Never Unplaying's First Review: Fable 2

A lot can be done in four years: a president can serve a term, a bachelor’s degree can be earned and a sequel of a unique Xbox game can be created. Thankfully, Lionhead Studios have chosen the latter and have delivered a more rewarding experience than if their Creative Director, Peter Molyneux, was President of the United States. Their smart decision has given birth to the world of Albion that is 500 years later from the original Fable. A world that is full of life wherever you go, from the bustling towns to the dreary swamps and each thing you do affects that world. Finally, that decision also made a game that surpasses Fable in every way.

After a slow and restrictive start as a child, the game really begins as an adult living with gypsies. When you walk out of the gypsy camp, the world you experience is one that is beautiful and complete. Forests are lush with greenery, lively towns have their unique personalities and caves are dark and mysterious. Elder Scrolls this is not though. Going from town to town is restricted to just a set road with a few branching paths. The world feels like one that is very expansive and open, but in reality, it’s just roads and towns. Even with these restrictions, the game holds your hand with a golden trail that acts as a mythical GPS to your goal. This trail seems like the game is treating you like an idiot, but it really give you little consequence to explore the areas around you. The branching pathways to caves and the ability to look around the area for treasure are no problem since the trail just brings you right to your destination. In addition, the game allows you to automatically appear to places you have been before. A first impression to this idea is that the game is being too easy and fast. Although in reality, it kills tedium in going back and forth in the many regions of Albion and only keeps the fun parts while saving time.

Choice is the true game in this game, because you can become many, many things. You can be a great hero by doing tasks such as saving people to becoming terrible villain by ending those lives. Most homes and stores can be bought and relates to their own corruption alignment based on if you lower prices or rip them off. So when you choose your gender, know that is only the first of hundreds of choices that can have the power to start a family or ruin a town’s economy. This is more than a simple good versus evil that Fable 1 was mostly about; this is an extremely in-depth characterization of your British little friend. This feature truly shines where you are hit with a big decision and your choice really changes everything. Wanting to make the right choice every time is a feeling that the game succeeds at achieving and what makes Fable 2 a unique and enriching experience.

The people of Albion will also be affected based on your choices and it shows. Each and every resident of Albion have their own opinion of you based on your actions and choices. Whip out your weapon and surrounding folks will get scared or start dancing to have them all wearing smiles. Lionhead did a great job with the citizens of Albion with their varying personalities backed by thousands of lines of great voice talent. It doesn’t end with looking at them though; you can kill them, marry them, and even get sexually transmitted diseases from them. The options are plentiful and they flawlessly intertwine itself on the downtime from killing things.

Of course Albion is not a peaceful place. You will be using force to subdue nasty monsters, shifty assassins or innocent people if you want. Combat is organized pretty neatly, with three of your buttons assigned to certain killing machines. The X button is your sword, Y is for ranged guns and crossbows, and finally the B button is all the magic. All can be upgraded a few times based on the experience you gain and even though the abilities stay assigned to the same button, combat does not suffer. For example, slashing is pressing X, blocking is holding X and special swings are holding X with the analog stick pointing towards an enemy. It’s easy to use, fun to play and never gets old.

Fable 2 introduces one of the most intelligent sidekicks in the video game world, your dog. He is always there for you. He sniffs out underground treasure to attacks enemies and does it every single time without you barking an order. He’s a reliable asset in Fable 2. You can scold him or love him to death, but in the end, he’ll still be the same loving ally since you adopted him. The dog can be hurt but never killed, meaning its flawed invincibility has you whipping out the never-ending Dog Elixir to waste time healing.

Speaking of never dying, you don’t die in Fable 2. When you kick the bucket, you just lose some experience and gain permanent scars on your character and then you’re revived. It’s barely a set back, especially when experience is so plentiful. This might have been decided since the game is so easy that dying won’t be a heck of a problem. Your fake death does get recorded for all other Fable 2 players in your friends list to see.

Like any big Xbox 360 game, Fable 2 uses Xbox Live in creative ways and succeeds in making a new way of knowing if your friends are playing too. Your Xbox Live friends who are also playing Fable 2 can run into you, or actually a little orb. This flying orb shows where your current position is and is accessible to see your deaths, the amount of paid for sex and so on. It can also send an invite for cooperative play. If you accept, you become your friend’s henchman instead of using your own character, which kills the fun of using the co-op function, but it gets a bit worse. You can not leave the same screen as your partner so you’re stuck within a few feet of each other. The experience feels as if it is offline co-op, which the game also supports.

