OK. The last few months have turned out to be amazing in terms of gaming and I don’t think it will stop just yet, with Fallout 3 on the Horizon, Farcry 2 actually here RIGHT NOW (!!!) and Little Big Planet screaming at me to sell one of my kidneys and finally get my hands on a PS3. Saying all this, I promise the NEXT entry I write won't be about computer games but, as we are truly in the golden age of interactive entertainment, it seems foolish of me not to get in on the action.
Fable 2 is a 3rd person RPG game set in a rural backdrop which looks something like an idyllic version of England before the industrial revolution. The game world is stunningly beautiful as are the inhabitants of the world itself. The game veers away from your usual Orc, Goblin, Dwarf RPG archetype in favour of bandits, slavers, shadows and Hobbes (said to be monsters created from little children that are stolen away in the night by monsters). Expect to use a variety of spells, swords and guns to hack and slash your way through a mass of enemies and, depending on how you play, friendly villagers too.Most of the quests in the game are designed to have an impact on your "good" or "evil" personality, your character changing as you make these decisions in the game. If you make mostly evil decisions you will gradually start to look evil and demonic. Most of this is very familiar to the Black & White games and obviously the Fable predecessor. Some of the biggest changes for me came with the buying and selling of property to generate your income, the ability to hike up the prices on the shops you own if you are evil or lower them if you are a benevolent saint.
Other facets of the game include the ability to buy a home and raise a family (or multiple families). Players can contract STD's from sleeping with prostitutes. You can have children and even become king by eventually owning all the shops and pubs in the land.
This game is seriously addictive. It is playable to the extreme, allowing it to be accessible to players with little experience in RPG gaming. This does however make it incredibly easy for someone who has played Oblivion or Warcraft but no less addictive and fun as a result.
Things I Liked
GFX: This game has fantastic graphics, especially on the backdrops the opening scenes are amazing, especially when you make it to the rural town of Oakvale.
Narrative: The story is very well told (narrated by Zoe Wannamaker) and ties in nicely with the first game, while not requiring you to know too much about it at all. The story is good, if a little obvious to see where it is going from the outset but it is written well enough to get you hooked from the beginning and pull you through to the end.
Playable: The Ranged, Melee and Magical combat are assigned to one button each, a fairly unique combat system sits behind all of this allowing the player to come up with a few simple combos.
Things I Didn't Like
Too Easy: The game is incredibly easy. You could defend it by saying it is designed to be fun for players of all skill levels, and it is, but seasoned gamers will have little trouble rattling through this. Some people will tell you it is also too short but I don't think this is the case. If you want to, the core story thread is there to play through in about 14-15 hours but there is so much other stuff to do in the mean time that you should be able to pad it out easily to 25-30 hours. Then I guess you have to play both good and evil sides of the story which could double that. OK... maybe it is a bit on the short side too.
Too Short: Haha
Casting System: Is very poor. The fact you need to charge up EVERY spell before you can use it means that a lot of the direct damage spells become pointless as you only get to cast against one target before the rest of them are on you. Better to just chop people up with your sword.
Maps: What maps? The only map you'll find for the regions of the game is tiny and you'll only ever see it when you are actually in that region. I managed to get by but this feature was sorely lacking in the game.
Casting System: Is very poor. The fact you need to charge up EVERY spell before you can use it means that a lot of the direct damage spells become pointless as you only get to cast against one target before the rest of them are on you. Better to just chop people up with your sword.
Maps: What maps? The only map you'll find for the regions of the game is tiny and you'll only ever see it when you are actually in that region. I managed to get by but this feature was sorely lacking in the game.
Shepherds Bush on a Sunday evening. A lively place filled with sounds of pint glasses clinking in the pubs, revellers denying the end of another blissful weekend. Red double decker busses create guttural rumbles as they ferry throngs of Londoners across a sprawling city that never sleeps. But tonight a new sound joins the evening chorus. Tonight the sound of a dying rancor echoes across the rooftops, the crackle of force lightning arcs down the streets and the sizzling pop of lightsabre on storm trooper startles a city fox rummaging in the bins outside
Although I don't pretend to be a hardcore fan of the Star Wars universe, I enjoyed the movies a great deal, I've read a couple of the books and I have played a variety of the Lucas Arts games set in the Star Wars universe so I had a good idea of the standards I should be expecting from this title. As is true with most of the games, books, comics and movies that are set in the Star Wars universe, The Force Unleashed is enriched by a
huge amount of Star Wars "lore" and back story. "TFU" is set just after "Episode III" and follows a young "apprentice" of Darth Vader as he is sent out to destroy Jedi that survived Order 66 (the order to kill all Jedi, given by the Emperor to the clone troopers). The story takes the player to a variety of new locations and to a few very familiar ones. You can expect non stop action from the minute you start the game, as a special treat, the player gets to sample the true power of the dark side by playing the first level as Lord Vader himself!
The game is played from a 3rd person perspective and is primarily a hack and slash through fairly linear levels. When I say linear, it's not "on rails" but there is clearly only one way to progress through the level, although there are opportunities to explore hard-to-reach areas along the way to discover powerups, lightsabre crystals and experience. The level backdrops look beautiful and most of the time they react when you use your force powers. The force powers themselves are activated by single button pushe
s and can be worked into lightsabre combos very easily with dramatic effect. The control system is very intuitive and soon after completing the first level, you should be hacking, slashing, blasting and electrocuting your way through scores of soldiers, wookies, tanks, rancors, miscellaneous aliens and Jedi.
Things I Liked:
Sound Effects : a full range of familiar zaps, fizzles and screams from the Lucas Arts sound department.
Combat: The combat is fluid and the control system is intuitive.
Storyline: The story is well written, the characters instantly seem like they "belong" in the Star Wars world I was completely hooked on the storyline and its characters.
DLC: A new campaign is on the way and 4 new playable characters. I hope they get new moves too. The expansion for this title has some real potential.
Things I Didn't Like:
The force powers can be difficult to control sometimes. Looking at the design of the game, I can't think of a better way they could have approached the issue with the constraints of a console joy pad. The main issue I have with it is the boss encounter which requires the mastery of the force powers to complete it. It is very frustrating and if nothing else, just highlights the issue to the player.
Too Short: I completed the game in about 3 evenings of play, granted i had a weekends worth of play too, i did feel that the game was a little too short and could have done with a few more levels of storm trooper smashing fun.
Replay Value: As I was playing the game I remember thinking, "I'm having fun, I'm going to play through this again!" there is a small element of RPG-esque character development in this game, but as you get towards the end, you should have earned enough points to pretty much max out all the skills, meaning that you aren’t forced to concentrate your characters skills in a particular field. I don’t think this is necessarily a BAD thing, it just means that every player at the end of the game will have exactly the same character, instead of one with different strengths and weaknesses, which would have been far more interesting and an incentive to play it all over again.
In Short...
I would recommend playing this game. It's fun, looks good and is quite immersive. See if you can borrow or rent it as it is short and there isn't really an incentive to buy it again. You could always get it second hand, but i think in retrospect, I would have rented it twice, once to play it through and another time later on next year when the DLC comes out.
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