OK. So it's 2009. You may have noticed that some time has passed since my ‘just prior to buying Fable 2’ post. Well I bought it, I played it and I enjoyed it. That’s the summary. Now let’s have a little more detail. First of all I went into the game with a vision. A character I wanted to be, and to see how the game let me deliver the character. I wanted to be an ‘east end gangster’ type. Loved in my hometown of Bowerstone, (because I was kind and generous) and hated and feared elsewhere in the kingdom. I would be handsome to start, with good gangster family values, but a womanising badboy when out of town.
All went well, aside from very worrying initial doubts, when after playing for a while, I thought to myself, “Hang on. This game is boring! What’s so great about Fable 2? All I’m doing is being a blacksmith!” Then the game began to charm me. My character developed. I bought a house and got married and had a child, (verrry evil!) and Gargoyles began to abuse me. After being held captive (SPOILER ALERT!) for a decade my character became even more evil, not to mention a sex crazed alcoholic fat killer. Wow! Fable really let me do it. Gaming fun and I never really felt compelled to act contrary to how my character, as decided pre-game, should act. The sound again lived up to what I expected, although my gaming conspirator rightly criticised the initial quote, “and so the story begins” (or something) NO IT DOESN’T! It continues!!! How hard is that to do! It only begins with a new game!
OK. That quibble aside, the sound and music was very good, as was the dialogue.
Game wise the much vaunted co-op play was a joke. It’s not coop play. It’s just a chance to share a friend’s world and look about. Play is severely restricted and the camera is a pain! So co-op should have been mentioned as a tourism feature, not a gaming feature if you ask me. As that it would have been a success. As compared to co-op play in Crackdown for example? Well no. It just doesn’t compare.
I finished the game in the main, and was looking forward to continuing, but basically got darked out by Fallout 3. And that stopped my 360 gaming for the present time!
What has replaced it? Read my next blog for a blast from a long distant past (in more ways than one….)
Showing posts with label RPG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RPG. Show all posts
Monday, February 9, 2009
Friday, October 24, 2008
In Praise of Able (with an F)
I thought I would take the time "Pre-Fable 2" to look at the reception of the original Fable and what made it, in my eyes, a big success.
For a game that I loved, I thought Fable received quite a harsh critical reception, partly because I think it dared to do a variety of things differently. And I hope that Fable 2 continues along this road…but more of that at a later date!
Let’s start with the feeling I got playing (and finishing..sometimes a rare thing) Fable. Well firstly, and this is important in a game, I enjoyed it. I felt I was a hero. I wasn’t particularly challenged; in fact I thought it was fairly easy. But I enjoyed it. And I’m sure Mr. Molyneux set out to achieve that, rather than laughingly sitting at his desk stroking a white cat as I tore my hair out in frustration, crying “Why is this game so hard!” That’s right; games don’t have to be hard. In fact, one of the things that occurred to me while playing Halo 3 was that a lot of the time I didn’t feel like an invincible super-soldier, but some poor grunt who got repeatedly gunned down after going over the top. OK, I selected the difficulty and wanted a challenge, but I basically lost the vision of being the protagonist that Bungie had created.
I think this is an inevitable part of “single protagonist” shooters, where you can die. They are nearly all one man armies in the Halo, Gears of War, etc mould. One of the good things about the COD 4 single player experience was the fact (SPOILER! LOOK AWAY!) that one of your protagonists dies in the course of his mission. It lends a little mortality back to the game, and the idea of war. I think some games in the future will have the nerve to address this, and create a different feeling game, perhaps in army /war styled shooters such as Gears or the Battlefield or COD series. Why not have the players character as the general, who gives feedback on story and progress and accomplishment in between missions, while you play as a series of grunts who have to carry out the missions. The amount of corpses the player accrues can act as a score as well as giving an emotional weight to your achievements in the game. If the unit runs out of men, then maybe that mission fails. All the while the player character “General Chief” can boast of his cunctation skills in preserving his boys, or coldly pronounce that the mission was accomplished regardless of casualties. Or break down weeping, “War is Hell!”
