Saturday, October 30, 2010

FABLE 3 - An AND (Watching) Review

I haven't been a huge fan of Fable 3 and despite playing through some of 1 and watching a bit of 2, I have found the enjoyment in the game about as much fun as reading Hero with A Thousand Faces three-fold. There is nothing wrong with the type of gameplay which Fable tries to push upon the player, and I do say push upon as if you cannot make your own decisions in the game it will actually choose them for you.
SPOILERS AHOY

One of the many choices in the game paint a black and white picture for what you can actually do in the game, the first major choice in the game is that of choosing between slaughtering an entire group of people and just a lonely wench who you met several minutes ago. The wench in question is quite an annoying sod who you meet and has very little characterisation. She's not a bad character but after the question on who to slaughter, if you just leave it, your decision is chosen for you, almost completely tossing the autonomy out the window. A tad of a shame if you went to take a brief piss and were thinking of killing the wench mid-tinkle.
Of course, the biggest problem that I (and alot more intelligent people had) are two things which seemed to occur in the first two Fable games.
1) Peter Molyneux's ass should not come with lips.
Peter Molyneux is a bit like the strange Tsar no one talks about in the gaming world. We all know he's there just watching every now and then just to come out of his chambers to say something go back in, take a dump, present it as a gift to the people and then go back inside to mold it with a few other people and then present it as a piece of art. But alas, this is my hyperbolic opinion and lack of knowing what a tsar actually is.
Peter's got props for founding one of the greatest game companies and creating one of the greatest games of all time, but his head is so far up his ass when it comes to promises, you'd think he gets paid every time he says a game will have some magical feature, which he does, the rich intelligent money-making bastard. It'd be nice for him to promise to have a game with little glitches...
2) Glitch is something only acceptable in music.
One of the biggest problems I had with the first Fable was the poor loading, the mis-matched lips to the acting and the missing pieces of scenes which seemed to sometimes overlay themselves and sound like an Aphex Twin song with a Disney film. Not to say they didn't fix it eventually, but when you're forking out a large amount of money for a (supposed) triple-A title (A$100 or US$60) then it's quite expected to get a FULL game and not something a designer just decided to lean back and say 'yeah that'll do'. You wouldn't get away with this shit in the cartridge age.
Whilst I actually wanted to play/see Fable 3 for one thing and one thing only and didn't get to see it I would be a blind dickhead and say OH IT WAS A TERRIBLE GAME OMG DON'T FUCKING PLAY THIS GAME, but in all seriousness, the game has pitch-perfect voice acting, a visual treat (the opening looked and felt like a PIXAR short), full of humour, an amazing soundtrack, a fairly tongue-in-cheek and interesting attitude towards love, trust and politics which plays perfect into the gameplay. It's a good game, but really not my taste.
Mainly coz I don't have time, money or a good comprehension on games journalism.
Now stare at a man who has all of those things and many more...He is God....

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