This was originally a two part review, I posted the second a day later, after a got a bit further into Fable 2. I wrote this in November, and I haven't edited it at all
Fable 2, the recent Lionhead release for the XBox 360. If you have a 360, I cannot think of any reason why you would not be at least vaguely aware of this game, such is the press and media coverage its been getting.
Fable 2 is, strangely enough, the sequence to the XBox original Fable, a massively successful game that I never played, but apparently was amazing, the storyline being something about a Hero wandering around a fictional country called Albion, doing missions and quests to level up, and if your character is good he looks noble, and if he is evil he looks demonic. Simple
In Fable 2, the story is set 500 years after the original, but you are still a Hero, and you are still tasked with doing crappy missions for morons to get revenge on some asshole from the beginning. Nuff said
Lets get the quick bits out of the way
Graphics
Like most 3rd person 7th gen games, Fable has rich and sprawling backgrounds, ranging from summer fields, to gorges, to medieval castles, to the sea, all of the locations are beautifully realized, and for the most part, you can interact with a large percentage of it.
Style
Obviously, this is very similar to a lot of RPGs out there, you kill people for XP, and depending how you kill them, you receive different sorts of XP and in varying amounts. You characters looks are fully customizable, with your style of playing changing not only whether he has horns or not, but also whether he is old or young, fat or skinny, or attractive to the NPCs.
The Story
This game is played much in the way of Black, if anyone had the common decency to play that. At the beginning of each chapter there is a cut scene, and a brief over view of what needs to be accomplished. Then, you are sent on your way to complete the missions in whatever why you see fit. Both the story line from Black and from Fable 2 are very good stories, but for me it does just seem to be an excuse to have your character walk from one end of the country to another, meeting people. I've been paying hardly any attention, and from what I've picked up, you're pissed off with some guy who killed your sister and punted you out of a window, but instead of getting him straight away, you hide in a caravan for a few years and then set out to kill him with a rusty sword and a rusty crossbow. After that, you learn how to set fire to stuff, and you go round gathering what seems to be a Ye Olde version of the A Team. Whatever, it's not important.
THE GAME
This game is like crack cocaine.
It has auto save, but still, I will not leave a mission half done, I will FINISH IT, but the sandboxing often gets in the way of this
I have spent at least 3 hours on it tonight, and in those 3 hours I found a scroll, killed some wolves, and went through a Crucible, which were 8 fights back to back, that I'd been putting off. If you get side tracked by a treasure chest, or you just fancy doing a bit of exploring, Fable 2 is immersive and truly staggeringly big. I have spent about 15 game hours on it, and today I found a new part of one of the first levels, that I'd not seen until now, and I found a host of new mini games. Without sounding like a games nerd, it's almost like this game does not want to be completed. It constantly gives you the option to wander off, explore, or be evil.
And let me say, there is nothing quite like being evil in this game
Do you remember GTA, the very first one, when you got into a car and ploughed down some pedestrians? The satisfaction you got from seeing them being crushed under or over your car? Well, that is what fable is like. You can, if you want, murder most of the human NPC characters throughout the game (certain story, or mission specific characters you can't, and you can't kill children either, more's the pit), and you can also kill a wide variety of the animals you encounter (apart from your dog).
Now, understand that when I say some of these characters are annoying, I mean full bore, card carrying, window licking annoying, and not killing these people is going to be the hardest thing you'll have done in a while.
I'll give you an example
One of the earlier missions is to seduce a woman, where afterwards you have the opportunity to either scorn her or marry her. As I'd spent the last 2 or 3 minutes seducing her, I married her, sat through a ball bustingly dull cut sequence about how me and this woman were possibly soul mates, had to buy a house, and then went to shag her. I did. Then, I found out you can beat your wife, and because my character was flame balling chickens, and using his massive hammer to smack shop owners about, I did the only honourable thing, and killed the *****
Hard
With fire
I then killed the crowd surrounding me, two policemen, and then slaughtered the majority of people in the pub.
And god damn did it make me feel gooooooooooooooooooooooooood
Much like if you see me playing GTA, I honestly do try to do the missions, but when you're belting it down the road, it is so tempting to mount the curb, and thin the herd a little bit, and this is what Fable is all about.
