I'll call this a half-review simply because I played a reasonable amount of this game, and enough to get the meat of the game down, but not the entire thing. I'll explain below.
Gameplay: 4.0
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
Fable 3 is obviously going to be the most similar to Fable 2. They share gameplay mechanics, such as a tag-along dog, speech systems, finding treasure, etc.
All of the Fable games have had 3 main methods of attacking - melee, ranged and magic attacks. In Fable 1 and 2, these mechanics were good. Overall, Fable has never been an overly fun game during combat, but the speech systems, relationships, exploration and everything else added together made it reasonably good.
I thought Fable 2's worst aspect of their combat was that there was no dying, so it felt worthless to care about efficiency or trying to actually win. You could always just as easily press one button over and over until the battle is over. Still, that didn't totally set in until the very end of the game, so I was still having fun with their combat. They threw unique challenges at you, at points, and it worked okay.
Fable 3's combat is even less interesting. You still cannot die, but the systems for healing, changing spells and fighting quickly are all so bad. The melee combat is as slow as ever, whereas in most 3rd-person whirl and slash fighting games, your character is fast and it's more fun that way. But, no, your character is terribly slow in every combat mode - melee, ranged and magic. The combat is supposed to be the meat and potatoes of the game, but fighting sequences are infrequent, and quite boring even when they come up. I played this game for about 6 hours and still never figured out how to switch magic spells, even though I owned several.
In fact, this entire game plays at a slug's pace. I found myself almost falling asleep while playing, mostly because either nothing is happening, or I'm spending more time navigating their game trying to find something that should be as simple as an inventory screen. For the first several hours, the game dips into a stage where basically nothing interesting happens for about 6 hours. You find yourself doing nothing but walking around, dressing up, being forced to work their jobs where you press a button as it tells you to press it. I mean, come on.. you've had how many years to refine Fable and this is what it's turned into? Putting on a chicken suit and walking around for an hour straight?
There are so many ways they went out of their way to slow the game down, too. For example - in any game, when you press "start", what happens? You go to a pause menu. What happens in Fable 3? You go to some sanctuary and your menus are turned into an explorable area. It might sound cool, but in reality you go into a menu for quick data retrieval/modification. And there's nothing interesting to do in there, since it's all normal information a game would contain in it's pause menu.
Going along with this "slowing the game down" theme, in Fable 1 and 2, your conversation system was simply pressing a couple buttons and doing an expression that one or more people can see. You get more expressions throughout the game, and you can use any one of them pretty much at any time. Welcome Fable 3 and your 1-on-1 conversation system in which you can do only 1 of 2 expressions at a time, and every one of them takes FOREVER. How much fun is standing around, holding the A button for 10 seconds, releasing it, then repeat, having no choice over what expressions you're able to do? I know! Let's make the conversation system slower, less interactive and far less rewarding!
There are even parts of the game where you have to press a button to talk to somebody, accept a quest, etc. But, some of them require you to simply press a button, and others require you to press and hold A for around 3 seconds, THEN release it. I know this sounds nitpicky, but add up this, their lack of anything interesting throughout the game, boring conversations, boring combat, and a menu that takes several minutes to navigate (because you have to walk around in it and wait for it to load) and you've got a slow, boring, tedious game.
And now you know why I couldn't play this entire game. It is easily one of the most boring games I've ever played.
Presentation: 9.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
Fable has always looked good for it's time. Fable 3's environments in particular are beautiful. They play just like a storybook, which goes along with their theme. Very good in-game music. Upon first glance and for a majority of the time, the game looks and sounds great.
Fable has always been behind in the character modeling (particularly the face) and speaking animations. Fable 3's facial animations, particularly when trying to sync them with dialogue, are pretty bad.
Theatrics: 7.0
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
Fable 3's story is about you, a younger brother to the king of Albion. You're the good brother, and the king is a jerk, of course! It actually starts off pretty well, and I was interested to see where it went. But after about the first 30 minutes, the story makes less and less sense, and the characters continue to get less interesting as more are introduced. Like a lot of sequels, the story seems tacked on to promote the same gameplay, without doing the exact same thing. Compared to Fable 2, this story seems thrown together.
Some parts of the game require you to do side-quest material in order to advance, for whatever reason, and some of the side quests are just stupid. I finally quit playing when the latest quests I had done were putting on a chicken suit and clucking at chickens, and then betting on those chickens racing against one another. Riveting story material, for sure...
Controls: 5.0
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
Fable still doesn't seem to understand that a first-person view usually sets the right stick to your camera/aiming. Still, after 3 games, they don't get it.
