Nostalgia is a funny thing sometimes, sometimes it can give you a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside like someone have just made you eat a pint of hot porridge, alternatively it can also make you feel disjointed, cold and alone, fortunately for me, Fable 3 gives me the porridge feeling without the obvious internal burns that hot porridge eating would bring...
So we're back in Albion, it's been 50 years since the last Hero that you played as in Fable 2 saved the day and eventually became King and things don't seem to have turned out too well after Papa Hero popped his clogs, you play as one of the previous Hero's sons, the Prince who has pretty much been kept in Castle Bowerstone pretty much all his life until your brother, King Logan decides you are a traitor and you, your butler Jasper (John Cleese) your fighting mentor Walter (Bernard Hill...that?s king Théoden from Lord of the rings by the way...) and you dog (Wynona Ryder..only joking) escape the castle to start the revolution. The story is admittedly better than the copy/paste shambles of the last Fable game but it is in no way massively original, you feel like the story has had a skin graft rather than just stuck a fake moustache on this time around, it's still got the same bones underneath and every now and then you see a scar that makes you stop and think "wait...we've been here before"
The game itself is good, I would even go as far as to say it's very good, it is, in my opinion, the best Fable game in the franchise, however that in no way means it is the greatest game of all time, it has it's fair share of bug and glitches, broken AI and features that don't work correctly but we as gamers have learnt to look past most of this and see the bigger picture, allow me to elaborate...
Remember when you had completed Fable 1 and you heard that Fable 2 was coming out soon? remember when we were promised that it would be a massive improvement on Fable and include lots of features such as being able to plant acorns and watch them grow into trees over time and when Fable 2 finally came out it was frankly a let down, a very playable and enjoyable let down, but a let down nonetheless, it had a extreme lack of polish, a broken AI system, a heavily overpowered spell system and somewhat clunky controls and all of these things let the game down, but somewhere between Fable 2 being the let down in our Albion loving hearts and Fable 3 coming out, we all seemed to decide that all of these things added "character" to the game and decided that it would be best if we ignored them, we even started to look forward to the "quirky" lack of polish and slightly childish graphics, the dialogue that feels like its ripped from the lost pages of an unknown Monty Python script etc and these things because part of the fabric of Fable, part of the fabric of Albion itself which still had a large place in my heart.
<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_KDmrHxJ5hOU/TTXiXHGkGPI/AAAAAAAAAKI/1ZHPf0_Pnhw/s800/Fable%203%201.jpg" alt="Lionhead were forced to cut their Child Levitation
Spell due to complaints from the NSPCC"/>
I suppose I should stop gushing about the history of the game and actually put my reviewing hat on now, the gameplay and handling are average-to-good, the character no longer gets stuck in a door frame whilst trying to go through a doorway, the movement feels smooth and pretty responsive, the combat is much as it was in Fable 1 & 2, I.E quite broken, there is nothing in Albion that poses much of a threat to Heroes unless you make the fight more interesting for yourself by not using magic or by only using firearms or by tying one hand behind your back whilst trying to hum the Austrian national anthem with an open mouth full of marbles...
Once I had collected experie.....sorry Peter, Guild Seals! to obtain the Fireball + Shock Level 4 spell, all my enemies fell into one of three categories A) Baddies that die after one casting, B) Baddies that died after the second casting or C) Bosses! it was at this point that the combat just felt very boring, I would find myself running around Silverpines with a train of about 10 Balverines following me just to mix things up a little, I would be trying to make the combat fun and enjoyable which isn't really something I should have to do from a product that is supposed to be fun from the get go.
