodes of The Wizards of Waverly Place because Dominica and I have had to have been skipping episodes all over the place when they fail to play on the PS3.  Dad went to bed around ten.  Dominica stayed up until just before midnight.  I stayed up later and watched the first episode of Sonny with a Chance which Dominica has seen along with most of the first season watching it without me.  Now that it works on the 360 I can watch it comfortably on the big screen.

I took the time to download the latest expansion pack to Fable II while I was up and using the 360.  Now that is ready for me to play the moment that I have some spare time.  It is a short expansion, I am told.  I am still very excited to get back into the world of Fable II – that is still one of my favourite games ever.

I did some hunting around and discovered that The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition was not available for download to the XBOX 360.  Secret is the original title in the Monkey Island series that released from Lucas Arts in 1990.  It is almost twenty years old this year and Lucas Arts just made a complete remake of the game as a downloadable title for the 360.  What is really cool is that they completely updated the game including new music and voice acting using the same cast that they used for the fourth title in the series, Escape from Monkey Island, which we have for Windows as well as for the PlayStation 2.  Included with the remake is a faithful port of the original as well and by hitting the select button you can switch back and forth between the original and the remake. Very cool idea indeed.  So I downloaded Secret and played a few minutes of it to check it out.  I am quite excited to get to go back and play the original now.  It has been a very long time since I have seen it.

Earlier today while I had some time I also downloaded some titles for the Wii.  There was a big Wii update since the last time that we had it turned on and now you can run games directly from the SD card which is a big improvement and a rather obvious one that I cannot believe that they did not figure out before.  Nintendo has released The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for the Wii retro console which was a really good idea, I think.  I never played the original on the N64 even though I had bought it when it released and was interested in playing it now so was glad to see if on the Wii.  Many serious players claim that Majora’s Mask is the best title, although least appreciated, in the Zelda series so I need to try it out.

I also downloaded Tales of Monkey Island: Episode One which just released for the Wii.  Tales is the fifth installment in the Monkey Island series and the first to release in a very, very long time.  Very exciting indeed.  Tales is also the first completely three dimensional title in the series.  The others were pre-rendered two dimensional with a three dimensional perspective to make it feel 3D.  Tales is an original for the WiiWare platform.  I hope to get to play it very soon.  Dominica will be really excited about this one as well.

Having the living room hard wired to the basement is really going to change the way that we use our house.  This is a major breakthrough for us.  It will affect our television viewing, video game playing, music listening, etc.  This is a change that will impact our lives on a daily basis.  Now what we can see that we want is to get wires run to the upstairs bedrooms.  That, of course, will not be nearly as easy as wiring the living room.  I have no idea how we will manage to pull that off if we even can.  It would be great to get a wire up to our bedroom so that, eventually, we could have a television up there with a PS3 or something to watch the UPnP content on the network.  That would make the media server that much more valuable.

I originally started this article with the intent of installing ps3mediaserver onto my OpenFiler installation but, due to a ridiculous lack of support for dependencies, ps3mediaserver is not a reasonable possibility for this platform.  As it turns out, though, MediaTomb is actually a better, lower resource usage, simpler option that does exactly what I want and does not require careful tuning to force to behave logically.

Installing MediaTomb onto a working OpenFiler system is actually extremely easy as MediaTomb is packaged with all dependencies included in the option binary package for Linux 32bit.  Simply download the i386 static binarys from the MediaTomb Static Binaries Download page.

You can then just unpack the download tarball to the /opt directory using “tar -xzvf” and you have a working system already!  It is actually that simple.  One of the great things about MediaTomb is that it does not attempt to transcode your media files lowering the quality and eating CPU cycles.  It is simply a UPNP / DLNA server.  If you are like me all of your media has been carefully transcoded ahead of time for maximum quality versus storage.  I certainly don’t want low quality, real-time transcoding degrading my video experience.  Many people do but if you are running a full storage server like OpenFiler you probably do not want it busy transcoding media files every time that they are served out.

You can start MediaTomb from the command line simply using the command:

nohup /opt/mediatomb/mediatomb.sh &

And away you go.  In my case I renamed the MediaTomb directory to /opt/mediatomb to make it easier to use.  When you fire it up you will get an on-screen message telling you where the web management interface to the software will be.  You can simply go to the web page to add your media directories to MediaTomb so that it can scan them and make them available via UPNP.

Caveat: I have noticed that MediaTomb tends to crash for me about once every twenty-four hours.  Not a major issue, restarting is quick and easy.  I am still investigating this and hope to have an answer soon but it is not a major issue.

Why not ps3mediaserver?

In order to make ps3mediaserver work you need to manual fulfill a large number of dependencies.  Ps3mediaserver comes as a tarball, not as a system package like RPM, DEB, Conary, etc. and so all dependencies are yours to discover and fulfill.  On Red Hat, Ubuntu or Suse systems these dependencies are often fulfilled by default and can be ignored.  On rPath, however, which is a dedicated appliance, server OS not only are they not filled by default but the necessary packages are not even available for the platform!

You will need to install Java for starters.  This will allow ps3mediaserver to run and serve out audio files.  If this is all you want then you can go down this route.  But once you start ps3mediaserver you will discover that it has no normal administrative interface and is designed to only work with an X GUI.  Of course, no one has X installed by default on rPath Linux – this is a server not a desktop.  This is an extremely silly requirement for ps3mediaserver and really shows that they do not intend this to be used in a serious installation like what we are doing here.  This is a desktop solution like iTunes.  Fine for most people but we are on a different scale here.

So to configure your new ps3mediaserver you will need to install Xterm and get remote X to your server.  If you are working from Windows then you will need an X server like Mocha to handle this.  You can install all of the necessary packages for this using “conary update xterm” but this is just the beginning of your problems.

You can set ps3mediaserver to not transcode but on Linux, without the transcoding libraries installed, it won’t work.  It will attempt to transcode regardless of the settings.  You can verify this by checking the media type from your PS3 or other video player.  For me my pristine, low bandwidth h.264 MP4 files were being displayed as being MPEG2.  This does not happen with ps3mediaserver on Windows with the statically compiled binaries.  Rather inconsiderate for the ps3mediaserver project to compile such for other platforms but to cripple the Linux version without so much as a list of dependencies that we need to fulfill.

You will need ffmpeg and mencode for starters.  Good luck.  Neither are available for the rPath platform and they do not compile using the included compilation environment.  You will, of course, need to install an entire compilation environment just to get started with these.  More software not exactly appropriate on a server.  You can remove it once you are done but then how do you update your system?

The bottom line is that you should avoid ps3mediaserver on the rPath platform and stick with MediaTomb.  The ps3mediaserver project just is not ready for prime time from what I have seen.  They are okay on carefully controlled environments but they are not yet prepared to really run on a “production” media server.  They have some great potential to be sure.  I’ve run their project on Windows and it is very nice.  Over the top complicated but nice.  However getting it to run for the highest possible quality, like MediaTomb does as its only real feature, requires a lot of work and a lot of extra libraries and bloat for a relatively simple system.

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.

• Blue Dragon
• Enchanted Arms
• Fable II (Fable 2)
• Grand Theft Auto 4
• Lego Indiana Jones
• Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
• Lost Odyssey
• Kung Fu Panda

Additional Downloadable Content:

• Fable II: Knothole Island
• Fable II: See the Future

XBOX Live Arcade Titles:

• Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

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.