I'm a Fable fanboy. I loved the first game, have replayed it multiple times on both my Xbox and my 360. I got caught up in the hype and watched all of the video diaries and downloaded the Pub Games early. I even eschewed the various gold glitches that shipped with the Pub Games downloads to "preserve my Fable II experience."
I was also intimately familiar with Molyneux's bloated sense of what was possible and penchant for exaggeration so I tried to keep my expectations in check. Still, on launch day, I tracked a copy down and jumped right in. What follows are my impressions after a week of play and a cautionary tale to those observers considering a first foray into the Fable universe.
My first session with Fable II was pretty sweet. There are some things that they do pretty well that made up for what I thought were some significant changes from the first one. In the spirit of "if it isn’t broke, don't fix it" I assumed that the sweet combat system and magic use from the first would be preserved, I was wrong.
The one-button combat control is tedious and dumb. The lack of ability to manage your spells without layers of menus is clunky and dumb. I was already disappointed in the Pub Games changes. Coin golf and a few of the others were highlights for me in the first one. Straight gambling is just not that appealing for me within a video game.
However, even with those knocks, the art style has always been appealing to me. The first story was so good I figured this would rock as well. The dog is the shit. Having him changes everything and is an awesome mechanic that was really well executed. The prospect and execution of differing jobs was handled pretty well. The world is an order of magnitude more open than Fable, where they really had you on rails. The Pub Games concept is so innovative that I believe it will eventually lead to a quantum shift in Xbox Live's interactions with games. The co-op is mildly entertaining and the "fuzzy orb" mechanic of finding and joining friends is a real revolution in gaming. Co-op keeps you in the main story-line which is interesting but the execution is where things really fell apart for me.
Like a lot of others on the Lionhead forums, once I downloaded and played the co-op patch all hell broke loose. Initial co-op play went as Lionhead planned (I assume), but, the next time I logged on I kept getting complete lock-ups that necessitated me manually shutting off my 360 in order to do anything. A new game start and a fresh download of the patch did not help. I eventually "fixed" this issue by uninstalling the first day patch, clearing my cache and playing off of Xbox Live. I did an extensive search of the Lionhead Forums on the 23rd and desultory one today and have not found any definitive statement from Lionhead about the issue or any possible resolution. I have found that the problem is getting picked up by other gaming sites and reported, but nobody is doing any definitive testing or coming up with even a catalogue of the various places where this is occurring.
This is sure to get more muddled before a fix is announced. People are even claiming RRoD are happening as a result of some Fable II bug. I am not ready to go there yet, but just dealing with the one issue has led me to scrutinize the game pretty carefully. Bottom line is, its buggy. Others have reported game-ending glitches with single player mission play. Even when it works the multi-player has some serious flaws. Not being able to play as your own character in others' worlds may be forgivable. GTA IV couldn't pull it off. However, Rockstar at least fixed the issues with the camera and play style that made GTA: San Andreas co-op a laughable, tacked on POS. The cameras in Fable II co-op have that same sense from GTA:SA- that they couldn't figure out a way to make it work for both players, so they added a bad compromise that made two people equally unhappy. Artifacts are still getting trapped on my screen, and I'm only seeing the minor ones people are reporting. Graphics problems and animation issues are rife. NPC's are stuck in walls. I keep getting hung up on boulders that are several feet away. Combat is dull due to the limited animations and the awful menu mechanic just destroys the immersive feel of the game.
The game is also just way too easy.
Anyone that plays Halo with me knows, I'm not hardcore. Anything. I'm a casual gamer, I play Rockband on medium, I play COD 4 on Normal, and I’m a Staff Captain for God's sake. I like winning easily and getting a few Achievements and then getting back to sucking at Halo ASAP. So if I'm saying the game is too easy, I can only imagine what real hardcore gamers would think.
None of these negative revelations might have been apparent to me (I certainly would not have written about them) if it were not for the horrible performance of the infamous Day One Co-op patch. It is just far too easy to extrapolate the hasty reaction at Lionhead Studios to the public outcry that rose up when they floated a tester that co-op would not ship with the disc.
Studio Grunt: I just can't see us getting to gold with Co-op on board and still meeting the deadline.
Studio Suit: We'll just have to patch it later.
M$: We'll just have to pay you later than, or maybe not at all.
Studio Suit: I meant we'll patch it later that day.
Studio Grunt: I'm telling you we can't deliver a viable product on that time...
Studio Suit: *whispers* Just cobble something together and get it done- It's an election year and the economy is in the crapper, we can ride that news cycle for weeks without worrying about it working.
M$: What?
Studio Suit: Oh nothing.
I've read a lot of positive experiences playing the game. Even people with the issues I am having are finishing their posts with "I hope they fix this soon, I love the game and just want to play it." Molyneux and Lionhead have beta tested on me before though, and I'm not going to buy Fable II: The Other Lost Chapters. My final recommendation is if you loved Fable, wait till they fix this one before you buy it. If you have never played it and are considering it, find a used copy of Fable instead.