One gripe I do have about Fable or rather, Peter Molyneux himself is his obsession with change, he wanted to get rid of the options menu and shop menus, which was fine, I actually think the sanctuary works really well with the game and prefer not having screens of lists to scrool through, he wanted to get rid of the expression wheel so that you only had three buttons when interacting with people, a Nice Expression, a Nasty Expression and a Funny Expression, again, not great as sometimes I would just like to shake peoples hands rather than dance with every shopkeeper I meet in order for them to give me a better price but whatever, I'll let that one slide but the fact that he said "I don?t like the whole Experience Points mechanic" and decided to get rid of that, "Hmm, okay, it will be interesting to see what you do here Peter!" I thought as gently stroking my bread as any gamer knows that the experience point mechanic is what actually makes an RPG/Adventure game, the ability to level your character up, gain new skills and abilities, so after playing Fable 3 for a while I found the Road to Rule, opened my first Guild Seal chest and was pleasantly surprised that it contained a Fireball spell, this feeling of surprise was quickly replaced with the thought of "wait a minute" as I was then presented with a number of additional chests all corresponding to different skills, abilities and aspects to my character that would each cost a different amount of "Guild Seals" which I was awarded by completing tasks for numerous people around Albion who all seemed to be suffering from the World of Warcraft "Exclamation Mark On Head" syndrome or by wandering around and killing enemies.....
<img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_KDmrHxJ5hOU/TTXiiN6HctI/AAAAAAAAAKI/tHGISZWwv3U/s800/Fable%203%204.jpg" alt="Bowerstone may have undergone some changes over the 50 years
since Fable 2 but once there, you will feel like you never left."/>
HANG ON!!! These are really just glorified experience points!!
C'mon Peter!! At least have the decency to admit that your just doing things differently, not take the interior designed approach of painting the room a different colour and claiming to have "made it over" I mean I know a lot of gamers are by this point C.O.D-addicted, brain-dead Treyarch owned zombie-husks but some of us aren't and can see through a very thin veil of "It's not experience...HONEST!" but I digress from my actual review of the game on one of my many rants...allow me to continue with the review...
The combat, like I said, is broken after a certain point in the game, the dog makes a faithful return as your trusty sidekick with its usual job of biting the occasional enemy and sniffing out the odd buried treasure now and then but I think that in the 50 years between Fable 2 and 3 a certain amount of canine inbreeding has happened as on more than one occasion I found myself stopping what I was doing to find out why Snuffles the Wonder Dog was barking only to find him running around in circles with the little "Dig Spot" icon above his head before giving up and ignoring the treasure and returning to my side, it was after maybe 30% of the game that I decided to stop paying attention to my dog when he barks unless he has found a treasure chest as Lionhead obviously thought people were going to walk very slowly through Albion and not need a character-dog-alignment to happen in JUST the right way for the dog to show me where a gem that is worth less than my characters shoes!
<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_KDmrHxJ5hOU/TTXiiJ-QFEI/AAAAAAAAAKI/zz2XKg41lvc/Fable%203%203.jpg" alt="Albion: A land of Heroes, Monsters, Magic and hysterical facial hair!
"/>
One aspect I did enjoy quite a lot was (and I doubt I'm spoiling anything here as this has been touted since day 1) being King! It was honestly a nice feeling to be wearing the Albion crown and to be making some of the kingly decisions, my only complaint about this particular aspect of the game is that it didn't last long enough, for something that was talked about as being the "last 50% of the game" it only felt like the last 15% of the game and whilst highly enjoyable was slightly disappointing, I think I may be being a bit greedy here but why couldn't I have more Day on the calendar?!? Anyone who has played this section of the game will understand my gripe here...
In conclusion, I feel that Fable 3 is the cheeky little urchin child of the video games world that can get away with it's missing front tooth, dirty face and inability to juggle fire because it makes it indering to people, wandering through Albion gives you that sense of adventure that you thought you had lost in video games, it's running around in the woods and exploring new things, your 6 years old again wondering "where does that go?" as you go from Quest objective A to Quest objective B and you see a random little path running up the side of a mountain, you cant help but think "well, the quest isn?t going anywhere, I'll just go....." and three hours later you find yourself back on your little breadcrumb trail wondering "right, what was I doing?"
