Fable is what you get when you put disappointment, total letdown, and a game developer with low standards into one game
User Rating: 5.8 | Fable XBOX
Some say it just didn't live up to the hype, but that isn't true, Fable deserves a 9+ for the first 10 hours, but after that it is just plain mediocre, Fable is a simply good game, whose developers were too incompetent to make it great. The gameplay in Fable is that of a poor quality RPG and an action adventure game combined. The actual RPG elements in Fable are, well, awful, not worthy of any compliment whatsoever. There aren't enough spells, and the abilities you level up in won't help you in your adventure (even though it isn't big enough to be called an adventure) half as much as they should. The combat is very fun, but a point will come when you realize, "Wait, What did leveling up my characters speed do?" The answer is simple, nothing worth mentioning. The combat in Fable is far too action based, even though it is very enjoyable, when your skill is so much more important than that of your character, what is the point? Fable also has a mediocre atmosphere, which is caused by horrible voice acting, bad graphics, and an overall mood that just doesn't fit with what you would expect. Fable has (or at least seems to have) a very serious point to it, but the actual game isn't serious at all, it's filled with bad jokes, corniness, and well, need I say more? The fairly good graphics in Fable are also overwhelmingly cartoonish. There is a proposterous amount of light bloom, and even worse, the environments have so much unneccessary detail that you have to go through a long loading screen every time you go into a new area. This is possibly the least mature game to ever to carry the M-rating. And how this hurts the game is that on the rare ocasions when it tries to be serious, you can't take it seriously at all. Even worse for the presentation is the horrible, obvious choices you have to make in Fable, in fact, the good/evil system in general is very bad, because it feels like the game expects you to be good. The other side of the moral spectrum is incredibly boring because when you go on a villager killing spree they don't even run, they just sit there, cringing in terror. When the guards finnally come, they're easy to beat, and guess what happens if you go outside of the area through a painfully long loading zone and then come back? You aren't even in trouble anymore! Fable doesn't just have a mediocre value, it expects to, which is obvious from the fact that your character's hair turns white after ten hours of play. Want to make a new character? No, it just isn't fun, whether you're good or evil, whatever choices you make, you'll just do the same things over and over again! When Peter Molyneux apologized for Fable, he said it was the best game Lionhead could make. I don't believe that. I believe that it could have been a better game if they had focused on the better features like family life, world size, and the main quest to name just a few. Instead of adding pointless and/or stupid ones like being able to drink until you puke, or running into just TOO many travelers in the middle of the forest, or filling the game with (as the award for "light bloomiest game of 2004" states) an obsessive amount of light bloom. Instead of making the major parts of the game large, Lionhead decided to implement a different feature every week of development (I don't doubt it). How hard is it to understand that making a main quest longer than 10 hours is more important than including decapitation? How unobvious is it that working on more spells and making a better system for leveling up is more important than adding more retarded demon doors that say things like "If you're fat I'll open!". In fact, I wouldn't have even cared if there had been no chicken kicking. I wouldn't have cared if there hadn't been a place where you could turn instantly good and instantly evil. Because every feature is so shallow, you can't help but feel that the game lacks the amount of content necessary for this kind of RPG. Even if it doesn't. Because of all these features that feel unfinished, or pointless, or both, Fable is made nothing but what it could of been and should have been instead of what it was. Now that that is over with, I'd really like to compliment this game on the feel of it, the gameplay, and the addiction that you'll have for it while it lasts. I really do recommend this game, I'm just not throwing out piles of praise for it. Trust me, it's enjoyable, but sometimes you might just feel like it's too small. And, considering the fact that it has been in development for 4 years, it is very small. I think that there is just too much flash and far too little substance than there should be. Nonetheless, I recommend it to anyone who likes open RPGs (and has low standards. And I highly recommend it to any poor confused creature who loves rpgs and owns nothing but an Xbox. 