Their lack of information on how to play the game is astounding. Like I had mentioned, I bought several magic spells and was never told how to switch. The inability to access an inventory screen is ridiculous. Setting the pause menu to anything but a menu is distracting, pointless and betrays your sense of normality. The pause menu is ACTUALLY the Xbox button, so you have to open your Xbox menu, then close it, so you can save or modify options. I actually found it by mistake. What a mess.
Whoever designed these controls probably thought they were making the game simpler and doing something unique, but no. They weren't. They were screwing off and going against all norms when it comes to this generation's expectations. DON'T DO IT.
Replay Value: 3.0
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
I didn't even have the patience to wade through this boring game enough to get to more than a couple towns. I have no idea how I would be inspired to play it more than once if I can't even play it once, halfway through. If I bought this game and this is what I got, I'd be pissed.
Fun: 3.0
What were the most and least fun parts of the game? Overall, how much fun is the game?
My god, this game is boring. And I mean, I've played boring parts of plenty of games and pushed through it, but this game is EXCEPTIONALLY boring. During most of the quests you find yourself doing nothing but walking from point A to point B. Having to walk through a menu screen is just... fail, in every way. Combat is slow and less inspired than any of the 3 games. Conversation systems are worse than ever. I don't know how you have this long to work on the Fable idea, and boil it down to walking around, wearing different outfits and listening to people jabber on about absolutely nothing interesting.
It might seem like I'm being a little mean and judgmental, because if this weren't named Fable I might go a little easier on it. But any game series that has been around for more than 5 years should have a good idea of the direction they want to go, and have a refined, quality product by now. Fable 3 is by far the worst in the series, and it felt like they didn't even try to make a good game. This game feels more like a sociological experiment rather than an entertaining product. So, I feel justified when I crucify this game. It deserves it.
My Overall Rating: 3.5
Complexity Level: Confused beyond belief. I honestly can't tell if they wanted casual gamers to play this, or wanted to appeal to both experience levels. It seems like it's suited for casual gamers more than anybody, but when you don't explain anything and betray all conventions when it comes to video games, you're going to get people sitting and wondering what they are supposed to do. So, I don't know how to classify this other than: no matter who you are, you'll wonder what the developers of this game were smoking. The answer is probably vacuum cleaner dust.
Gameplay: 4.0
Unique gameplay concepts - What drives the game, and what is it similar to?
Fable 3 is obviously going to be the most similar to Fable 2. They share gameplay mechanics, such as a tag-along dog, speech systems, finding treasure, etc.
All of the Fable games have had 3 main methods of attacking - melee, ranged and magic attacks. In Fable 1 and 2, these mechanics were good. Overall, Fable has never been an overly fun game during combat, but the speech systems, relationships, exploration and everything else added together made it reasonably good.
I thought Fable 2's worst aspect of their combat was that there was no dying, so it felt worthless to care about efficiency or trying to actually win. You could always just as easily press one button over and over until the battle is over. Still, that didn't totally set in until the very end of the game, so I was still having fun with their combat. They threw unique challenges at you, at points, and it worked okay.
Fable 3's combat is even less interesting. You still cannot die, but the systems for healing, changing spells and fighting quickly are all so bad. The melee combat is as slow as ever, whereas in most 3rd-person whirl and slash fighting games, your character is fast and it's more fun that way. But, no, your character is terribly slow in every combat mode - melee, ranged and magic. The combat is supposed to be the meat and potatoes of the game, but fighting sequences are infrequent, and quite boring even when they come up. I played this game for about 6 hours and still never figured out how to switch magic spells, even though I owned several.
In fact, this entire game plays at a slug's pace. I found myself almost falling asleep while playing, mostly because either nothing is happening, or I'm spending more time navigating their game trying to find something that should be as simple as an inventory screen. For the first several hours, the game dips into a stage where basically nothing interesting happens for about 6 hours. You find yourself doing nothing but walking around, dressing up, being forced to work their jobs where you press a button as it tells you to press it. I mean, come on.. you've had how many years to refine Fable and this is what it's turned into? Putting on a chicken suit and walking around for an hour straight?
There are so many ways they went out of their way to slow the game down, too. For example - in any game, when you press "start", what happens? You go to a pause menu. What happens in Fable 3? You go to some sanctuary and your menus are turned into an explorable area. It might sound cool, but in reality you go into a menu for quick data retrieval/modification. And there's nothing interesting to do in there, since it's all normal information a game would contain in it's pause menu.