Which leads me back to Fable. I finished it easily, and I had a blast. So much so, that I made a new character and jumped right back in vowing to do things differently this time (in fact, evilly!) The game’s enjoyment came not from the progress alone, but through the environment and the atmosphere the game conjured. In fact I can sum up my love of Fable in two words: “Chicken Chaser!” The character of the game was embodied by brave use of audio, and it still resonates today as one of the few games whose audio signature stays with me and epitomises the game (alongside the fantastic chatter of the original Halo). In fact I remember being quite angry reading an Edge magazine discussion which dared to criticise the use of audio in Fable, seeming to prefer yet more bland “thou & thee” mid Atlantic RPG speak. I hope Fable 2 continues in the path it so ably beat before, and from the few clips I have seen, it seems to do so. Its humour shone throughout the game, and was a big part in making it a comfy gaming experience that will long stick with me as a uniquely identifiable game. Chicken Chasing was not just an amusing audio clip it was a fun experience in the game, one which had nothing to do with “storyline” and “progress”. Again, Fable acted as a gaming enabler; the ability to spend time in the world mucking about, boasting in front of crowds and scaring passers by took the pressure off the player to ‘accomplish’ and progress, and let them proceed as they saw fit. Progress might be buying another house, or getting a new haircut. Either way, it was an enjoyable gaming experience, and something other games could do well to learn from.
Perhaps more games, even those not starting with an F, should make the player Able.
For a game that I loved, I thought Fable received quite a harsh critical reception, partly because I think it dared to do a variety of things differently. And I hope that Fable 2 continues along this road…but more of that at a later date!
Let’s start with the feeling I got playing (and finishing..sometimes a rare thing) Fable. Well firstly, and this is important in a game, I enjoyed it. I felt I was a hero. I wasn’t particularly challenged; in fact I thought it was fairly easy. But I enjoyed it. And I’m sure Mr. Molyneux set out to achieve that, rather than laughingly sitting at his desk stroking a white cat as I tore my hair out in frustration, crying “Why is this game so hard!” That’s right; games don’t have to be hard. In fact, one of the things that occurred to me while playing Halo 3 was that a lot of the time I didn’t feel like an invincible super-soldier, but some poor grunt who got repeatedly gunned down after going over the top. OK, I selected the difficulty and wanted a challenge, but I basically lost the vision of being the protagonist that Bungie had created.
I think this is an inevitable part of “single protagonist” shooters, where you can die. They are nearly all one man armies in the Halo, Gears of War, etc mould. One of the good things about the COD 4 single player experience was the fact (SPOILER! LOOK AWAY!) that one of your protagonists dies in the course of his mission. It lends a little mortality back to the game, and the idea of war. I think some games in the future will have the nerve to address this, and create a different feeling game, perhaps in army /war styled shooters such as Gears or the Battlefield or COD series. Why not have the players character as the general, who gives feedback on story and progress and accomplishment in between missions, while you play as a series of grunts who have to carry out the missions. The amount of corpses the player accrues can act as a score as well as giving an emotional weight to your achievements in the game. If the unit runs out of men, then maybe that mission fails. All the while the player character “General Chief” can boast of his cunctation skills in preserving his boys, or coldly pronounce that the mission was accomplished regardless of casualties. Or break down weeping, “War is Hell!”
Which leads me back to Fable. I finished it easily, and I had a blast. So much so, that I made a new character and jumped right back in vowing to do things differently this time (in fact, evilly!) The game’s enjoyment came not from the progress alone, but through the environment and the atmosphere the game conjured. In fact I can sum up my love of Fable in two words: “Chicken Chaser!” The character of the game was embodied by brave use of audio, and it still resonates today as one of the few games whose audio signature stays with me and epitomises the game (alongside the fantastic chatter of the original Halo). In fact I remember being quite angry reading an Edge magazine discussion which dared to criticise the use of audio in Fable, seeming to prefer yet more bland “thou & thee” mid Atlantic RPG speak. I hope Fable 2 continues in the path it so ably beat before, and from the few clips I have seen, it seems to do so. Its humour shone throughout the game, and was a big part in making it a comfy gaming experience that will long stick with me as a uniquely identifiable game. Chicken Chasing was not just an amusing audio clip it was a fun experience in the game, one which had nothing to do with “storyline” and “progress”. Again, Fable acted as a gaming enabler; the ability to spend time in the world mucking about, boasting in front of crowds and scaring passers by took the pressure off the player to ‘accomplish’ and progress, and let them proceed as they saw fit. Progress might be buying another house, or getting a new haircut. Either way, it was an enjoyable gaming experience, and something other games could do well to learn from.
Perhaps more games, even those not starting with an F, should make the player Able.
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