Give me a break. The industry did nothing but slurp up the sadistic go-out-and-kill-cops-and-innocent-people game that was GTA1,2,3...etc.
But all of a sudden it's in bad taste? Give me a break. How about an actual review of...gee...I dunno....THE GAMEPLAY. The only thing a two page article that does nothing but rant about the rude and crass nature of SR2 tells me is that someone with more experience with these types of games should have reviewed it.
No mention of the online coop. No mention of just about any gameplay element. Just a soccer mom-ish rant.
@ironman tetsuo
Spare the snide opening remarks. It almost makes me not want to validate you comments with a response.
I've also played the game non-stop since it launched. Played it all weekend. And? Does that magically invalidate a games flaws? If so, then I'd say you'd be less than objective. As far as "Major" flaws...we'd both have to agree on what constitutes a "major" flaw. I'd say even minor flaws should be at least MENTIONED in a review. Which they're not in this case. No mention of the coop issues. Or the map issue.
To clarify. I'm not saying the game is bad. Not at all. But I just take issue with a review not going into detail about the negative issues a game has. There's just NO reason not to mention the less than optimal way the coop was implemented. It just doesn't "flow." The developers really lost a chance at making the coop in this game really stand out. Most likely because a "suit" said they have to make a fall 08 release no matter what in order to get those holiday sales next month.
The map issue is FAR more than annoying. It hinders exploration. But definitely not game breaking. But I believe it's worth mentioning and deducting points in any fair review. And rpg of this size and scope not giving players the OPTION of using the traditional in-game mini map is just bad design.
And to clarify, I'm not complaining that you can't warp to an area you haven't discovered. I'm pointing out the design flaw when you're told you can't warp to an area you haven't been to...you don't KNOW what the closest zone that you HAVE been to is. And...since you don't have a world map...you can't just look at it. See that rookridge is the closest zone and port there and walk the rest of the way.
Once again. Game breaking? No. Sloppy design? Yes. Is that now something reviewers should not do? Point out sloppy design/implementation?
And (from my very limited experience w/ co-op) all of the people on my friends list do not even want to play coop. The few that do, always want to host. Why? Because NO ONE wants to spend ALL that time pimping out their character, gearing them up, fine tuning their look...and then join their buddy's game as "generic henchman 908." It's also a drawback to be completely tethered to the host character. Plenty other online
And I definitely should specify that the floating orbs ARE fantastic. It felt like I was in an MMO for a moment in bowerstone when I put the orbs to "ALL." Man, there were players everywhere. Talking about quests. Asking questiosn. Answering questions. Generally, helping each other out and being chill. That is a great feature.
I agree that Fable 2 does far more better things with the RPG genre than Final Fantasy. I agree 100% with that statement. However, that doesn't excuse any of the glaring flaws from being mentioned. Period.
Why bother with a map at all if it's not going to be accurate? From a design standpoint, that's just not justifiable. Don't give me this "they're sticking with the ye old times theme and trying to make it realistic with the time period the game takes place in" because that's rubbish.
Sorry, "committing to memory" isn't fun. When every major rpg for the last decade has given players a working, functional, map... If it's fun for you, then great. Don't use the map in ANY game. But give players the OPTION. Just like we have the OPTION to use fast travel or not.
As far as coop, no...I don't think there would be jerks trying to ruin my world. Because I have this thing called a "friends list" and I play with friends. The coop could have just as easily been designed to not allow a guest player to injure the hosts family. Problem solved.
The coop isn't just icing, man. Maybe for YOU. But not everyone is going to have your perspective. There was ALOT of complaining when they announced the coop would be delayed. That wasn't players griping about not getting their icing. Those were players upset about a major portion of the game being delayed.
Personally, I wish they just didn't include coop. If you can't do something right, just don't do it. Don't half ass it.
Sloppy development. And sloppy gaming "journalism" in giving this game a 9 and not even MENTION the flaws.
Ugh. This is why reviews are becoming less relevant in todays age of information that the internet has given to us. I agree with this review, to an extent. But it seems to be more of a shallow preview with a score slapped on it than an in depth, well laid out (and well justified) summary of the games positive and negative aspects.
Don't get me wrong. Fable 2 is a good game. Very fun. But three things bother me with this review. First, the author doesn't give ANY mention to some of the MAJOR flaws with this game. After spending 25 hours in the game, I can lay out a few. The lack of an in-game map in the 21st century w/ an rpg is inexcusable.
