Please note that many of these games are really good games, and pacing issues aren’t indicative of them being bad by any stretch. With that out of the way, let’s begin.

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain’s tale of a turbulent development cycle is well known at this point, which ultimately resulted in a breakup between series creator Kojima and developer Konami. And while the game is still excellent in so many ways – cracks do rear their head, especially in the pacing department. The game starts off really strong with missions slowly building in complexity as you track down Skull Face, but after a certain point in the game – players are subjected to repeated missions that increase the difficulty and put additional conditions for completion. This particular stretch feels especially jarring, considering how varied levels previous games featured. To add to that, completing these missions is absolutely vital to achieving the game’s ending.

Two Worlds

The timing of Two Worlds’ release, coming up after The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, might seem like it created lots of unfair expectations. Unfortunately, this wasn’t helped by developer Zuxxez proclaiming it to be “a more focused, grittier experience” than Oblivion with “much more complex” magic, a “more complex society” and more depth to the horse riding. The final result was a mess with graphical issues, a cliched story wrought with awful voice-acting, repetitive combat and bugs galore. Some of the environments looked nice and the world was appropriately large. But that “deep” horse riding was a nightmare to control, souring the experience all the more. Overall, Two Worlds is looked back upon as a meme and an albatross that it’s successor had to bear.

Microsoft has announced the last few titles coming to Xbox Game Pass for April. It kicks off with MLB The Show 21, available now for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and the cloud. On April 22nd, co-op title Phogs! comes to PC subscribers. Co-op dinosaur shooter Second Extinction is out on April 28th for console, PC and the cloud, albeit as part of Xbox Game Preview.

The title is still in early access so Game Pass provides a nice way to see if it’s up your alley. Next up is Destroy All Humans! on April 29th, launching for consoles, PC and the cloud. As a remake of the original, it sees Crypto-137 harvesting humans and taking down armies with all kinds of alien weapons and abilities.

Fable 3 and Fable Anniversary will be available to play via the cloud on April 30th. On the same day, several titles will be leaving Xbox Game Pass. The titles and their platforms in question are:

• Endless Legend (PC)
• For the King (Cloud, Console and PC)
• Fractured Minds (Cloud and Console)
• Levelhead (Cloud, Console and PC)
• Moving Out (Cloud, Console and PC)
• Thumper (PC)

Do note that there will be spoilers ahead for every game we speak about, so if we begin talking about a game you don’t want spoiled, skip ahead to the next entry.

METAL GEAR SOLID 2

We all love a good conspiracy theory, and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty threw the mother of conspiracy theories at us when it revealed to us the true nature of the Illuminati-like Patriots. What was even more of a gut-punch, though, was the realization that Raiden had inadvertently been functioning like a pawn for them all along, with the reveal that the entire Big Shell Incident was orchestrated by the Patriots just as a means to facilitate the S3 Plan and mould Raiden into their very own Solid Snake replica.

Kill Your Friends – Far Cry 3

Forget for a second that Far Cry 3 had an utterly idiotic storyline with an unlikeable protagonist. By the end of the game, Jason Brody is given a simple choice – kill his friends and ally with Citra, leader of the Rakyat, or release them. Now keep in mind at this point that Jason’s friends have only really needed rescuing from all kinds of insane enemies and he’s the one de-sensitized by all the drugs and killing. By the end, if Jason decides to kill his friends, Citra ends up killing him for some Rakyat glory or something like that.

Bomb-Master Cannon – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Upon arriving at Windfall Island’s Bomb Shop, you’ll be shocked to learn just what kind of prices are on offer. For 10 bombs, you need to pay a whopping 10,000 rupees. Sure he’s the last bomb-maker left but that’s enough to crowd-fund ten of Ganon’s deaths. Thankfully, once Tetra and her crew give him the ol’ rundown, Bomb-Master Cannon sees fit to lower his prices.

Bloater – The Last of Us

The final stage in evolution for a victim of the Cordyceps virus, the Bloater’s immense size is a testament to its damage resistance. As such, the sheer thickness of the fungus is pretty disgusting when you look at it. The one recognizable quality of humanity remaining are the teeth and they look especially awful, jutting out amid all the fungi.

Fable 3 wasn’t exactly well received by players and sever critics (us NOT included), and Peter Molyneux, creator of the Fable series, feels the instalment needed more time, and regards it as a personal failure of his.

“I take this as a personal failure,” he told Eurogamer. “And it is a personal failure. Not being persuasive enough that Fable 3 needed more time. That’s purely and utterly my fault. It’s me not being clear enough about it.

