What were we talking about again? Who's man's best friend?
That's right my little Lassie, my Rin Tin Tin, my Benji, my Jerry Lee, my... Clifford, my... Scooby. And why not create a game in which children can learn to love the mangy puppy that licks really hard and smells like how bad he looks.
Fable 2 does just that. It does more too. Like helping me to realize that a new focus on games (don't forget Fallout 3) today is to reinforce what I should be for Halloween which is Mad Max and my wife can be his faithful companion.
OK, back to the actual game at hand; Fable 2 is a sequel in which all the goody goodness was kept and new ewwy gooey goodness was added brought to us by Lionhead Studios. The original had a few features that I have yet to see in very many others. The choices and actions that are made throughout the game subtly change your overall appearance. I've seen games maybe focus in on single large decision changes where all of a sudden you notice something different(hair where there was no hair before) but Fable was able to watch how you even fought your enemies and very slowly change the look of your character as if all the fighting was truly taking a toll on you. My character from the original was focused heavy on spell usage and ever so slowly started to have deep scars, eyes became colorless, and hair faded from a deep black to white.
F2 uses that great feature and with a little help of Hi-Def capability amplifies your ugliness to the extent where you realize you are your father. And yes, if you decided to be a red-headed step child of destruction, you would later turn into a semblance of Satan and continuing upon that path would give you full blown Texas longhorns.
And it wouldn't be a RPG unless there was, well, some sort of role playing involved to get you those two sharp pointers out of your forehead. Fable was able to take some funny emotive actions and allow you to interact with any NPC that you came across including drawing your weapon and kill said NPCs. This presented nice opportunities in which shopkeepers or homeowners would suddenly have an "accident" and therefore leave their property up for sale for anyone to come along and take control of. NPC townsfolk would hear of your previous reputation and then already fear and whisper to one another when you strolled along the streets. F2 again builds on the management of emotes, reputation and worldly renown even to the point where crowds will gather around you in town just to get a look at you or run away screaming. The only downside is the repetitiveness of things spoken as you wander around. Families (plural on purpose) can be made, prostitutes can be visited, and the ever so Sims favorite same-sex marriages can be obtained. A new addition, since you can now choose to be a female, is figuring out how to become a pregnant Frances McDormand Fargoian hero.
Another feature that companies don't want or can't figure out how to mimic is the adaptive difficulty that Lionhead implements. It's something that can only really be understood by playing firsthand. What adaptive difficulty does is take into account how fast you kill enemies, how much health you lose, and how easy it is for you to take on multiple enemies (watching all targets and switching between them). It then constantly tweaks the overall difficulty to the point where the game isn't easy but is still achievable by adding/subtracting enemies, making them stronger/weaker, and giving more/less health gain opportunities. This allows for anyone to pick up and play through the game no matter what their skill level is (finesse vs button mashing) while still having fun. The storyline is immense, British voice acting {in a non-mocking British accent} quite literally stupendous, and graphics a solid 
example showing off the beauty of Hi-Def with Hi-Fidelity environments and sound/music. The addition of a traveling canine companion is, as I hinted to earlier, ideal for adding personality and a friend to situations where loneliness is coupled with survival. If your Underdog isn't enough of an Alpha Dog for you, there is a Co-op mode available which can make for even more confusing situations such as what to tell your co-op buddy's now orphaned son after you decided to shoot the child's mother (in-game spouse of your buddy) when your co-op buddy left the room to drain the little buddy.
example showing off the beauty of Hi-Def with Hi-Fidelity environments and sound/music. The addition of a traveling canine companion is, as I hinted to earlier, ideal for adding personality and a friend to situations where loneliness is coupled with survival. If your Underdog isn't enough of an Alpha Dog for you, there is a Co-op mode available which can make for even more confusing situations such as what to tell your co-op buddy's now orphaned son after you decided to shoot the child's mother (in-game spouse of your buddy) when your co-op buddy left the room to drain the little buddy.Congratulations Lionhead, you've created another amazing RPG that should be played by everyone in the hero hot seat whether you prefer playing as a baddy bo baddy or an Adam Ant goody two shoes. Even if you don't own a 360 go buy a few cases of beer and play the game co-op with someone that does. In my case it is actually my wonderful (no sarcasm implied or intended) wife and thankfully all the beer is for me.
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