fable

I’m a gamer and my favourite genre is RPGs. Naturally I’ve been looking (and looking and looking) for a good RPG for the XBox. I was hoping Fable could fill this void but I’m sadly disappointed. First the upside. The game is visually stunning and most of the interface is decent. The character advancement is flexible and allows a lot of freedom to develop your character however you desire. I like a lot of freedom in my games. If I want to do x I should be able to. This is where Fable is VERY frustrating and disappointing. While you can go where ever you want *most* of the time; once you enter a quest you *have* to complete it. You can’t save and you can’t come back to it. It is success or fail.

This is even more frustrating when you are forced to do some lame activity to advance in the game. Such as when you are in jail and have to win a running race to see the warden. It is *horrible!!*. I get stuck on walls, the character walks most of the time (I thought he was a hero??!) and it can’t be skipped or avoided. You have to complete it to advance. Another irksome thing is not being able to config the keypad layout. Yes, can assign behaviours etc. to certain joystick movements but can’t move your core abilities around such as magic, attack defend and power attack. I dunno. By reading what the game was going to be about I thought it would allow a lot of freedom in the gameplay. While the combat, graphics and characters are all very interesting – i can’t get the shortcomings out of my mind. Good effort but I’m still disappointed.