Review: Fable Anniversary

Anyone who's played Fable knows that it fell short of these amazing claims and there's a good chance they felt disappointed when they saw it failed to live up to everything it was supposed to be if they pre-ordered. This is unfortunate, because once we get past Molyneux's grandiose claims for what Fable will be and just accept it for what it actually is, Fable turned out to be a rather impressive final product. Raising children wasn't an option in the first Fable and sadly neither was killing the little brats that ran through the town, but overall the game seemed to match the goals of what Molyneux wanted to create, even though it came in a much more scaled back version of what he raised our expectations to be. The story progressing across a lifetime basically got reduced to the hero would whenever they leveled up and the world didn't seem to change at all from when the hero when from his teenage years to entering his sixties. On the other hand, Fable had a bit of an unexpected Monty Python quality with a narrator. He wasn't the most useful voice as he would typically tell you there is a quest card at the guild or randomly ask "what's that?" but having a disembodied British voice throughout the game was a nice touch.

Choosing to be good or evil was usually straightforward. Several of the main quests had an optional way to end them depending on the outcome, typically spare the foe for good points and kill them for evil. There were a couple quests where there were two available quests but they were the same event, the choice was just to determine what side the player was on which actually was a cool way of making it feel like you were choosing a side. A more fun way to rack up the evil points was to just go on a Grand Theft Auto style rampage in town and kill a bunch of guards and civilians, but again no killing children since they take away your weapons in the towns with kids. This can actually cause some problems, since you may want to go to town but end up having a massive bounty in several towns that doesn't expire for a few days.

Fable Anniversary is a port of ten year old game released on eight year old hardware after we’ve witnessed the power of next-gen. Yet even with so much stacked against it, it manages to impress. There’s not much of a "wow-factor" because of its ill-timed release, but with the exception of completely rebuilding the game for Xbox One, there simply isn’t much else that could be done that isn’t accomplished here. Sound, functionality and graphics are all substantially improved and breath new life into a game that has aged remarkably well. Even after two sequels and console generations, Fable has the uncanny ability to suck you into its Adventure Game strategy through the world of Albion. Anniversary is more of a preservation if anything, ensuring that the entire franchise can now be played in the same manner on the same console. As a museum piece, it’s a wonderful effort that ensures the game will remain relevant for a new generation of players. As a game, it’s the definitive edition of a superb title that has a lot to offer even in 2014.


There have already been two movies based on the Silent Hill games - one of them pretty good, the other pretty terrible. These games were based on the first Silent Hill game and Silent Hill 3 , which deal with the town's strange cult and the little girl who becomes a vessel for their god. Silent Hill 2 , however, is about a man called James Sunderland who comes to Silent Hill after his wife sends a letter inviting him to the town. He finds this pretty disturbing, since his wife has been dead for three years. It's a great set-up for a game full of mystery, psychological horror and creepy monsters - all of which could transfer very well to the big scr

The final new feature in Fable Anniversary (besides achievements) is that of SmartGlass, something that is weighing heavier and heavier in overall experience these days. As admitted by Lead Designer Ted Timmins, it was basically implemented here as way to test the technology’s capabilities for future implementations. Thanks to that, there are actually a few interesting features that the app offers. Unsurprisingly, it’s basically an interactive map, but they’ve worked with Prima to also provide the locations of key items and characters (without going into too much detail). While this may seem a bit like cheating at first, it’s helpful enough only to ensure that you won’t get lost and makes it so you won’t result to using a full-blown strategy guide.

Whether you like him or not, Peter Molyneux is a man that’s in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction with the status quo of the industry, and that’s really what makes his career so incredibly fascinating.

Member the games you used to play? We member. The basement at the Hardcore Gamer office has a section known as the Crust Room, with an old grey couch and a big old CRT TV. All the classic systems are down there collecting dust, so in an effort to improve the cleanliness of our work space, we dust off these old consoles every so often and put an old game through its paces, just to make sure everything stays in working order. We even have a beige computer with a floppy disk drive.