Fable Heroes Review
Fable Heroes is a mediocre four-player brawler that's only partly redeemed by its fabled license.
The Good
- Fun competition for coins with four players present
- "Dark Albion" offers a humorous topsy-turvy vision of Albion
- Clever nods to previous Fable games.
The Bad
- Uninspired, simplistic combat
- Boring level design
- Upgrades too reliant on chance.
As a cartoonish brawler centered on four-person hijinks, Fable Heroes resembles the chaotically entertaining Castle Crashers. Unfortunately, Fable Heroes never comes close to reaching the highs of that downloadable juggernaut, and even in its best moments it feels like it's three steps behind gameplay developments that have kept the genre alive. While it's not without its fun moments, Fable Heroes is a mere novelty that never establishes itself as a worthy offshoot of the traditional Fable adventures.
A whimsical artistic style carries over from the original Fable games to this downloadable spinoff, although instead of hacking and slashing with the familiar heroes who look like refugees from a Disney flick, you race through each level with three friends or non-player characters as rag dolls modeled after Fable favorites. They're cute, but their chirpy voice emotes lack the personality of character voices in the original games. Elsewhere, you might be amused by balverines and hobbes that look cuddly enough to put in a baby's crib, but it's hard to escape the impression that this would be little more than a generic brawler it you stripped it of its cel-shaded imagery from Albion.
Still, that simplicity might have worked for Fable Heroes had it remained with the visuals, but it also extends to the combat. There's some variation among the available characters in that each one has a ranged or melee specialization--some, such as the unlockable Sir Walter, have both--but a lack of combos ensures that combat itself never grows much more complex than unleashing charged attacks or rolling out of harm's way.
Beyond that, characters can unleash devastating special attacks, but only at the expense of one of the five hearts that make up your health bar. Lose all of them, and you die, but that simply means that your resulting ghost loses the ability to pick up coins while fighting until you come back to life by finding another heart along the path. Until then, you're as powerful as you were before you died aside from the absence of your special attack. That power extends even to the boss fights (which unfailingly feature a hulking monstrosity that jumps around and periodically spawns minions), with the upshot that there's technically no way to lose to them.
Indeed, it's easy to get the impression that Fable Heroes isn't really about beating enemies, but rather about collecting coins. Coins fall like Louisiana rain in Fable Heroes, whether from the enemies themselves or from the crates you find littered throughout this raggedy vision of Albion. Smash enough enemies, and you get a multiplier bonus to pick up yet more coins, or you could simply beat them out of stationary targets that pop up during "break times" like the cars in Street Fighter II's bonus levels.
20 comments
i liked it, 5.5 seems a bit low but i'll agree it could have been better, it's essentially a way to make a lot of gold for f:tj - which i'm also getting (set to be a millionaire in no time) if you're expecting another castle crashers though then stay well away
They should have called it something else rather than Fables. I think it would have been rated better overall and it would not destroy the franchise name.
1 Like I purchased the full game as well, and honestly don't think a lot of the universal dissatisfaction for it is totally warranted. The game isn't without it's faults obviously, but for ten bucks it's a very cute and charming nod to Fable franchise and has a heck of a lot of personality crammed into it.
2 Like i got the game and jeez ppl need to stop wineing its a good game i mean for 10$ you get a game that gots 30 achievements gameplay is something 360 fans need as it beats playing a damn shooter so for me i like it
2 Like Someone at Lionhead has obviously noticed G rated movies tend to make a lot of money and they're trying to capture that "magic". Now I'm starting to think Molyneux wasn't breaking promises and lying, he was just doing what he was told.
5 Like Fable 2 ranks among my top ten loved games.When Fable 3 came out I expected a better game than 2.Insteat I got a stripped down version of Fable 2.The story was just ,"ok".My two favorite spells were turned into potions.There were almost no clothing to find or weapons to buy.The only way you could find different items was by multiplayer,but I didn't have X-box Live back then.Now this Fable Heroes comes out and there is no way I am trusting Lionhead studio again.The art style exceeds my limit of cuteness and it is way to simplistic.It seems like Lionhead Studios is favoring acessability over making a unique game with great story,look,personality,and gameplay.
At first, I thought "Fable? OMG, that's so cool!!". Then, I thought "Naah, it can't be... it looks... so different...". Next, I saw the Lionhead Studio, and thought "Naah, still can't be, probably just a coincidence..." and then I read the first paragraph and was like "WTF? So it IS Fable... Naah, not going to get it, Fable 3 was enough of a disappointment (not that it's a bad game, just a disappointment) as it is..."
I jsut cant understand why they didn't expand on F2. F3 could have been so much more and whilst I enjoyed it, was nowhere as good as F2. I want F2 +. I know it will never happen and its a huge shame because the Fable universe is beautiful. I will still be getting this, even if its only for some remote feelings of nostalgia.
Fable franchise is pretty much dead after Fable 3. I never expected a rip-off title to appear
Man Microsoft sure decided to run the Fable franchise through the mud ...then do it some more. Good work guys, good work. Bunch of brilliant people you have working there.
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Fable Heroes
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- Publisher(s): Microsoft Game Studios
- Developer(s): Lionhead Studios
- Genre: Action
- Release:
- Classification Board: G
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