Lionheads business is making you fall in love with Albion...and business is good.
9/10
Skith666
If you enjoyed this review, please check out my blog with more of my work at www.skith666.blogspot.com
So we're back in Albion, it's been 50 years since the last Hero that you played as in Fable 2 saved the day and eventually became King and things don't seem to have turned out too well after Papa Hero popped his clogs, you play as one of the previous Hero's sons, the Prince who has pretty much been kept in Castle Bowerstone pretty much all his life until your brother, King Logan decides you are a traitor and you, your butler Jasper (John Cleese) your fighting mentor Walter (Bernard Hill...that?s king Théoden from Lord of the rings by the way...) and you dog (Wynona Ryder..only joking) escape the castle to start the revolution. The story is admittedly better than the copy/paste shambles of the last Fable game but it is in no way massively original, you feel like the story has had a skin graft rather than just stuck a fake moustache on this time around, it's still got the same bones underneath and every now and then you see a scar that makes you stop and think "wait...we've been here before"
The game itself is good, I would even go as far as to say it's very good, it is, in my opinion, the best Fable game in the franchise, however that in no way means it is the greatest game of all time, it has it's fair share of bug and glitches, broken AI and features that don't work correctly but we as gamers have learnt to look past most of this and see the bigger picture, allow me to elaborate...
Remember when you had completed Fable 1 and you heard that Fable 2 was coming out soon? remember when we were promised that it would be a massive improvement on Fable and include lots of features such as being able to plant acorns and watch them grow into trees over time and when Fable 2 finally came out it was frankly a let down, a very playable and enjoyable let down, but a let down nonetheless, it had a extreme lack of polish, a broken AI system, a heavily overpowered spell system and somewhat clunky controls and all of these things let the game down, but somewhere between Fable 2 being the let down in our Albion loving hearts and Fable 3 coming out, we all seemed to decide that all of these things added "character" to the game and decided that it would be best if we ignored them, we even started to look forward to the "quirky" lack of polish and slightly childish graphics, the dialogue that feels like its ripped from the lost pages of an unknown Monty Python script etc and these things because part of the fabric of Fable, part of the fabric of Albion itself which still had a large place in my heart.
<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_KDmrHxJ5hOU/TTXiXHGkGPI/AAAAAAAAAKI/1ZHPf0_Pnhw/s800/Fable%203%201.jpg" alt="Lionhead were forced to cut their Child Levitation
Spell due to complaints from the NSPCC"/>
I suppose I should stop gushing about the history of the game and actually put my reviewing hat on now, the gameplay and handling are average-to-good, the character no longer gets stuck in a door frame whilst trying to go through a doorway, the movement feels smooth and pretty responsive, the combat is much as it was in Fable 1 & 2, I.E quite broken, there is nothing in Albion that poses much of a threat to Heroes unless you make the fight more interesting for yourself by not using magic or by only using firearms or by tying one hand behind your back whilst trying to hum the Austrian national anthem with an open mouth full of marbles...
Once I had collected experie.....sorry Peter, Guild Seals! to obtain the Fireball + Shock Level 4 spell, all my enemies fell into one of three categories A) Baddies that die after one casting, B) Baddies that died after the second casting or C) Bosses! it was at this point that the combat just felt very boring, I would find myself running around Silverpines with a train of about 10 Balverines following me just to mix things up a little, I would be trying to make the combat fun and enjoyable which isn't really something I should have to do from a product that is supposed to be fun from the get go.
