Fable Xbox Review

Title: Fable .............................................. Publisher: Microsoft .............................................. Developer: Big Blue Box .............................................. Release: September 2004 .............................................. Xbox Live: Yes .............................................. ESBR: Mature ..............................................

Fable can be considered great in many respects. It is after all, the first game to let be good or evil and have people act accordingly to your presence. It allowed for a wide variety of options to customize your character. It basically allowed you to be what ever you wanted. So, why then, are people upset by this game? Because they didn’t get all that was promised. Don’t get me wrong this game is amazingly good, but it didn’t deliver on everything it was once hyped to have.

Length was another problem with this game for most people. Clocking at less than 20 hours with everything completed is not a good sign, especially for diehard RPG fans. For me, this wasn’t much of a problem. I don’t play too many RPG’s so I’m not used to 50+ hour games, but I can definitely see why this problem would arise with other people.

Gameplay
The game play in Fable is fairly intuitive. You can cast spells, fire a bow, or swing your sword without much hesitation or without using to many buttons. This is both a strong point and weak point for Fable. It’s strong because it allows you to be able to use any sort of attack quickly and easily. It’s weak because options are then cut back on to be able to keep the controls simple. Not a big problem right? Unfortunately that’s not all that plague’s this game.

Graphics
Graphics are really good and really bad in this game. The environments look great and are quite varied. I would sometimes just walk from one town to another just so I can walk through the environments and see how they change. The character models on the other hand, were quite a different story. Your character looks very well done and looks like there was a lot of time put into him. As for the rest of the people you meet on your quest, they looked almost thrown in as an after thought. They were plain and boring as well. There wasn’t a whole of variety in the people from town to town or even house to house. You’ve seen one brunette bachelorette, you’ve seen them all.

Sound
The sound in Fable was amazing. The music fits it perfectly, the swords clang when they should, the bow sounds like you would expect. It’s just all around good. My only problem with the sound in this game is after you get a wife, the sounds just don’t sound right sometimes and are quite repetitive.

Overall
So we’ve gone through some of the problems this game has and your wondering if it’s actually worth that hard earned $50. The truth of the matter is, it’s worth every penny. This game, though not the genre defining, mind blowing game it was hyped to be, is FUN. The mere fact that you can just go and decimate a town or save a traveler from bandits, or both, is amazingly cool. There are so many ways to play through this game, and though none will affect the story much, it’s worth going through 2 or 3 times just see what differences do turn up.

9.3 Overall Score  Fun 9.2  Gameplay 9.3  Graphics 9.2  Sound 9.6  Replay 9.4

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Xbox Core Rating System