I have been playing Genshin Impact for over a month and have yet to grow bored of the world it has to offer. It’s worth noting that this doesn’t mean I spend five hours a day wandering around Teyvat — often, I log in for 20 minutes or so just to box off my daily commissions and tackle a sidequest or two. I firmly believe that this is Genshin Impact’s greatest stren

For some reason, Genshin has me constantly wondering about the new Fable game that Playground Games is working on. We know barely anything about this, mind. All of the good stuff appears to be locked behind a big fat Demon Door. One thing we do know, though, is that loads of people reckoned it was going to be an MMO. This was quickly debunked by Xbox insider Klobrille back in July, which is fair enough. New Fable’s not an MMO. We get the pict

Genshin’s not an MMO either, but it does take a variety of lessons from the genre. It has shared spaces and co-op events. Its world is designed as a progression tool of its own — hard level-gating ensures that you can’t progress through the main story without becoming intimately familiar with the area it takes place in. The fact it runs on a regularly updated individual server even plays a role here — logging in and seeing I have mail from Mihoyo reminds me of the startup UI for Final Fantasy 14 or World of Warcraft. It’s a game where every day brings something new, where you can pal around with mates in multiplayer areas or become friends with new folks who seem sound. Sure, Genshin caters to a single-player experience for those who want it — but if you’re after something a bit more sociable, especially in times like these, Mihoyo’s got loads of that for you as w

Honestly, I called Fable 3 shite after I finished it at 14, despite voluntarily pumping about 50 hours into it. "This is so bad, I’m going to keep playing it. I hate this game, no I can’t go to bed yet." I think there was always something drawing me to it, no matter how much I tried to dislike it for not picking up from directly where Fable 2 left off and featuring all of the exact same characters. And now, ten years later — I just wish more people talked about it, because I still think people have yet to fully appreciate how genuinely ambitious it all was.

Albion even seems to hold claim to its very own version of the Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda. One grave in Fable III reads: "Andrzej Zamoyski 'It's dangerous to go alone. Take this.'" It's not clear who Andrzej Zamoyski is, but his quoted line is iconic from The Legend of Ze

I’d like to go back to what I mentioned at the beginning of this piece. A month and a bit into Genshin and I’m still signing in on the regular. I’m dying for another Elemental Crucible-esque event where I can partner with random players and boot around some hilichurls in all-out cooperative mayhem. I know I can play the rest of the game in co-op, but again — I like the single-player parts being single-player. That’s a great thing about Genshin — it recognizes that balance between experiencing a story on your own and exploring the world around it with other people. I think that would be great for Fable in particular — maybe Bowerstone is an MMO-esque hub where you can flick a switch and all of a sudden, boom! Marketplace, flog your trinkets and bullshit for coin, the more you rip people off the better. Flick the switch back and Hideo Kojima all of a sudden, boom! NPCs are the only people bothering you, and you can just ignore them if you w

That’s the thing — I love the Fable dog, and I love the art. I love the devil horns and the tricksy little gnomes. But I don’t think Fable 2 was like Fable, so I’m not sure why so many people were annoyed about Fable 3 not being Fable 2: Again. That’s why I was annoyed, as well as pretty much anybody I asked about it. But in hindsight, it makes very little sense to me — I would hope that the new Fable game in development isn’t just a rehash of Fable 2. I’d hope that it takes a lot of its lessons — for better and for worse — from Fable 3.

I agree that Fable brings a distinctly single-player narrative experience to mind. Knocking the shit out of Lucien Fairfax is something you want to do on your own terms, in your own space. But despite Fable’s story being good, the best bits were always the parts you got to experience with other people. I didn’t start a new game very often because all I wanted to do was to stay massively overpowered and wreak havoc on Albion with my pals without having to worry about any repercussions. That being said, there eventually came a time and place where I thought, "you know what? Maybe three months of (literally) farting around Fable 2 is enou

While there wasn't one central spoiler moment that would leave fans up in arms, the whole trailer for Spider-Man: Miles Morales is filled with a lot of the game's big ticket enemies. From the Rhino to Miles Morales' own uncle, the Prowler, there were plenty of spoil