It’s simply Fable-ous!
Game Title: Fable 2
Publisher: Microsoft
Developer: Lionhead
Format Reviewed: XBOX 360
Price: £39.99
Molyneux Delivers!
There i said it. He’s actually for once, not over promised and under delivered. He has actually set out and done everything he has promised to with Fable 2.
It’s been 4 years since Fable was released, and the disappointment of what was missing that was promised is still stinging and you get the feeling that Mr Molyneux has listened and for once stopped over promising.
Fable 2 is unashamedly British (the voice over is done by Zoe Wannamaker of My Family fame) and features a lot of lovely British slang like “Betwazzled”. This gives the game a bit of a unique charm as, lets face it, there aren’t many games that are as british as this without being sterotypical anyway.
The game starts with you as a child, and slowly introduces the basic mechanics of the game and offers you a few limited choices as to what to do to progress. Once you’ve done the time skip and are an adult, the game picks up pace and has a very nostalgic moment for those of you who have played the first game. Character creation is a simple affair, with you simply choosing male or female and off you go.
Being a hero isn’t easy though, for one thing to be a great hero you need to have lots and lots of gold, and one thing they’ve fixed from Fable is that you no longer just find and have stocked copious amount of gold. You actually have to work for your gold. You can be a blacksmith or a woodcutter amongst other things, the more work you do the more money you earn for successfully completing a sword (if you were doing the blacksmith job for example) and thus more money to spend on Equipment (which is actually expensive compared to the first Fable, seems Albion is suffering from the credit crunch too).
The combat is one button based – one button for sword, one for gun and one for magic. This is quite simple, but it actually makes the game more accessible and fun and less like say Too Human which was overly complicated. Continuing the trend of making things more accessible, you won’t actually see a game over screen should you die in battle, you’ll lose some experience points and will be resurrected on the spot. It makes the game stupidly easy should it ever happen, but play the game right and it won’t.
Another thing making the game easy is the trail showing you where you have to go, it’s a long gold trail (which you can make dimmer) and it’s a bit too obvious (i think maybe an arrow on a map would have worked a bit better personally) but there is nothing stopping you from not following the arrow and simply wandering the world and following your dog off the path as he leads you on a hunt for treasure.
The dog is the perfect companion for you throughout the game (and yes, he does change depending on your actions throughout the game, as do you). Early on, your dog will attack enemies when you have knocked them down and will bark to let you know he’s found treasure, If you go into a scary cave he will wimper and will not move until you either praise him, throw his ball or shout at him. It’s surprising how attached you will get to the dog (or maybe it was just me, because i just associated it with my real dog!) and it is a refreshing change for a companion in an RPG (although nowhere near as unqiue as Dungeon Siege’s Donkey).
The story is much better written than the first game and as long as you follow the golden trail it flows along at a nice pace. Not taking into account side quests, the game will take you about 12-15 hours (about twice as long as Fable) to complete and it just feels like a much meatier game overall.
The online co-op works very well, there was concern that the patch wasn’t going to be ready for launch, but when we recieved our Review Copy last week, the patch was ready for download. You find your friend’s Purple Orb and you press A and invite them to your world as your Henchman. They can then do anything in your world that they could do in their own – they can even steal your wife! The purple Orbs can be extended to everyone who is playing the game on Live, and if you are close enough to them and they talk with the Microphone, you can hear them – this is particularly annoying when you are stood in a heavily populated area and listening to a cutscene and everyone is talking but at least you can turn it off.
It’s hard to find fault with Fable 2 really. It is the game that Fable should have been, you get the feeling when playing this that Peter Molyneux was trying to atone for Fable and ended up making the game he really wanted to. It’s probably the most fun i’ve had with the XBOX all year, and it’s a good British romp with a good smattering of humour and very good writing and story that isn’t rubbish.
The score below is well deserved, go and buy this game. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s a bloody brilliant game everyone should experience.
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