You have the choice, though if you're a sad and sick individual like me, you'll be going round bleeding the town dry (as you can buy all the shops and the houses, then you can bump the prices up, for mo' money), occasionally murdering lots of people, and often ignoring the missions to beef yourself up, so you can ruin peoples shit faster
I recommend this game
Part Two
As I have sung the praises of Fable 2, let me now shed some light on the less than favorable points.
To say that Fable 2 is similar to WoW is a massive understatement, it has, for all intents and purposes, taken WoW and whole hearted stolen massive chunks of game play, ideas and characters. However, as WoW is an amazing game (it is, I don't care if you think it's nerdy, or boring, it's probably because you haven't played it), and so immersive I'm tempted to let this slide.
What I'm not going to let slide however, are the mini games.
I was really, REALLY hoping for these mini games to be varied, challenging and rewarding, but bugger me, it is next to impossible to seriously use these jobs throughout Albion as your main source of income. There is no way that you can be expected to stand there like a melon waiting for a bar to turn green so you can press A and chop some wood, at $12 a time. It's completely stupid, the only way to make serious money from the jobs is to get a chain of around 20 perfect hits, and then carry on, so you're making about $50 a hit.
If you miss the hit, you lose your chain, and go back to making a pittance.
I'm not joking, it's a REAL ball ache.
Saying that, it's not really necessary to make money in Fable 2. It would be very easy to ignore the money making side of it, and just go through the game without a house, income, potions, food and weapons other than what you pick up, and there is no lack of treasure chests, buried items and pick ups throughout the game, it would just mean you die a bit more.
And here we have our next little gripe
The deaths
I'm going to give you a list of what happens when you die, as there are some good ideas here, and some bad ideas here.
Good idea
When you die, any XP you haven't picked up is lost, forever, but as it's generally between 10 and 500 XP it's not a massive lose
Bad Idea
When you die, you have to sit through a sequence where the screen darkens and slows down, as your body rag dolls through the air, similar to GTA 4 and Burnout. As if the game is pointing out how shit you are at it
Good idea
You can use resurrection vials to stop this, and stop you losing any XP. It also prevents the single most annoying aspect of the game
Very, very fucking bad idea
When you die, you are permanently scarred for the rest of the game. And it's not a cool pirate-esque scar, oh no, it's a really stupid looking scar, the kind you see on people who shave with their eyes closed.
Annoying
What is also annoying, it the sheer amount of time you spend waiting for shit to happen.
This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it's mainly the loading screen. Every time you exit an area (or enter) you have to sit through a loading screen, and where this doesn't sound too bad, what you will find is that after a while, you'll find yourself needing to go from area to area quickly, and you will spend at least 5 minutes going between 3 different locations, even if the amount of time walking is 30 seconds for each one.
I understand why this is happening, the graphics and the scenery are so big and well designed, the game needs to load them, and so this is more just me complaining than an actual issue.
What is an issue, and a truly shocking choice of game design, is the item screen.
If you want to access an item when you don't really need it (a book, XP vial, clothes, or weapon) you are forced to go through a really slow menu, and if you want to use an item immediately after (when you are assigning book knowledge, or XP vials are classic examples of this) you are forced to go through it individually each and everytime. This takes up serious game play time, and is NOT a good design idea.
Now, finally, I'm going to wrap up with what is truly a genius bit of game design, but just DOES NOT fit with my style of gaming
The Good/Evil, or Fear/Respect gauge.
If, like me, you have little or not tolerance for people walking about whilst their not on fire, and choose to do something about it, you will be evil, and the people will begin to avoid you on the streets.
If you then proceed to massacre whole towns once in a while, because you fancy having bigger horns and redder skin, the towns people will be terrified of you, and will run away from you as soon as you see them.
This is really a good bit of game design
However, you need these towns people, so you can sacrifice them to unholy shadows, or whatever. You occasionally need them around, and when they're fleeing from your very shadow it makes the game very difficult
After all these problems that I've listed, the game is still very good, and highly addictive. Infact, I'm going to play for an hour or so as soon as I've found my iPod, and not play on GTA, that's how good it is.
If you are going to get it, and I advise you at least have a week at it, remember, this game actually has choices and consequences for your choices. If you do go round being nice, and a bit of a wimp, you'll have shite weapons, but loads of friends (who are pretty useless), but if you're an evil bastard, flaming people randomly, and extorting vast amounts of cash from people, people will avoid you, and you'll have a hell of a time getting people to listen to you, or follow you
Still
I like it
Fable 2, the recent Lionhead release for the XBox 360. If you have a 360, I cannot think of any reason why you would not be at least vaguely aware of this game, such is the press and media coverage its been getting.