One gripe I do have about Fable or rather, Peter Molyneux himself is his obsession with change, he wanted to get rid of the options menu and shop menus, which was fine, I actually think the sanctuary works really well with the game and prefer not having screens of lists to scrool through, he wanted to get rid of the expression wheel so that you only had three buttons when interacting with people, a Nice Expression, a Nasty Expression and a Funny Expression, again, not great as sometimes I would just like to shake peoples hands rather than dance with every shopkeeper I meet in order for them to give me a better price but whatever, I'll let that one slide but the fact that he said "I don?t like the whole Experience Points mechanic" and decided to get rid of that, "Hmm, okay, it will be interesting to see what you do here Peter!" I thought as gently stroking my bread as any gamer knows that the experience point mechanic is what actually makes an RPG/Adventure game, the ability to level your character up, gain new skills and abilities, so after playing Fable 3 for a while I found the Road to Rule, opened my first Guild Seal chest and was pleasantly surprised that it contained a Fireball spell, this feeling of surprise was quickly replaced with the thought of "wait a minute" as I was then presented with a number of additional chests all corresponding to different skills, abilities and aspects to my character that would each cost a different amount of "Guild Seals" which I was awarded by completing tasks for numerous people around Albion who all seemed to be suffering from the World of Warcraft "Exclamation Mark On Head" syndrome or by wandering around and killing enemies.....
<img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/_KDmrHxJ5hOU/TTXiiN6HctI/AAAAAAAAAKI/tHGISZWwv3U/s800/Fable%203%204.jpg" alt="Bowerstone may have undergone some changes over the 50 years
since Fable 2 but once there, you will feel like you never left."/>
HANG ON!!! These are really just glorified experience points!!
C'mon Peter!! At least have the decency to admit that your just doing things differently, not take the interior designed approach of painting the room a different colour and claiming to have "made it over" I mean I know a lot of gamers are by this point C.O.D-addicted, brain-dead Treyarch owned zombie-husks but some of us aren't and can see through a very thin veil of "It's not experience...HONEST!" but I digress from my actual review of the game on one of my many rants...allow me to continue with the review...
The combat, like I said, is broken after a certain point in the game, the dog makes a faithful return as your trusty sidekick with its usual job of biting the occasional enemy and sniffing out the odd buried treasure now and then but I think that in the 50 years between Fable 2 and 3 a certain amount of canine inbreeding has happened as on more than one occasion I found myself stopping what I was doing to find out why Snuffles the Wonder Dog was barking only to find him running around in circles with the little "Dig Spot" icon above his head before giving up and ignoring the treasure and returning to my side, it was after maybe 30% of the game that I decided to stop paying attention to my dog when he barks unless he has found a treasure chest as Lionhead obviously thought people were going to walk very slowly through Albion and not need a character-dog-alignment to happen in JUST the right way for the dog to show me where a gem that is worth less than my characters shoes!
<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_KDmrHxJ5hOU/TTXiiJ-QFEI/AAAAAAAAAKI/zz2XKg41lvc/Fable%203%203.jpg" alt="Albion: A land of Heroes, Monsters, Magic and hysterical facial hair!
"/>
One aspect I did enjoy quite a lot was (and I doubt I'm spoiling anything here as this has been touted since day 1) being King! It was honestly a nice feeling to be wearing the Albion crown and to be making some of the kingly decisions, my only complaint about this particular aspect of the game is that it didn't last long enough, for something that was talked about as being the "last 50% of the game" it only felt like the last 15% of the game and whilst highly enjoyable was slightly disappointing, I think I may be being a bit greedy here but why couldn't I have more Day on the calendar?!? Anyone who has played this section of the game will understand my gripe here...
In conclusion, I feel that Fable 3 is the cheeky little urchin child of the video games world that can get away with it's missing front tooth, dirty face and inability to juggle fire because it makes it indering to people, wandering through Albion gives you that sense of adventure that you thought you had lost in video games, it's running around in the woods and exploring new things, your 6 years old again wondering "where does that go?" as you go from Quest objective A to Quest objective B and you see a random little path running up the side of a mountain, you cant help but think "well, the quest isn?t going anywhere, I'll just go....." and three hours later you find yourself back on your little breadcrumb trail wondering "right, what was I doing?"
Lionheads business is making you fall in love with Albion...and business is good.
9/10
Skith666
If you enjoyed this review, please check out my blog with more of my work at www.skith666.blogspot.com
