I thought a game about puppets would be more entertaining.
Fable Heroes is a 4-player brawler, devoid of any actual
narrative. You move from one level to the next over the playable area of
Albion. Most levels have a fork in the road, allowing you to choose how you'd
like to end the level: a boss fight or a minigame. Neither choice alters the
route of the game. You'll still play through the same handful of stages, before
unlocking "Dark Albion", which features "dark" versions of
the exact same stages for you to play through again.
- They tried an
interesting concept with one stage: Named "The Cloud", this stage was
initially locked until the player community reached a certain benchmark in earned
gold. However, it was reached within a couple days of the game's release and is
now open to play. It's an odd thing to think about… What if the game failed to
sell? This level would just be sitting there? And now that it's permanently
open there's nothing special about it. It was sort of there to punish early
adopters. Day One players weren't able to play the whole game. But they could
have helped to unlock it. A weird experiment, but ultimately short-sighted.
You have several characters to choose from: Four to start
with, a handful more to unlock as you progress through the game. You'll also
choose your three A-I teammates, if playing alone. Most are melee characters,
but there are a couple ranged fellows. You can also unlock the powerful Jack of
Blades, which features both fighting styles. Aside from one basic attack, you
have a much slower Flourish attack. You'll need to spend in-game gold to level
up your attack speed, strength and range. The dodge-roll button will be your
best friend when battles get chaotic.
You play as a wooden puppet version of "your favorite
characters from the Fable Universe". That presents a problem for me, since
I never made much of a connection with any character in the Fable games. I
liked my farty show-off create-a-character that I molded throughout each game.
That was a highlight of the Fable series, being able to be your own character,
to make choices that affect your life and your story. None of that is in this
game. They could have at least let me play as my PANSE (Xbox Avatar).
Aside from ignoring the core foundation of Fable, they seem
to have gone to great lengths to make this experience as dull as possible. Aside
from the aforementioned fork in the road at the end of the levels, the stages are
frightfully linear, as you literally walk down the street, unable to interact
with houses or backgrounds. There are no combos to your attacks, just a basic
attack and a flourish. You can purchase an upgrade to get a finishing move,
which you will have to unlock for every group of enemy types. The most exciting part of the game is
building (and keeping) your multiplier so you earn more money. Killing enemies,
or finding multiplier bonuses in treasure chests will raise your multiplier,
while getting hit or going too long without making a kill will decrease it. Of
course, it starts with a pretty low maximum until, you guessed it, you buy the
upgrades. It seems like this game was designed as a micro-transaction affair,
though thankfully the end product does not take any money beyond your initial Xbox
Marketplace transaction.
While the graphics and animation are all solid, they do lack
any special qualities. I think this again is due to the limits of the franchise
it draw upon. For me, Fable doesn't necessarily have its own recognizable art
style. It's just sort of a semi-cartoony version of historic English villages,
maybe a little steampunk thrown in here and there. And while the look of Fable
games is connected to that certain era, that historic period isn't connected
necessarily with Fable. So, this just looks like it could be any game. It's
Fable? If you say so.
The stages, besides being lackluster and linear, are too
spaced out. Groups of enemies pop out at certain areas, and in between there
are usually long stretches of road with nothing to do but break barrels for
coins or open treasure chests for mostly useless prizes like balloons that drop
a couple coins when popped (as opposed to just letting you have the coins) or
turning you into a slow-moving giant for a time. Remember how the multiplier
decreases when you aren't actively killing enemies? With these huge gaps in
between enemy groups, it's obvious the game is against you getting those high
scores.
The simplistic combat and straight-forward level designs are
not the unfriendliest part of the game, though. That award would go to the
unlocking system. Between levels, you are placed on a square game board. Your
performance on that level awards you with a number of dice rolls. To unlock an
upgrade, you must land on that tile and then spend your hard-earned gold on the
new perk. However, there are usually three upgrades on each tile, so you'll
have to land on that same space three times. But the spaces don't disappear
when you complete them, so as you near full completion, you'll be wasting your
rolls trying to land on that last elusive space.
You'll also be in charge of upgrading your A-I buddies. This
means you can work on upgrading all your characters four-at-a-time this way,
though you will probably need to give them some of your gold (by going to a
certain spot on the game map) because their take will likely be significantly
lower than your own (which also means they'll get less dice rolls to use on
upgrading).
Once a character finally purchases all of their upgrades,
they move to a special section of the board where they spend their gold on
one-time perks such as invincibility, to be used on the next played stage.
These are also governed by luck, having to land on them instead of just being
able to purchase them outright. A more user-friendly game might have just put
these tiles on the board in place of the fully-purchased upgrade tiles.
Actually, a better game might have just made a store for your characters to
pick and choose what they wanted to buy whenever they wanted!
One other thing, on a technical side... while the game
played well, the A-I characters would routinely disappear and reappear. Almost
always this would happen mid-level at a giant object you're supposed to smash
to get coins. Sometimes they won't reappear. But they'd still be there, totally
invisible, because later in the level I'd see enemies getting beat up with no
one around them. A bizarre glitch.
So, who is this game for? Sometimes it feels like it used to
be a Facebook game, other times it feels like it was being geared for Kinect
controls. It seems very much marketed to a young childhood audience, yet it's
based on a series that has been very much Mature rated so far. I know Fable 3
had a more-simplified combat system from the previous games... is this game the
ultimate goal they were heading for? Are they telling us that the upcoming
Fable: The Journey (with its lower Teen rating) is not at all intended for
long-time series fans? I just hope it's not as dreadfully dull as this game
was.
1.5 out of 4 Stars
Recommended for: Kids that aren't very picky.
Franchise fixes: This could have been a great game, it just
needs some amount of depth. It's cute, but it's not cute enough. It could be a
good brawler, but it needs something more. A story, perhaps? Unlockable combos?
Achievements/In-Game Rewards: The achievement list is nice
and varied, though you'll have to read it to know what to do, as it wants you
to use specific options in specific levels. The game even comes with a couple
nice Avatar awards: a shirt for completing the first stage, and a Jack of
Blades mask for fully upgrading the Jack of Blades character. Too bad, beyond
new characters, the in-game unlockables aren't great.
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