If you think only the story is all there is, think again. Lionhead didn’t take four years only on a ten hour forgettable story compared to the other RPG offerings that the Xbox 360. There are a lot of creative achievements that are fun to obtain, from getting 2.5 million gold worth of real estate to having an orgy. There are fifty gargoyles to kill and fifty silver keys to obtain throughout Albion and the only way to get them all is completing all the side quests and exploring the entire world. Fable 2 is a fun and unique game and is worth your sixty bucks if you know you’ll try every quest and try every achievement, because playing solely on the main quest will end up a disappointing affair. Lionhead can put their heads up high knowing that sequels can be better in every way than their originals.

There is another version of Fable 2 available, a limited edition for those willing to throw down another ten dollars. There are more than its pretty white cardboard sleeve and the standard DVD of the making of Fable 2. There is a code for an exclusive downloadable package from the Live Marketplace. After some code punching and download waiting, you get an exclusive costume, some weapons and a dungeon. Maybe a few have heard of the costume Lionhead cooked up for this limited release. The people in Fable 2 called him Hal, but everyone in this world calls him Master Chief, Halo’s green armored hero. With the exclusive Energy Sword in hand, you can run around Albion playing dress up as if you’re lost in time. Halo fans will appreciate what Lionhead did here and might be worth the extra ten bucks if you solely want the costume. Sadly only the costume, because the Energy Sword is pretty weak and the exclusive dungeon, the Hall of the Dead, is extremely short. And the Hall’s prize, the Wreckager cutlass, falls short compared with the easy-to-obtain legendary swords that are available in the regular edition. It’s unfortunate that so much exclusive content that only few can claim ends up being so useless, fun costume aside. It’s hard to recommend this seventy dollar “Limited Collector’s Edition” package if you’re not a big Halo fan.

Never Unplaying's score of Fable 2: 8.0/10

A Reviewing Prospective: Professional, Amateur and Never Unplaying

Reviewing a game is done in many ways by many people. Some live their lives doing such a task, employed by publications that involve creating the hottest news, in-depth previews, and making deadlines for all of it. There are also crowds of people like myself that do it for free, either as a portfolio or just for fun. We amateurs do it in many ways, through blogging sites like this, through public and private message boards or through a high school newspaper. However, I would like to shine light on a different way to get a review, and it is one that is very powerful and completely unknown, even to the reviewers themselves. It is the simple answers from retail employees. As I said in my initial post, I will give insight to the retail side of gaming, and I believe a good place to start is how an employee at a game store is as much influential to their customers as a full time writer for a gaming publication.

I love reading video game reviews, whether it is online or the older printed media. I see dozens of talented editors, staff writers and freelance writers work their hardest on their reviews for the most important games of their time. Hours of tiring gameplay is needed for a review that a self-respecting writer can be proud of and talented writing is needed to back that work up. Never Unplaying was created because I would like to be an addition to the dozens of writers out there, but I believe that reviewing games should be revised a bit. While many of these writers are respected by me and many readers alike, I feel that their word can and should be reaching more readers.

Professional video game websites or magazines can only go so far and thus limits their true reader potential. To achieve that audience, they must expand to all the customers in the video game market, not only the ones who currently read it. Companies like Nintendo have achieved expanding actual players and I believe that video game journalism should evolve its field to reach those customers as well. The booming of casual gamers never use a written review to persuade their purchase, so as respected journalists, we should stride to be less of a reviewer and more as a guide to smarter purchases. Sadly, many issues prevent this touchy subject, due to many things to lack of budget to how to express reviews for bad games outside the website, like in a store.

I know not everyone with a game system reads the reviews on the games that they buy, but they would appreciate some help if given. What easier then to ask for opinions when they buy them? Something clicked in me while in line at a local game store; I saw someone asked the clerk how was a certain new released game. The clerk intelligently answered the question with very quick summaries to the graphics, how it plays and lastly, compared it as close as possible to a few games. That answer won over the customer to buy the game. After decided to stalk the store during big release days, I saw that it happens a lot in these stores. The answers varied from the clerk on duty, some were very in-depth, like what I saw before, to a quick “It’s great/bad.” It amazed me that this was a very quick, efficient, and most importantly persuasive review and it didn’t involve a blog like this or a big video game website.

