Yacolt's Profile

Fable 2

Published: Tue 28 Oct, 2008 | On:

I love Lionhead Studios, and infact aspire to work there. So what do I, as a massive fanboy, think of the newly released Fable 2?

To begin with, let me say that I have been avidly following the Lionhead forums and keeping myself up to date with all goings on in Guildford (where LH are based). Because of this, I have high high high expectations for this game.

With my sneaky swindling ways, I managed to get my grubby mitts on the game one whole day before it was available to the public, and played it on a GIANT HD tv.

My first impressions were of awesomeness. The immediate appearance is great: the world looks well crafted and there is a lot attention to detail, the graphics are somewhat stylised and cartoony.

The game lets me know what to do in simple yet effective ways, more like reminding me of what I should be doing, rather than forcing me to do any specific things. The reminds are clear, and quite obviously show what needs to be done in order to progress the story.

There are several noticeable issues during my first play too, namely the frame rate and the slow loading time on the menu. There is some frame lag while I play (but I was playing on a huge TV) and when you press start, there is a noticeable lag before the menu appears, and its slide in from the left is stuttered.

Since my initial jaunt in Albion, I have since completed the game once, doing many of the sidequests, being a good and pure female, who ended up rather fat with strange glowing red eyes and blue skin...

Combat couldnt be simpler, and that is a very good thing. I can happily mash away at the keypad and kill things good, or apparently try to time the strikes to achieve better damage and more experience. I am still yet to master the finese of combat, and prefer to just mash away. There doesnt seem to be a huge benifit from try to be stylish, apart from less RSI maybe... The best part for me would be melee'ing an enemy into one corner, then whipping round to shoot or lightning his friends try to surround me.

Storyline wise, the main story and side quests link themselves up well, giving me a lot to do if I want to, or I can ignore things completely. If you dont care about having a family, you dont have to, and it wont matter to the main story. Like I said before, you dont have to do anything, it just enriches your experience if you do.

In terms of sidequests, I can actively see a change in the world around me, depending on what I do. This becomes more apparent later on in the game, with areas filling up with travelling traders as I bump up the economy's star rating by doing quests or working jobs.

A feature which I find useful is the star rating system. Nearly everything has a star rating, from items to abilities, which shows at a glance how good an item is. This means you can easily scroll to items in the menu, or view progress in things at a glance, or go into detail by viewing the specifics in the menu. I can easily see how good a weapon is compared to others via the number of stars, but to compare individual five star items is also as simple.

The current buzz about this game is the glitches. I have to say that I have noticed some, but none game threatening, merely just annoying. Some are in the menu, such as the slow opening. New items in your inventory are highlighted with an exclamation mark next to their names, but in the clothing section, these never dissappear, even when you look at the item.

With the AI, at one point I couldnt get either my husband nor my wife to react to any of my expressions, even when they loved me 100% and wanted to sleep with me. Frustrating enough for me to go and do something else instead.

In dungeons, there are a combination of killing many things, as well as puzzles, which involve finding switches, hitting things with melee, ranged or magic depending on their colour (these circular things that change location and/or colour once you hit them) and can be challenging. The challenges are rewarded well too. I want to complete the challenges and receive the rewards, Im not just grinding.

Needless to say, the dog works well and is awesome. You become very attached very quickly. Nothing to complain about there.

Co-op wise, it seems to make the game awesomely easy. Single player is fairly straight forward as long as you bring enough potions, but two player is overkill. You are based on one single screen, and cant go too far apart, but you can press the back button to magically warp to the main player if you get stuck or issues arise.

Playing with a character that glitched its way to over 1mil gold was a bit of a silly thing to do really.... It made the game too simple in some respects, since I am now getting over 15000 gold every 5 mins, and own 90% of Albion. All bough before halfway through the game.

Over all, this game has had a lot of hype and falls short in some areas. There are several bugs, and I was lucky enough not to run into all of them, but some sound nasty! It is a huge game, but I finished it fairly quickly. I do feel like Ive only scratched the surface though, and will be spending a lot of time re doing things and trying to find all the little secrets and hidden things. Watching events unfold from both sides of choices is great, both good and evil moments having their hilarious moments.

Above average game, slightly over hyped, buggyness too, but I cant get enough of it! The bugs and cons dont out weigh the beauty and simple elegance of the game. 9/10 for me.