Fable 2 is, strangely enough, the sequence to the XBox original Fable, a massively successful game that I never played, but apparently was amazing, the storyline being something about a Hero wandering around a fictional country called Albion, doing missions and quests to level up, and if your character is good he looks noble, and if he is evil he looks demonic. Simple
In Fable 2, the story is set 500 years after the original, but you are still a Hero, and you are still tasked with doing crappy missions for morons to get revenge on some asshole from the beginning. Nuff said
Lets get the quick bits out of the way
Graphics
Like most 3rd person 7th gen games, Fable has rich and sprawling backgrounds, ranging from summer fields, to gorges, to medieval castles, to the sea, all of the locations are beautifully realized, and for the most part, you can interact with a large percentage of it.
Style
Obviously, this is very similar to a lot of RPGs out there, you kill people for XP, and depending how you kill them, you receive different sorts of XP and in varying amounts. You characters looks are fully customizable, with your style of playing changing not only whether he has horns or not, but also whether he is old or young, fat or skinny, or attractive to the NPCs.
The Story
This game is played much in the way of Black, if anyone had the common decency to play that. At the beginning of each chapter there is a cut scene, and a brief over view of what needs to be accomplished. Then, you are sent on your way to complete the missions in whatever why you see fit. Both the story line from Black and from Fable 2 are very good stories, but for me it does just seem to be an excuse to have your character walk from one end of the country to another, meeting people. I've been paying hardly any attention, and from what I've picked up, you're pissed off with some guy who killed your sister and punted you out of a window, but instead of getting him straight away, you hide in a caravan for a few years and then set out to kill him with a rusty sword and a rusty crossbow. After that, you learn how to set fire to stuff, and you go round gathering what seems to be a Ye Olde version of the A Team. Whatever, it's not important.
THE GAME
This game is like crack cocaine.
It has auto save, but still, I will not leave a mission half done, I will FINISH IT, but the sandboxing often gets in the way of this
I have spent at least 3 hours on it tonight, and in those 3 hours I found a scroll, killed some wolves, and went through a Crucible, which were 8 fights back to back, that I'd been putting off. If you get side tracked by a treasure chest, or you just fancy doing a bit of exploring, Fable 2 is immersive and truly staggeringly big. I have spent about 15 game hours on it, and today I found a new part of one of the first levels, that I'd not seen until now, and I found a host of new mini games. Without sounding like a games nerd, it's almost like this game does not want to be completed. It constantly gives you the option to wander off, explore, or be evil.
And let me say, there is nothing quite like being evil in this game
Do you remember GTA, the very first one, when you got into a car and ploughed down some pedestrians? The satisfaction you got from seeing them being crushed under or over your car? Well, that is what fable is like. You can, if you want, murder most of the human NPC characters throughout the game (certain story, or mission specific characters you can't, and you can't kill children either, more's the pit), and you can also kill a wide variety of the animals you encounter (apart from your dog).
Now, understand that when I say some of these characters are annoying, I mean full bore, card carrying, window licking annoying, and not killing these people is going to be the hardest thing you'll have done in a while.
I'll give you an example
One of the earlier missions is to seduce a woman, where afterwards you have the opportunity to either scorn her or marry her. As I'd spent the last 2 or 3 minutes seducing her, I married her, sat through a ball bustingly dull cut sequence about how me and this woman were possibly soul mates, had to buy a house, and then went to shag her. I did. Then, I found out you can beat your wife, and because my character was flame balling chickens, and using his massive hammer to smack shop owners about, I did the only honourable thing, and killed the *****
Hard
With fire
I then killed the crowd surrounding me, two policemen, and then slaughtered the majority of people in the pub.
And god damn did it make me feel gooooooooooooooooooooooooood
Much like if you see me playing GTA, I honestly do try to do the missions, but when you're belting it down the road, it is so tempting to mount the curb, and thin the herd a little bit, and this is what Fable is all about.
You have the choice, though if you're a sad and sick individual like me, you'll be going round bleeding the town dry (as you can buy all the shops and the houses, then you can bump the prices up, for mo' money), occasionally murdering lots of people, and often ignoring the missions to beef yourself up, so you can ruin peoples shit faster
I recommend this game
Part Two
As I have sung the praises of Fable 2, let me now shed some light on the less than favorable points.