“The subject matter of Fable 3 was really good. Becoming a king was a good centre point for a game. It’s a shame we didn’t find more time.”

“As a creative director you always have to be clear about why you need time,” he continued. “Any publisher in my experience over the years, they don’t want to give you more time. Of course they don’t, because it means more money. But they equally don’t want you to make a mistake with the product.

“It’s very difficult for publishers to actually appreciate why more time is needed and what the business case for more time is. That’s the responsibility of the director who’s in charge of that developer. That’s me – to explain that and make that clear.”

He then went on to talk about Fable 2: “I loved the dog in Fable 2. That was a moment where we realised gaming experiences aren’t just about the weapon you’ve got, that you can give something else to players.

It was a great journey to implement that feature. The emotional link people had with their dog – I’ve still got letters from people who said, I love my dog and when it dies these terrible things happen. That’s how you measure success.”

It’s a faithful port of the original, warts and all

The big hurdle most games face in the transition from console to computer is the issue of controls. Joypads and mouse and keyboard inputs don’t seem to have much in common these days. Considering the simplicity of Fable 3’s control scheme on 360, the PC controls should be considered a success; more or less. Though interactions with characters and objects are handled easily enough with the number keys (easier than it sounds, I promise), the controls become more complex than the game’s Xbox cousin the moment you engage in combat. The 360 version of the game was able to satisfyingly map your melee, ranged and magic attacks to three separate face buttons, allowing you to quickly mix up your attacks on the fly. The PC version gets around the lack of said face buttons by forcing you to switch into different attack modes with the number keys or mouse scroll wheel. Whilst it does work, you often find yourself unable to manage these different combat modes effectively when in the heat of battle. It generally means you’ll stick to one attack method for each battle. It isn’t a game breaker by any means, as the rest of the controls feel very comfortable, but it certainly doesn’t match up to Fable 3’s native version on the Xbox 360. On the plus side, the game does offer support for an Xbox 360 controller if you have the means of plugging it into your PC, making my mouse and keyboard control complaints moot if you have this luxury.

The other key area that often takes a hit in the porting process is the game’s graphics and subsequent frame rate. Thankfully, the PC port of Fable 3 passes these tests with flying colours. The port is smooth, very smooth even, and offers a stutter free experience, provided you meet the hardware requirements of course. Should your machine go above and beyond the call of duty, you’ll find that the game’s visuals actually surpass those of its Xbox counterpart quite impressively. Smoother textures and a much further draw distance are just some of the treats awaiting your journey through Fable 3 on PC. One other point to note is that the colour palette seems more mellow on PC, with a more emphasised motion blur effect also gracing the port. Whether this is good or bad will depend on your preference, but it’s worth keeping in mind regardless.

It’s a shame that Fable 3’s combat doesn’t completely gel with the good old mouse and keyboard

The other potential hit the game takes in its transition to PC is in the multiplayer department. The co-op action of Fable 3 makes a largely translucent appearance in the PC port. You can still adventure along with your buddies and engage in marriages and business partnerships as well, if that’s how you want to play it. You can only do this online though. The local co-op action seems to have been lost in translation, a true shame to be sure. Understandably, it would be hard to deal out two sets of controls on a single mouse and keyboard, but there are enough people out there with USB controllers to make local co-op worth including regardless. It’s shame then that this opportunity has been missed.

Aside from the mild changes in the port’s transition, the game remains unchanged. This is a double edged sword however. The plot remains as engagingly simple as ever, though the moral complexity is occasionally a little lacking or too overt for my liking. Likewise the combat has a lot to offer and is well complemented by the game’s sleek menu-less inventory system, though the lack of weapon variety may annoy some more classic RPG fans.

The superior draw distance and textures on PC bring the world of Fable to life

Fable 3 on PC offers the same enjoyable action RPG experience that console owners were treated to last year. Control issues prevent the PC version from eclipsing its Xbox counterpart, but PC owners are in for a nice visual treat. If you only game with computers, then rest assured that your Fable 3 experience will not be marred by a dodgy port job. That said, those with a choice of nightmares will have to make the judgement call of whether they want better graphics or controls. But at least we now have the choice.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Lionhead has released a Fable III developer diary in which the studio chats about the various changes made in order for it to work on PC, which included a rewrite of the control system, the addition of 3D support and more.

The PC version of Fable 3 is set to launch on May 17th.

Thanks to Bigdownload.