Fable 2 - Review Roundup

Another positive review for Fable 2 from Gamespot.

Albion does look really impressive. The world has a cartoony feel, which gives personality to the characters and environments. The changing weather effects are quite stunning. The noon sun makes way for an unrelenting downpour, soaking you and your poor dog as you search for a snickering gargoyle. Though there are a number of technical problems, such as people walking through each other or the excruciating load times between areas, Albion is such a charming place that you'll want to see every hidden thing. The music also sets the mood of the varied environments quite nicely. The serene strings of the grassy plains clash wonderfully with the eerie howl from the foggy swamps. The voice acting is also well done. Listening to the goofy observations of the citizens, who will happily mock your clothing to your face or shout marriage proposals from across the courtyard, keeps Fable II funny and inviting the whole way through.

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Changing this to a review roundup as there maybe a flood of them as Gamespy's review (another positive one) is up. They seem to like the combat system:

Fable II's most interesting game mechanics are the combat system. The combat system conceals a great amount of depth behind its accessible exterior. Melee combat, ranged attacks and magic are all controlled independently by a single button, but it doesn't lack in depth. You're judged on how skillfully you've defeated any particular encounter, rewarding you with bonus experience, so every battle becomes a test to improve yourself. This ratings system serves to make every combat important and worth your attention, since you'll always strive for that extra experience and the kudos for a job well done.

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Another positive and high scoring review (9.2/10) at CVG.

Fable II fixes the wrongs of the original Fable - mainly in the structure and storyline areas where at times it proved to be a bit of a mess - and fleshes out the bits that worked, like the absurd but charming social commands and simple but satisfying experience system.

After a sluggish opening the game grows into an incredibly fleshed out, absorbing adventure world where wasting your time blowing kisses at bar maids, teaching your dog to play dead and building your career as a woodcutter doesn't feel like wasted time at all.

It's still not the revolutionary piece of software Mr. M lauded it to be, but Fable II finally sees Lionhead's original concept realised, and all round it's clearly the developer's best game to date. Well done Peter, you finally did it.

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More information.

Its a cool game so far....30 minutes in havin alot of fun, looks really cool.

Very interesting - good to see that this one has delivered ... now for the PC port (and four years later, the Mac port ... seriously, Fable 1 *just* came out for Mac!)

The Gamespot video review is up if anyone wants to see it in motion.

Hehe, that dog reminds me of the old Rogue game, Nethack. I wonder if you can polymorph it into a dragon?

txa1265 said:

Very interesting - good to see that this one has delivered ... now for the PC port (and four years later, the Mac port ... seriously, Fable 1 *just* came out for Mac!)

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Get used to it if you plan on using a Mac for gamin. Also expect to pay $60 for what you would pay ~$10 for the windows version of by the time that the Mac version comes out.

Bungie was the ONLY good commercial game studio for MacOS and they may as well be dead now. (Thanks M$!)

This is why I ditched the mac MANY years ago for gamin, but at least now that they use x86 CPUs you can use WINE or just boot XP or something...

[EDIT]
Oh yeah! If you hear jobs mumble something about gaming on the Mac, ignore him. He's lieing through his teeth...
[/EDIT]

That said anyone here play it yet?

Ehh. Sounds okay I guess. I liked the combat, humor, the art style, and the simulation aspects of the first one. Sounds like this one has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses. I'll play it if it comes out for the PC I guess.

I recently saw Fable 1 - for 25 Euros in an electronics chain shoppe.

Astonishing that this price is still that high.

cutterjohn said:

Get used to it if you plan on using a Mac for gamin. Also expect to pay $60 for what you would pay ~$10 for the windows version of by the time that the Mac version comes out.

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Thanks for clue-ing me in ... my nearly 30 years using Apple products (as well as PC's) has left me in the dark

One last positive review spotted at GiantBomb.

Just slapping this link in here because it won't show at the top of the thread being included so late. Again positive, solid 4/5 nicely written review.

cutterjohn said:

Get used to it if you plan on using a Mac for gamin. Also expect to pay $60 for what you would pay ~$10 for the windows version of by the time that the Mac version comes out.

Bungie was the ONLY good commercial game studio for MacOS and they may as well be dead now. (Thanks M$!)

This is why I ditched the mac MANY years ago for gamin, but at least now that they use x86 CPUs you can use WINE or just boot XP or something...

