Fable is both absolutely incredible and disappointing at the same time.
User Rating: 8.9 | Fable XBOX
Let me start off by saying this is probably the hardest review I have ever written. Fable is unusual in that it is both an excellent game and yet there are so many obvious areas for improvement. I think this really speaks to the originallity of the game and how revolutionary it is. Some of the things the developers did with this game were pure genious, yet this new game formula is a little rough and has some room for improvement. Fable is a visually impressive game. The graphics don't excel where you would normally expect them too though. The character models are pretty standard fare, and have an exagerated cartoonish look to them. However, the skin textures are very impressive, especially as you get older. Where Fable's graphics really shine is in the environments. When you're walking through a forest path you can see the sun shining through the trees, casting shadows with individual leaves upon individual blades of grass at your feet. Fable's graphics are not flawless however. There are a few minor parts in the game where the framerate struggles (I noticed it this was mostly centered in the town of Oakvale). The biggest drawback to the visual style though is the loading screens. For a game like this a continuous world would have been a perfect fit. I suppose these problems are due to the graphical limitations of the Xbox though more than any shortcommings of the developers. Of course the graphics aren't what Fable is all about. A lot of people will say that Fable is too short and that the main quest will only take you 7 hours to finish. While this is true, they are missing what Fable is really about. At the core of Fable is not the storyline. Fable's core is freedom. And it really does deliver. There is a ton of stuff to do in the world of Albion. You can buy and rent property, you can show off your trophies, you can get married and divorced, have sex, beat your wife, pick the locks on people's doors, steal items from merchants, buy items and take them to different areas to make a prophet, get a haircut, get a tatoo, join fight clubs, kill peasants... the list just goes on and on. It is this very freedom though that is Fable's downfall. So much freedom requires a lot of content in the game. As a developer of a game like this you have to anticipate the kinds of things that the player is going to want to do with all of this freedom. For the most part Big Blue Box does a good job with this. There was more than a few instances though when i found myself thinking, "I wish they had more of this or I wish I could do this." To me, the biggest area where they failed with respect to content was the equipment. The amount and variety of goods that you can buy is staggering. There are some 6 types of melee weapons and 2 types of ranged weapons in the game, each with 4 or 5 different levels of quality. And there are about 13 different outfits you can obtain with three different varieties for each. However, a lot of this is redundant or has no real use in the game aside from aesthetics. All of the light melee weapons are pretty much the same, and all of the Heavy Melee weapons are pretty much the same. One of the most interesting things about the armour in Fable is that I often found myself mixing and matching outfits, or wearing outfits that had lower rating, simply because I liked the way that they looked. However, in combat there is really only one choice when it comes to what armour you're going to wear. There is no armour that offers special bonuses for magic or agility. The combat system was fairly well done. If you have played Wind Waker, it is almost exactly the same. You lock on to your target and use different buttons for your different attacks. However there are a few minor problems I had with it. For starters, it is easy to accidently attack a friendly unit and it is difficult to tell them apart from enemies when you have them licked because they run red when you are locked onto them. Also, it is difficult to control who you are locking onto. The game automaticall picks the person closest to you, but if you want to switch you have to let up on the button and then push it down again. All in all though, Fables combat is satisfying and fulfills its role in the game. Another interesting aspect of Fable is the economy. Its the most robust system I have ever seen in a game. Some of the ideas here were brilliant but poorly implemented. For instance, prices for goods vary depending on where you are and who you are buying them from. So you can buy goods cheap and take them to another area and make a profit. The problem with this is that its difficult to find who is paying the most or least for any one product and its difficult to make any substantial amount of money doing this. Fable also has a real estate system. You can buy any piece of property in the entire game world. After you buy a houes you can then rent it out to make a little money. The problem here is that your rent accumulates slowly and, unless you play for that magic # of 100 hours that Lionhead kept quoting, you'll probably never get a return on your investment. Also the benefits of the real estate system are heavily slanted towards someone who wants to play on the evil side. 95% of the property in Albion is already owned by someone and if you want to buy it you must somehow get rid of (kill0 the owner first. In conclusion, Fable is a truly great and fun game. It has its hangups but its still worth the money to buy it. If you do buy it, don't make the mistake of just rushing through the storyline because that is not where the bulk of Fable's gameplay lies. It certainly has its flaws, but the moments when it really shines through make it well worth it. Fable is like anything new or innovative. It has some great concepts but I'm certainly looking forward to some more polished sequels or copycats in the future.