The more detailed opinions I heard in the store was summed up in a few words and all they needed to know. Seems the first thing the customer wanted to know is graphics. Most of them just wanted to know that and they were sold, which was really strange. It’s like they want looks more than if the game actually worked. If the opinion continued, the clerks mostly described the game by comparison to a popular game. It makes a lot of sense really, games with free-roam capabilities are simply “like Grand Theft Auto” and platformers are “like Mario games.” This kills the time needed to explain how the game works and since most of these customers knew how these games played, it was all it needed. It’s a little too simple but it grabbed the person enough that the games either sold or not based solely on their opinion. After the many times that happened, it came to me, it did not just happen here, it happened in other stores all over the country. If there are about four thousand game stores, and people asked for the clerk’s opinion two times an hour for an eleven hour workday, it totals to 88,000 reviews a day that was given by an employee. That’s 88,000 people that professional reviewers lost to.

We lastly come to Never Unplaying’s review process. I will review in a way in the spirit like the game store clerk, simple, efficient and effective. I do not want to bog the review with technical lingo like most professional reviews, but deliver a review like the big sites. I will see if a game has a technical issue like an anti-aliasing problem and factor it when I outline, but explaining issues like that in the actual piece interferes with trying to be a easy and effective read. If the game is fun, what it's about, if it is worth its price tag, if it’s something you’d buy if you were hearing this from a store clerk, that's what this blog's focused on. It will be a respectable sized review, but hopefully not as big as the professional sites, because you have better things to do but read one single review all day. It will be written like this article, using very simple language. I try to keep the wording of the piece simple to give an easier way to explain the game so than anyone can understand. It will still have some gaming lingo to cater experienced gamers. It’ll end with the 1-10 point scale that is standard in most game review sites and I’ll make sure that the games are graded fairly. You will not see a lot of too high or too low score marks, it’ll be judged in multiple ways that differ for each game. It should be obvious that Brain Age should be judged in a different light than Final Fantasy. Written so that the review caters to the audience the game’s originally intended for (or who it should be intended for). I hope because of this is why you’ll come back to Never Unplaying.

Construction Continuing

Before I actually start this, I have been adding new things to make this a better blog. Today I made a nice, clean and simple banner as you can see above this. Made a motto too, because this blog is unique with the content that I'll sure to deliver.

Also made a Twitter for this, this will show what I'm doing gaming and site-wise. This is not a personal one so don't expect my life because that's not what you're here for and it's not what it's created for. The Twitter is a great thing, because instead of blogging every little thing down, I can give little news feeds through that instead. It's also good for Twitter users so you can follow it, and get anything I post from it right to you. I'm also thinking of using it every time I post so you know when to come back to the blog. Comments work so if you want, please post comments in terms of ideas for the blog to make it somewhere you'll come back to.

All this while playing Fable 2 at the same time.

Unplaying Stop!

Never Unplaying is more than the making of a new word, it's a new blog. As it sounds, its a blog related to the video gaming world.

I, Marik, will be chatting about select console and handheld gaming news and do some reviews like most others, but I'll also try to do a few unique topics that bigger sites and other bloggers tend to ignore. Either due to lack of experience or lack of interest, I'll discuss things that tend to be ignored, marketing. The boxarts, the commercials (or lack there-of), the viral stuff and the free customer-generated hype, these things are crucial for success of a game in such a large industry. We'll see how popular games take advantage of this (like a Halo) and how games could have been more popular if taken advantage of it (like an Okami).

Never Unplaying can also mean life and I'll focus on a role in the industry that is very stereotyped to gamers and generally ignored by everyone, the gaming retailer. Now this is not a life blog of a guy behind the counter of a game joint and talk about how the job's done. It's about why retailers do what they do, who the customers are, and give you a look at a view of games that most can't even imagine. Including surprisingly, the game publishers and developers. This is completely unbiased too, so don't think that I'll make it a slander party here, the results can surprise you.

Never Unplaying is a unique blog with a unique name and I thank all who read this and hope its very different take on the gamer's lifestyle pleases you enough to come back!