Going along with this "slowing the game down" theme, in Fable 1 and 2, your conversation system was simply pressing a couple buttons and doing an expression that one or more people can see. You get more expressions throughout the game, and you can use any one of them pretty much at any time. Welcome Fable 3 and your 1-on-1 conversation system in which you can do only 1 of 2 expressions at a time, and every one of them takes FOREVER. How much fun is standing around, holding the A button for 10 seconds, releasing it, then repeat, having no choice over what expressions you're able to do? I know! Let's make the conversation system slower, less interactive and far less rewarding!
There are even parts of the game where you have to press a button to talk to somebody, accept a quest, etc. But, some of them require you to simply press a button, and others require you to press and hold A for around 3 seconds, THEN release it. I know this sounds nitpicky, but add up this, their lack of anything interesting throughout the game, boring conversations, boring combat, and a menu that takes several minutes to navigate (because you have to walk around in it and wait for it to load) and you've got a slow, boring, tedious game.
And now you know why I couldn't play this entire game. It is easily one of the most boring games I've ever played.
Presentation: 9.0
Graphical and audio presentation (animation, texturing, overall look & artistic style)
Fable has always looked good for it's time. Fable 3's environments in particular are beautiful. They play just like a storybook, which goes along with their theme. Very good in-game music. Upon first glance and for a majority of the time, the game looks and sounds great.
Fable has always been behind in the character modeling (particularly the face) and speaking animations. Fable 3's facial animations, particularly when trying to sync them with dialogue, are pretty bad.
Theatrics: 7.0
Story, Dialogue, Cut-Scenes and Artistic Use of Camera
Fable 3's story is about you, a younger brother to the king of Albion. You're the good brother, and the king is a jerk, of course! It actually starts off pretty well, and I was interested to see where it went. But after about the first 30 minutes, the story makes less and less sense, and the characters continue to get less interesting as more are introduced. Like a lot of sequels, the story seems tacked on to promote the same gameplay, without doing the exact same thing. Compared to Fable 2, this story seems thrown together.
Some parts of the game require you to do side-quest material in order to advance, for whatever reason, and some of the side quests are just stupid. I finally quit playing when the latest quests I had done were putting on a chicken suit and clucking at chickens, and then betting on those chickens racing against one another. Riveting story material, for sure...
Controls: 5.0
Ease of Use and Smoothness of Controls
Fable still doesn't seem to understand that a first-person view usually sets the right stick to your camera/aiming. Still, after 3 games, they don't get it.
Their lack of information on how to play the game is astounding. Like I had mentioned, I bought several magic spells and was never told how to switch. The inability to access an inventory screen is ridiculous. Setting the pause menu to anything but a menu is distracting, pointless and betrays your sense of normality. The pause menu is ACTUALLY the Xbox button, so you have to open your Xbox menu, then close it, so you can save or modify options. I actually found it by mistake. What a mess.
Whoever designed these controls probably thought they were making the game simpler and doing something unique, but no. They weren't. They were screwing off and going against all norms when it comes to this generation's expectations. DON'T DO IT.
Replay Value: 3.0
Total Gameplay Time versus Expected
I didn't even have the patience to wade through this boring game enough to get to more than a couple towns. I have no idea how I would be inspired to play it more than once if I can't even play it once, halfway through. If I bought this game and this is what I got, I'd be pissed.
Fun: 3.0
What were the most and least fun parts of the game? Overall, how much fun is the game?
My god, this game is boring. And I mean, I've played boring parts of plenty of games and pushed through it, but this game is EXCEPTIONALLY boring. During most of the quests you find yourself doing nothing but walking from point A to point B. Having to walk through a menu screen is just... fail, in every way. Combat is slow and less inspired than any of the 3 games. Conversation systems are worse than ever. I don't know how you have this long to work on the Fable idea, and boil it down to walking around, wearing different outfits and listening to people jabber on about absolutely nothing interesting.
It might seem like I'm being a little mean and judgmental, because if this weren't named Fable I might go a little easier on it. But any game series that has been around for more than 5 years should have a good idea of the direction they want to go, and have a refined, quality product by now. Fable 3 is by far the worst in the series, and it felt like they didn't even try to make a good game. This game feels more like a sociological experiment rather than an entertaining product. So, I feel justified when I crucify this game. It deserves it.
My Overall Rating: 3.5
Complexity Level: Confused beyond belief. I honestly can't tell if they wanted casual gamers to play this, or wanted to appeal to both experience levels. It seems like it's suited for casual gamers more than anybody, but when you don't explain anything and betray all conventions when it comes to video games, you're going to get people sitting and wondering what they are supposed to do. So, I don't know how to classify this other than: no matter who you are, you'll wonder what the developers of this game were smoking. The answer is probably vacuum cleaner dust.
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