On Saturday I picked up a new XBox, primarily to play on XBox Live, since my old one can do so no longer. I also picked up Fable, which is a fantasy RPG which sees you start out as a young boy who survives the destruction of his village and is brought into the Hero’s Guild to be trained to become a Hero. Once trained, you can take on various quests, become well known, and depending on your actions, be loved, hated, or even ridiculed. The game looks great, and the gameplay is very intuitive. So far, I’ve managed to complete the training part of the game without much difficulty, and have graduated as a Hero. Apparently my first quest is to deal with a nasty wasp problem at a picnic area 🙂
I also had a session on Saturday night playing Halo 2 on XBox Live. This was my third online session, and I hadn’t played online since November. Needless to say, I sucked big time 🙂 After a little while playing in the Rumble Training matchmaking list, I was managing to get a few kills in, and ending up somewhere in the middle of the end-game stats, so I thought I’d try a few ranked games.
I first had a go at the Head to Head matchmaking list, where it’s one-on-one Slayer. The map was Warlock, my opponent knew it like the back of their hand, and spent most of the match using the active camo. I lost 10 – 0 🙂 So, then I reckoned that a larger group of players would be better, since I could possibly pick up some scraps from a bunch of players shooting each other. The Rumble Pit matchmaking list threw me into Ivory Tower against 9 other opponents – and again I was outclassed. I got one lucky kill when I threw a grenade half-way across the map and finished someone off, but that was it. My average lifespan was 20 seconds 🙂
I think that maybe my foray into the ranked matchmaking lists was premature, and a bit – or even a lot! – more training is required. However, it was fun – though it was more fun in the Rumble Training matchmaking list, where I was actually surviving for longer than 20 seconds! The only problem is that I don’t have a lot of time to play online, so the chances that I’ll improve enough to ever leave the training grounds are slim – but I’ll still have fun 🙂
I also want to take some time to explore the multi-player levels, without getting shot at. There’s always the possiblity that there’s some clues to the Tru7h hidden there somewhere.