The omission of that in-game mini-map makes navigation through the towns and the roads painful. Oh, there is a map, but if you want to view it...you'll need to press start. Look where you want to go. Then press start again to get back into gameplay. So if you're in a huge town trying to find a weapon vendor, expect to be pressing start alot in order to make your way. There is no world map. Just section maps. So you never know what the adjacent zone is unless you commit it to memory. You never really know what zones are next to what. It makes the game feel ALOT smaller than it is since you HAVE to rely on the instant transportation system
The game does have a waypoint system in the form of the golden train that leads you directly to targets. It fails in two ways. First, when you have a quest target in a zone you've never been in, you can't quick travel there. You can only follow the gold trail. But since you have NO WORLD MAP you have no idea how far away your target is. You have to randomly go through zones hoping you don't have to go through each and every zone to get to you target.
The second flaw of the golden trail is that it wastes cpu time calculating all the time. Creating slowdown. It'll go in one direction one moment. Vanish. Then reappear in another direction.
Finally, NO mention of the Coop mode. At all. How can you release such a half done review? You left out mentioning the most broken feature of the game. The coop in fable 2 in horribly implemented. And I really wish gaming sites would call out developers when they pull this crap. When they hype up a game, then half-arse it. The online coop doesn't even let the client player use their OWN character. They have to use a random premade generic henchman. I don't understand why most sites don't call out flaws such as this. When playing online, both players HAVE to be on the same screen at the same time. So in a game of this size, I can't go to one area of the world and let my friend port back to town to grab some supplies. Also, when one player pauses, it pauses the game for both of them.
The crappy coop alone disqualifies this game from a 9. Not to mentions the bugs, and gliches and crashes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on Fable 2. Heck, I'm about to go play right now. But I'm just fed up with gaming sites giving unrealistic, undeserving reviews and never go into details about the flaws in a game.
Here's the thing though, and I've worked enough years in retail as both grunt and management: Parents typically do NOT care what their kid plays. Period. You can slap all the ratings you want on a game, if little Billy wants it...Mommy will get it for him. I've had parents come into my shop and get ANGRY at me for not selling M rated games to their children. That they had to come all the way to the store and do it themselves was a terrible inconvenience.
I've only seen one parent ask what was about at the time of purchase and then decline to purchase the game due to its content.
Network now...
CyberData4's Comments
Give me a break. The industry did nothing but slurp up the sadistic go-out-and-kill-cops-and-innocent-people game that was GTA1,2,3...etc.
But all of a sudden it's in bad taste? Give me a break. How about an actual review of...gee...I dunno....THE GAMEPLAY. The only thing a two page article that does nothing but rant about the rude and crass nature of SR2 tells me is that someone with more experience with these types of games should have reviewed it.
No mention of the online coop. No mention of just about any gameplay element. Just a soccer mom-ish rant.
@ironman tetsuo
Spare the snide opening remarks. It almost makes me not want to validate you comments with a response.
I've also played the game non-stop since it launched. Played it all weekend. And? Does that magically invalidate a games flaws? If so, then I'd say you'd be less than objective. As far as "Major" flaws...we'd both have to agree on what constitutes a "major" flaw. I'd say even minor flaws should be at least MENTIONED in a review. Which they're not in this case. No mention of the coop issues. Or the map issue.
To clarify. I'm not saying the game is bad. Not at all. But I just take issue with a review not going into detail about the negative issues a game has. There's just NO reason not to mention the less than optimal way the coop was implemented. It just doesn't "flow." The developers really lost a chance at making the coop in this game really stand out. Most likely because a "suit" said they have to make a fall 08 release no matter what in order to get those holiday sales next month.
The map issue is FAR more than annoying. It hinders exploration. But definitely not game breaking. But I believe it's worth mentioning and deducting points in any fair review. And rpg of this size and scope not giving players the OPTION of using the traditional in-game mini map is just bad design.
And to clarify, I'm not complaining that you can't warp to an area you haven't discovered. I'm pointing out the design flaw when you're told you can't warp to an area you haven't been to...you don't KNOW what the closest zone that you HAVE been to is. And...since you don't have a world map...you can't just look at it. See that rookridge is the closest zone and port there and walk the rest of the way.
Once again. Game breaking? No. Sloppy design? Yes. Is that now something reviewers should not do? Point out sloppy design/implementation?