To say that Fable 2 is similar to WoW is a massive understatement, it has, for all intents and purposes, taken WoW and whole hearted stolen massive chunks of game play, ideas and characters. However, as WoW is an amazing game (it is, I don't care if you think it's nerdy, or boring, it's probably because you haven't played it), and so immersive I'm tempted to let this slide.
What I'm not going to let slide however, are the mini games.
I was really, REALLY hoping for these mini games to be varied, challenging and rewarding, but bugger me, it is next to impossible to seriously use these jobs throughout Albion as your main source of income. There is no way that you can be expected to stand there like a melon waiting for a bar to turn green so you can press A and chop some wood, at $12 a time. It's completely stupid, the only way to make serious money from the jobs is to get a chain of around 20 perfect hits, and then carry on, so you're making about $50 a hit.
If you miss the hit, you lose your chain, and go back to making a pittance.
I'm not joking, it's a REAL ball ache.
Saying that, it's not really necessary to make money in Fable 2. It would be very easy to ignore the money making side of it, and just go through the game without a house, income, potions, food and weapons other than what you pick up, and there is no lack of treasure chests, buried items and pick ups throughout the game, it would just mean you die a bit more.
And here we have our next little gripe
The deaths
I'm going to give you a list of what happens when you die, as there are some good ideas here, and some bad ideas here.
Good idea
When you die, any XP you haven't picked up is lost, forever, but as it's generally between 10 and 500 XP it's not a massive lose
Bad Idea
When you die, you have to sit through a sequence where the screen darkens and slows down, as your body rag dolls through the air, similar to GTA 4 and Burnout. As if the game is pointing out how shit you are at it
Good idea
You can use resurrection vials to stop this, and stop you losing any XP. It also prevents the single most annoying aspect of the game
Very, very fucking bad idea
When you die, you are permanently scarred for the rest of the game. And it's not a cool pirate-esque scar, oh no, it's a really stupid looking scar, the kind you see on people who shave with their eyes closed.
Annoying
What is also annoying, it the sheer amount of time you spend waiting for shit to happen.
This comes in many shapes and sizes, and it's mainly the loading screen. Every time you exit an area (or enter) you have to sit through a loading screen, and where this doesn't sound too bad, what you will find is that after a while, you'll find yourself needing to go from area to area quickly, and you will spend at least 5 minutes going between 3 different locations, even if the amount of time walking is 30 seconds for each one.
I understand why this is happening, the graphics and the scenery are so big and well designed, the game needs to load them, and so this is more just me complaining than an actual issue.
What is an issue, and a truly shocking choice of game design, is the item screen.
If you want to access an item when you don't really need it (a book, XP vial, clothes, or weapon) you are forced to go through a really slow menu, and if you want to use an item immediately after (when you are assigning book knowledge, or XP vials are classic examples of this) you are forced to go through it individually each and everytime. This takes up serious game play time, and is NOT a good design idea.
Now, finally, I'm going to wrap up with what is truly a genius bit of game design, but just DOES NOT fit with my style of gaming
The Good/Evil, or Fear/Respect gauge.
If, like me, you have little or not tolerance for people walking about whilst their not on fire, and choose to do something about it, you will be evil, and the people will begin to avoid you on the streets.
If you then proceed to massacre whole towns once in a while, because you fancy having bigger horns and redder skin, the towns people will be terrified of you, and will run away from you as soon as you see them.
This is really a good bit of game design
However, you need these towns people, so you can sacrifice them to unholy shadows, or whatever. You occasionally need them around, and when they're fleeing from your very shadow it makes the game very difficult
After all these problems that I've listed, the game is still very good, and highly addictive. Infact, I'm going to play for an hour or so as soon as I've found my iPod, and not play on GTA, that's how good it is.
If you are going to get it, and I advise you at least have a week at it, remember, this game actually has choices and consequences for your choices. If you do go round being nice, and a bit of a wimp, you'll have shite weapons, but loads of friends (who are pretty useless), but if you're an evil bastard, flaming people randomly, and extorting vast amounts of cash from people, people will avoid you, and you'll have a hell of a time getting people to listen to you, or follow you
Still
I like it
