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[UpperCaseN]

I just finished this game and wow, it is surprisingly amazing. I’m not even a fan of the Fable franchise but my wife loves it, so she convinced me to try them out. I was so-so on Fable 1, I hated Fable 2, and Fable 3 I liked best because the streamlining, which many people disliked, but that was good for me since I’m all business when it comes down to this type of game. Fable: The Journey is a departure from the standard Fable, WRPG formula and is instead an on-rails, Kinect only game. On-rails meaning you cannot control where you travel and you’re just along for the ride. Light gun games like House of the Dead, Time Crisis, etc. are notable games that are on-rails.
The game was initially met with negative criticism, since the Fable series often promises player choice and consequences, and in this game you can’t even choose where you’re walking. People wanted the next chapter of the Fable series, not some Kinect only spinoff. After the game’s reveal, Peter Molyneux went into damage control mode and assured that the game absolutely isn’t on-rails, whether we believed that or not. He went as far as leaving Lionhead studios during or at the end of development for Fable: The Journey, which was quite ominous to the players and did nothing but harm the fan perception. It was released with mixed reviews in October 2012 and didn’t even have an OT here on NeoGAF.

The game:
There’s a free downloadable demo on Xbox live which I strongly encourage anyone interested to try. It might not be for you and that’s ok; a lot of people dislike motion controls so if that’s not your cup of tea, I’d feel bad if you went out and bought the game, so trying the demo is the best way to see if you’d like it or not. Fable: The Journey has 2 types of gameplay. Driving your (I don’t know the best term) Horse cart? You’re holding the reins and control speed and general direction, but the path is still linear. You’re sometimes given opportunities to go left or right but the paths end up merging again anyway. There’s also optional stops you can make for a bit of extra dialogue or to open some chests on the side of the road. The 2nd type of gameplay is combat. You’re given the ability to cast magic which is done by holding your left or right hand to your shoulder and thrusting forward. When there were multiple enemies on the screen, I often felt like E. Honda doing his hundred hand slap.

My experience:
I had an absolute blast with this game. Right from the start they are very clear that you can play while sitting down, which is great since hours of motion gaming while standing up is tiresome on the body. I read a pre-release statement that you don’t have to move your coffee table out of the way but I had to. The Kinect’s detection asked me to sit at the very edge of my couch, so instead of that, I moved the coffee table out of the way and rolled my computer chair into the middle of the room to sit on. This reduced my distance from the TV by half my regular, which I believe is a major contributor to the feeling I had of being on a Universal Studios simulation ride. It felt just like the Back to the Future or the Harry Potter rides, where you’re sitting but there’s a screen in front of you and the actors talk straight to the camera. “Oh no, the bridge is collapsing! Hurry, follow me!” There is a bit of story, particularly history on some characters, where since this is a spinoff, I wasn’t expecting any at all. I won’t go into anything in particular, but if Fable 4 ever happens they’ll probably have to re-cap the events of Fable: The Journey since I doubt many people played it.

There’s no in-game timer but I believe HowLongToBeat.com’s 9 hours is correct. Over the course you gain experience, purchase upgrades, and learn a few new spells, so there is a sense of progression. They do a pretty good job at switching you between combat and driving, so it gives you a chance to rest, but I found myself pausing the game and resting on my own, a good idea.

Faults:
Now this does need to be mentioned, because it can’t be ignored. Although I have a glowing opinion of the game, the motion detection is nowhere near perfect. Better than I expected but still spotty at best. The game appears to offset this by giving you high, regenerating health, so when you do the motion to block an attack and your character never blocks, it mostly doesn’t matter since you went from 100% health to like 94%, big whoop. I actually did die a few times, but the checkpoints start you pretty much right at that moment. Frustrating that probably every single time I died, my arm is in the block position but it didn’t happen on screen. The shooting is spotty as well. The game allows you to calibrate your aim but it only does this with the dominant hand; so when shooting with my right I mostly hit my mark, but shooting with the left was laughably bad. The spells do have a bit of homing into the enemy and you can use aftertouch to guide shots around corners or over cover, which is also useful for the inevitable shots that miss, you can try to steer them back towards your target.

It’s a shame that this game appears to have gone completely missed, because it’s surprisingly very good. The production quality is the best of the Fable series yet, but that’s to be expected since the game’s scope is much smaller than the others. Anyone interested, I encourage you to try the free demo and anyone here who has played it, please share your opinion; I’d like to hear what you thought.

 

[oVerde]

Played at some gaming events and kiosks, loved it, the tracking worked better than expected for a sitting game, the tracking miss rate is there, but so minimal, although I couldn't play it at my home, my Kinect is 1/3 offset placed from the centre of my tv, not even the calibration helped and couldn't hit a spell

So, get the demo and try it as I did.

 

[Conor 419]

The highlight of Microsoft's incompetence as a software publisher.

Now set the scene, Microsoft were largely responsible for Fable 3 having development issues. The title was rushed and various failed Kinect implementations caused a huge waste in human resources throughout its development, overall causing the title to be a critical disaster and suggested to largely be the reason for internal strife at Lionhead.

So what do Microsoft do? Instead of getting them to either

1| Develop something genuinely new in a period of weak first party software
or
2| Start development for a next gen Fable game.

We get a forced Kinect title which was critically lacking and a complete commercial disaster.

Nice one Microsoft.