Review: Fable Anniversary

With prosthetic limbs becoming ever more advanced, the world of cyberpunk shooter series Deus Ex is starting to seem like a realistic vision of the future. As human beings start to use technology to evolve their own biology, the player is faced with some hard choices regarding what the future of the human race should look like, and how it should be governed. The original Deus Ex is still the pinnacle of the series, but Deus Ex: Human Revolution was the title that really demonstrated just how great a movie adaptation could l

What better way to reinvent a gaming franchise than taking away the controller? It’s a risky proposition to turn one of the most successful Xbox franchises into a Kinect-only title, but that’s exactly what’s been done with Fable. Instead of producing a family-friendly mini-game based game, however, Lionhead Studios have created a full-blown adventure that manages to rival the main canon in scope. Not only is Fable: The Journey an evolution of the series, but a crucial experiment to see if Kinect can manage to produce a story-driven experience with nothing but the player’s body.


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

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.


Based on the Fables comic books by Bill Willingham, The Wolf Among Us is a cool, noir detective story with a fantasy twist. When characters from fairy tales are exiled to live in the human world, the Big Bad Wolf changes his ways and becomes Sheriff Bigby Wolf, the lawkeeper of Fabletown. After discovering the horrible murder of a young woman, Bigby embarks on a desperate hunt for a serial killer and along the way finds himself digging deeper into the corruption and organized crime at the heart of the Fable community. It's a tense story with plenty of interesting characters, and it has the potential to be a great crime thriller movie - with a talking pig as a bo

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 crafting guide 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.

As is common with Kinect, enjoyment of the title will largely be based on how accurate your set-up is. I played the game with a 42" TV in moderate lighting conditions and adequate space around me. Some will experience the game in better conditions, but I prefer to review Kinect releases with what I feel is a realistic representation of most gamer’s arrangements. To calibrate, there’s a special tool that has you cast spells at stationary enemies. It seems easy enough, but after using the new settings, attacks were going all over the place. It took about four calibrations to get it as accurate as possible. Once calibration is correct, there is a learning curve to get spells accurately cast. To really nail it, your arm must be fully retracted before extending, with the palm facing up at all times. It sounds simple, but remembering to keep correct form during the heat of battle can be tricky.

Despite not living up to some of the promises made by Peter Molyneux during its production, Fable is a great RPG and one of the standout Xbox titles. The freedom to play as a virtuous hero or a vile hellion is reason enough to play through this title twice and as short as the main quest is, that isn't nearly as demanding of a request as it would be with some other RPGs. A year later Fable: The Lost Chapters was released which featured an additional chapter with a new area and enemies at the end of the game along with some additional side quests and minor features. For the tenth anniversary an updated version of Fable: The Lost Chapters was released as Fable Anniversary for Xbox 360, which was a bug riddled mess on its initial release. It has been improved somewhat through patches but playing Fable: The Lost Chapters on the original Xbox is the recommended way to go if at all possible, though any RPG fan should experience this title in some capacity, even if Fable Anniversary is the most realistic option. Fable II was a well done follow up and the less said about Fable III the better.