Why Fable 2 is Garbage
I was planning on ranting about everything wrong with Fable 2 and why it is utter rubbish, when, lo and behold, I discovered that Zero Punctuation has already done it for me. So let’s all go watch it instead, while eating tea and crumpets.
Ok, I guess I can’t quite get away with being that lazy and I have a few other things I wanted to mention, anyways. My biggest complaint is the abortion of a coop mode that isn’t even worth playing. Normally what you would expect from coop would be two (or more) players with full control as if they were playing single player, except they are playing in the same game and can therefore ridicule each other for every tiny mistake like the socially inept cretins we are. Instead, you get two players who must both be on screen at all times (even over Live) and largely no control over the camera.
The camera is pointed at a fixed position between your two characters and neither player has any control over it with the right stick. Supposedly either player can reorient it with the left bumper, but neither my friend nor I cared to play long enough to figure that out. Both players are also confined to a space about the size of a college dorm room before you run into an invisible wall preventing either of you from making any further forward progress. It feels a good deal like trying to play football while chained at the neck to your partner with 4 feet of razor wire and wearing blinders. I supposed I should have expected something like this when I heard they needed a release day patch to get it to work at all.
So now that the main reason I paid money for this game has been cruelly denied me, let’s investigate the single player and see if there is anything we can salvage from the $60 I just wasted. Let’s start with the dog. The only real use he serves is to find treasure chests full of worthless junk and to find dig spots with, you guessed it, more worthless junk. They tried to work him into a quest or two, where the dog is supposed to track someone or something through a completely linear dungeon and they even still have the magical Golden Brick Road™ to show you where to go (except for the Archeology quests). In another case of pandering to casual gamers (read: drooling, mouthbreathing retards), every time the dog wants you to do something, it barks (which is good, since he can easily be off screen) and displays an accompanying bright, large icon over his head (Completely disrupting any sense of immersion you may have had. This is bad). God forbid you miss a few trinkets at the start while learning that when the dog barks and runs off someplace it wants you to follow it. I’m not trying to say that catering to casual gamers is inherently bad, but maybe you can use a slightly smaller hammer to bludgeon them with next time, Captain Obvious.
I also thought it strange that the main pursuit of Fable 2, combat, was so bland and boring (cast Time Control, charge up a big spell, kill everything), whereas the combat in a game like Assassin’s Creed, where the point was to avoid getting into fights, was so much deeper and more fulfilling. Eventually, they throw a few meager excuses for puzzles at you, but it seems as if they thought better of it after trying it once or twice and gave up. I guess those two elements are really just indicative of the game as a whole. Disappointing, half-assed and unpolished.
