G-pinions

I have no idea how to write about Fable. It took me around 20 hours to win the game and I was very disappointed when it was finally over. The last 3 hours I found myself running from town to town, trying to do anything to eek a few more hours of entertainment out of it. I clearly had fun playing this - it took me less than a week to get through it - and I even found myself sitting in class thinking about what I was going to do in Albion when I finally went home.

But, even with some good moments in the game, it really wasn’t very good at all. The combat was choppy at best, the graphics were technically impressive but unimaginative, there was no challenge to speak of in either combat or puzzle solving, the story would have been better if it was completely omitted, and there is no replay value at all. In fact, I can’t think of even one aspect of this game that would receiving a grade higher than “average” from me.

You can see the bind I’m in now.

And the worst of it is how this column is practically mirroring Nick’s last post about Knights of the Old Republic. Granted, Nick did at least have some love for KotOR for the first half of the game whereas I had to put up with the abundant amount of frustration Fable served up for almost all of my 20 hours of gaming. Though the first hour was amazing, it went downhill in every way after that. Anyway, no one wants to sound like Nick. And even fewer people want to reread something Nick wrote.

So, I’m going to try and explain the reasons I so feverishly tore through this game.

First, as hit or miss as the combat system is (get it? Hit or miss? Because the targeting sucks…) it really is fun to kill people. Some of the best parts of the game are when you find yourself surrounded by a legion of angry enemies and you have to hack them all to bits. It may not be difficult, but I don’t always play games for a challenge.

The strategy I took into most fights was just slashing every enemy that came near me. Then, when someone was about to stab me in the back or the swarm just became too darn thick, I let loose a Force Push, throwing everyone 30 feet from me and hurting them in the process. Then, I could go after one particular enemy until I was forced to repeat the process. It may not sound terribly exciting, but when a small army of the undead is slowly closing in on you there is nothing better than blowing them all away in one swift move.

One-on-one fights were much different and, unfortunately, much easier. During a few parts of the game you face off with one big, bad foe who wants to destroy you. This is when I whip out my Nightcrawler move and destroy them without being hit. You can see this game isn’t too imaginative; the two best magical moves are stolen from Star Wars and X-Men. But, it is fun to teleport behind an enemy, stab him in the back until he faces you, then repeat. Ah, the slow, powerful boss character. They never win, do they?

And that's about it for the good stuff. Now, on to the bad!

All that stuff about good and evil is completely useless. Most people would say that it sucks because you can kill a whole town then come back later and find it repopulated and your heinous acts forgiven. I, however, think it sucked because none of the other parts of the game were any fun. Sure, you can woo and eventually marry a woman (or man) but it’s even more work then real life and way less fun. Wooing consists of just hitting a direction on the D-Pad, which causes you to flirt or give them a gift. Then you hit another button to give them a ring. So fucking boring. Couldn’t it have at least been an Ikaruga-type mini-game?

You might ask “Tom, how could this have been done better?” Well, if you aren’t going with my Ikaruga idea and want to keep the integrity of the woo in tact, there is only one solution: take it out. Why not create some more missions or write a decent story instead of wasting our time with this toned down Sims crap? I don’t play The Sims because it’s boring to live out someone else’s life when I have to face my own stupid reality anyway. Being placed in a world where I can do horrible things I wouldn’t be able to in real life, like destroy a village, is a blast. But being placed in a world where I can do things I do in real life is an exercise in tedium. Ugh… I can’t believe I wasted 10 minutes of my life trying to have sex in Fable. I feel dirty now.

Furthermore, the game is so damn limiting it may as well be Final Fantasy X-3. There is no exploration at all. None. You are confided to specific paths in the road. How did this game go from allowing you to go anywhere and do anything to holding your hand from one mission to the next? Grrr.

Anyway, I’m done ranting. I had fun, but I also love video games. I see no reason anyone else would need to play this, especially with Jade Empire only months away.