Fable II

Even though I have no business buying new games when I have so many left to finish, I found myself at Best Buy last week with $15 of Reward Zone money and a copy of Fable II in my hands.

 

I know I should have resisted, but I didn't.

 

After playing for about 5 hours, some impressions:

 

- I found the game pretty "blah" at the beginning, when you're playing as a child.

 

- Once you grow up and start getting new quests, things pick up.

 

- Visuals are solid, with a nice color palette and nice lighting, but something about them keep me from being really impressed.  Some scenes are on the verge of being breathtaking, especially in the early morning with the sun filtering in through the top of trees, but it never reached that point where I sit back and am just amazed at what I am seeing.

 

- Part of the problem might be the camera.  For some reason the camera in this game bothers me and I never feel like it is in the right spot.  Can't really explain it.

 

- I'm also not terribly impressed with your character's animation.  Especially his running animation.  It doesn't really look like his feet are interacting with the ground.  And when you sprint by holding down A, you move ridiculously fast and it looks pretty bad.  Your walking animation also doesn't change at all when walking up or down stairs or slopes and this looks off.  Man I like to nitpick.

 

- Combat is fun and easy.  Pulling off combo attacks and switching between melee, range and magic attacks is simple and intuitive.

 

- Voice acting is very well done.

 

- The magical trail of light that points you in the direction of your current quest is very helpful but it really does take away from the sense of exploration and discovery.  The map system is pretty dreadful, since you have a very small map to view from the start menu and I can't seem to zoom in on it.  I would have preferred a better map system and for the light trail to be an option or as something you can bring up if you are lost.  As is though, you basically need the light trail, otherwise you won't have any idea where to go because of the lack of a decent map.

 

- The way you interact with people, by choosing different actions from a circular dial, is pretty silly and extremely shallow the more you break it down.  You can basically spam one action until you get someone to reach whatever level of "like" or "dislike" that you want.  It is great in concept, but the execution is just flawed.

 

- Your dog is very well animated, but can be a bit glitchy as well.  He tends to get stuck while trying to show you a treasure and runs around in circles when trying to get to a certain location.  Odd.

 

I'm going to stop now because I can sense I am being pretty harsh on the game.  I've actually enjoyed my time with it.  I haven't been blown away, but I've enjoyed it.  It seems to get better and draw you in the more your play.

 

Unfortunately, my playtime with it is going to really limited in the next few weeks.  I also picked up Madden on Friday and I can tell that game will take up a lot of my time (will post impressions soon) and next Tuesday is Batman: Arkham Asylym, so Fable probably don't be in my disc tray for thenext month.