And (from my very limited experience w/ co-op) all of the people on my friends list do not even want to play coop. The few that do, always want to host. Why? Because NO ONE wants to spend ALL that time pimping out their character, gearing them up, fine tuning their look...and then join their buddy's game as "generic henchman 908." It's also a drawback to be completely tethered to the host character. Plenty other online
And I definitely should specify that the floating orbs ARE fantastic. It felt like I was in an MMO for a moment in bowerstone when I put the orbs to "ALL." Man, there were players everywhere. Talking about quests. Asking questiosn. Answering questions. Generally, helping each other out and being chill. That is a great feature.
I agree that Fable 2 does far more better things with the RPG genre than Final Fantasy. I agree 100% with that statement. However, that doesn't excuse any of the glaring flaws from being mentioned. Period.
Why bother with a map at all if it's not going to be accurate? From a design standpoint, that's just not justifiable. Don't give me this "they're sticking with the ye old times theme and trying to make it realistic with the time period the game takes place in" because that's rubbish.
Sorry, "committing to memory" isn't fun. When every major rpg for the last decade has given players a working, functional, map... If it's fun for you, then great. Don't use the map in ANY game. But give players the OPTION. Just like we have the OPTION to use fast travel or not.
As far as coop, no...I don't think there would be jerks trying to ruin my world. Because I have this thing called a "friends list" and I play with friends. The coop could have just as easily been designed to not allow a guest player to injure the hosts family. Problem solved.
The coop isn't just icing, man. Maybe for YOU. But not everyone is going to have your perspective. There was ALOT of complaining when they announced the coop would be delayed. That wasn't players griping about not getting their icing. Those were players upset about a major portion of the game being delayed.
Personally, I wish they just didn't include coop. If you can't do something right, just don't do it. Don't half ass it.
Sloppy development. And sloppy gaming "journalism" in giving this game a 9 and not even MENTION the flaws.
Ugh. This is why reviews are becoming less relevant in todays age of information that the internet has given to us. I agree with this review, to an extent. But it seems to be more of a shallow preview with a score slapped on it than an in depth, well laid out (and well justified) summary of the games positive and negative aspects.
Don't get me wrong. Fable 2 is a good game. Very fun. But three things bother me with this review. First, the author doesn't give ANY mention to some of the MAJOR flaws with this game. After spending 25 hours in the game, I can lay out a few. The lack of an in-game map in the 21st century w/ an rpg is inexcusable.
The omission of that in-game mini-map makes navigation through the towns and the roads painful. Oh, there is a map, but if you want to view it...you'll need to press start. Look where you want to go. Then press start again to get back into gameplay. So if you're in a huge town trying to find a weapon vendor, expect to be pressing start alot in order to make your way. There is no world map. Just section maps. So you never know what the adjacent zone is unless you commit it to memory. You never really know what zones are next to what. It makes the game feel ALOT smaller than it is since you HAVE to rely on the instant transportation system
The game does have a waypoint system in the form of the golden train that leads you directly to targets. It fails in two ways. First, when you have a quest target in a zone you've never been in, you can't quick travel there. You can only follow the gold trail. But since you have NO WORLD MAP you have no idea how far away your target is. You have to randomly go through zones hoping you don't have to go through each and every zone to get to you target.
The second flaw of the golden trail is that it wastes cpu time calculating all the time. Creating slowdown. It'll go in one direction one moment. Vanish. Then reappear in another direction.
Finally, NO mention of the Coop mode. At all. How can you release such a half done review? You left out mentioning the most broken feature of the game. The coop in fable 2 in horribly implemented. And I really wish gaming sites would call out developers when they pull this crap. When they hype up a game, then half-arse it. The online coop doesn't even let the client player use their OWN character. They have to use a random premade generic henchman. I don't understand why most sites don't call out flaws such as this. When playing online, both players HAVE to be on the same screen at the same time. So in a game of this size, I can't go to one area of the world and let my friend port back to town to grab some supplies. Also, when one player pauses, it pauses the game for both of them.
The crappy coop alone disqualifies this game from a 9. Not to mentions the bugs, and gliches and crashes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on Fable 2. Heck, I'm about to go play right now. But I'm just fed up with gaming sites giving unrealistic, undeserving reviews and never go into details about the flaws in a game.
Here's the thing though, and I've worked enough years in retail as both grunt and management: Parents typically do NOT care what their kid plays. Period. You can slap all the ratings you want on a game, if little Billy wants it...Mommy will get it for him. I've had parents come into my shop and get ANGRY at me for not selling M rated games to their children. That they had to come all the way to the store and do it themselves was a terrible inconvenience.
I've only seen one parent ask what was about at the time of purchase and then decline to purchase the game due to its content.
All CyberData4's Comments