[EDIT]
Oh yeah! If you hear jobs mumble something about gaming on the Mac, ignore him. He's lieing through his teeth...
[/EDIT]

That said anyone here play it yet?

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First off guess you never read my post and secondly the M$ thing is lame.

txa1265 said:

Thanks for clue-ing me in ... my nearly 30 years using Apple products (as well as PC's) has left me in the dark

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Didn't know that you suffered with the mac for so long . I went back to using them for a while in the late 90s, but decided that since I was already maintaining x86 machines and only using the macs for web browsing and some office work to just dump them altogether(in favor of linux/windoze x86 builds) as games just weren't showing up and the premium on macs was idiotically high, especially after they switched to x86... (I thought that you were relatively new to macs... one of the new "converts"... turned to the darkside myself as seen above... life is better overall here... and more cost effective...)

@rune_74
I know. I saw it. Didn't find it even minimally helpful. Off to c.s.i.p.g.r I guess...

That was the reason I was non-Mac for a number of years - well, not completely , I still had it running my MIDI rig. But the high cost, antiquity of Mac OS 7 & 8, and the need for me to have a PC for work and desire to actually play games all led me to skip on Macs for quite some time.

However, by the time the 'Titanium' Powerbook arrived, Apple had reasserted itself as having the absolute best build quality in notebooks - something they maintain still. And Mac OS X is so much better than Windows XP and Vista in many ways, from robustness to Unix integration to extendability to security and so on. And the ability to run WinXP and Vista on a laptop that is better built than any PC I've owned, get better performance on the PC side than similar PC laptops due to better components in the Apple, and have the ability to run all the PC stuff as well as Mac stuff ... makes it a winner.

txa1265 said:

That was the reason I was non-Mac for a number of years - well, not completely , I still had it running my MIDI rig. But the high cost, antiquity of Mac OS 7 & 8, and the need for me to have a PC for work and desire to actually play games all led me to skip on Macs for quite some time.

However, by the time the 'Titanium' Powerbook arrived, Apple had reasserted itself as having the absolute best build quality in notebooks - something they maintain still. And Mac OS X is so much better than Windows XP and Vista in many ways, from robustness to Unix integration to extendability to security and so on. And the ability to run WinXP and Vista on a laptop that is better built than any PC I've owned, get better performance on the PC side than similar PC laptops due to better components in the Apple, and have the ability to run all the PC stuff as well as Mac stuff ... makes it a winner.

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We're going offtopic now, but yes, WHEN Apple was doing ppc they HAD to have good quality and they did it with their own designs mostly, now that theymoved to x86 it seeems to me that they're living off of Intel ref designs and generic somewhat customized notebook cases like every other x86 "manufacturer". This is even more pronounced to me as I've started delving into the world of whitebox x86 notebooks and barebone x86 notebooks, as I've already specced the new macbook pro in a brebone (plus equivalent/"better" components for less than half the price minus OSX) notebooks.

...and look at this guy with a prelim pricing from a somehwt higher priced vendor
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10009297
Theoretically the ATI Radeon Mobility 3850 wipes the floor with the 9600M in the macbook pro and the barebones that I've been looking at. ((this is the compal JFL90 based notebook, cheapish polycarbonate shell, but the MSI MS-1651 with Al case is close in price, bit not from cyberpower) 9600M GT 512MB, 4GB, 320GB 7200RPM (WD) hd sata II, Vista Home Premium 64bit, P8600(2.4GHz) (cyberpower.com xplorer 7800, others are close in price) is priced at c. $1000 v. > $2k for a macbook pro, and this 3850 should be about $1150 - $1200 from the same vendors when it ships similarly equipped)

We need a new notebook(and other) hw thread I think since I'm so far offtopic now... (I started looking a few months ago at the open pandor, then netbooks, then stumbling across the fairly new whitebox/barebone notebooks...)

(Apple is the lazy guys PC now... or the guy with more money than sense... dunno who that would be today though...)

[EDIT]
As far as the lazy comment goes, I've NEVER bought a prebuilt computer in my life other than the various macs that I've owned, which have also included ALL of the notebooks that I've owned up until now. i.e. all my "windows"/PC desktops I've built from a collection of selected components, and now I'm starting to look into doing the same with notebooks... If nothing else you have complete control over the components, and usually end up saving at least some $$$ to boot...
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Fable 2 is the top selling game in the UK 3 days after release beating the likes of FIFA & Farcry 2.