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Review Fable lubbin' at ActionTrip

Saint_Proverbius

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Tags: Fable: The Lost Chapters

<a href="http://www.actiontrip.com/">Action Trip</a> has a <A href="http://www.actiontrip.com/reviews/fablethelostchapters.phtml">review</a> of <A href="http://www.microsoft.com/games/fable/">Fable: The Lost Chapters</a>. They give it a score of <b>90/100</b> and slap the <b>Editor's Choice</b> award on it. The author even praises it for replay value. Anyway, the clip:
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<blockquote>Every time I play the game, pretty much the same thoughts come into my mind, so I don't think I'm wrong on this. The original game's biggest problem (or certainly one of its biggest problems) was that Peter Molyneux, the man behind the project and the head honcho at Lionhead Studios, gave one too many interviews about it, promising features that never made it into the final release. For one reason or the other, Fable was rushed to the stores. My guess is that MS needed like three other big titles on the Xbox besides Halo. Hence, Fable was released with a bunch of its cool features never seeing the light of day. To be fair to the publisher, God only knows how many features Lionhead decided to scrap in between Peter marveling about them and letting the entire gaming press know about it, so a part of the blame surely rests on Lionhead's shoulders.</blockquote>
<br>
By the time this game was released on the XBox, it had Halo, Morrowind, KotOR, Dead or Alive 3, and a bunch of other titles. I seriously doubt this game pushed the sales of the console up that much. It also doesn't explain why all those cool features weren't in the PC release which was months and months and months after the XBox one.
<br>
<br>
Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</A>
 

Chefe

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I like Fable, but that review sucked.

I could ramble on and on about how well written the storyline is

Say what now?

and a engrossing storyline that fuses some of the best qualities of Japanese storytelling

What the fuck? Fable doesn't have a hint of that jap crap in it. It's about as pure western fantasy as you can get. Not to mention there is no good qualities in Japanese storytelling, so it's an oxymoron anyways.

which somewhat alleviates the problem of the painfully linear maps.

Again... what? The maps are extremely linear (although, I beg to differ on the "painful" part).

Fable is an action RPG, which focuses on action and story progression rather than the character's stats progression.

Hahaha! What is he joking? It's totally opposite! The entire game is about your progression as a character and hits stats, the story is there merely to hold everything together.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Ever seen The Seven Samuri and then watched The Magnificent Seven? It's basically the same movie, and Mag7 was a remake of sorts of Seven Samuri.. But Magnificent Seven just kicks the ever lovin' shit out of Seven Samuri in so many ways. It's just a much, much better movie all around.
 

Mifune

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Saint_Proverbius said:
Ever seen The Seven Samuri and then watched The Magnificent Seven? It's basically the same movie, and Mag7 was a remake of sorts of Seven Samuri.. But Magnificent Seven just kicks the ever lovin' shit out of Seven Samuri in so many ways. It's just a much, much better movie all around.
The Magnificent Seven is an excellent film, but comparing it to TSS iss like comparing the Da Vinci Code with Foucault's Pendulum.
 

RuySan

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Well...i love the Pendulum and i pretty much despised Da Vinci Code...and the latest movie i've downloaded was The Seven Samurai. I suppose i will not see The magnificient Seven, if your opinion is worth it
 

obediah

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Mifune said:
Saint_Proverbius said:
Ever seen The Seven Samuri and then watched The Magnificent Seven? It's basically the same movie, and Mag7 was a remake of sorts of Seven Samuri.. But Magnificent Seven just kicks the ever lovin' shit out of Seven Samuri in so many ways. It's just a much, much better movie all around.
The Magnificent Seven is an excellent film, but comparing it to TSS iss like comparing the Da Vinci Code with Foucault's Pendulum.

Well I think there's quite a bit of bias inferred by your handle. But I agree 100%. We also can't forget A Bug's Life - certainly the weakest of the three, but it was nice to see the influence.
 

Saint_Proverbius

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Mifune said:
he Magnificent Seven is an excellent film, but comparing it to TSS iss like comparing the Da Vinci Code with Foucault's Pendulum.

The Seven Samuri didn't have nearly the depth of plot of The Magnificent Seven nor did the actors in The Seven Samuri portray nearly as much depth of character as the characters in The Magnificent Seven. For example, I don't remember the villagers ever betraying the samuri like was done in the Magnificent Seven, which changed the scope of the movie. The gunfighters were betrayed, humiliated, and so forth, yet they still decided to go back and do the job because they befriended the villagers and the revenge factor.

Steve McQueen was probably one of the more memorable characters in The Magnificent Seven, but when you look at the script, he hardly had any lines at all. Most of his presence came from gestural acting and his expressions during the movie. Plus there were a lot more characters that were fleshed out, such as Robert Vaugn's character of the notorious gunfighter that lost his nerve. In fact, unlike The Seven Samuri, all the characters in Magnificent Seven had information about who they were whereas the several of the samuri seemed like mere filler to reach that magical number of seven.
 

Sol Invictus

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Not to mention there is no good qualities in Japanese storytelling, so it's an oxymoron anyways.
I think it's rather asinine for you to say a thing like that. Some of the best stories I've seen came in the form of anime - particularly the GunGrave and Evangelion cycles and a whole bunch of Samurai Champloo (which has anything but flashy robots or gigantic swords) episodes, but don't let the facts get in the way of your little 'statement of fact'.

As for Mag7 vs TSS, I'd go with Mag7, mainly because a few of the characters in TSS aren't fleshed out at all. The only ones I seem to remember are the noble samurai leader, the silent swordsman who kills a challenger at the start of the movie, the newbie, and the fake samurai with the no-dachi. That's four. I can't remember the other three.
 

Chefe

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Sol Invictus said:
I think it's rather asinine for you to say a thing like that. Some of the best stories I've seen came in the form of anime - particularly the GunGrave and Evangelion cycles and a whole bunch of Samurai Champloo (which has anything but flashy robots or gigantic swords) episodes, but don't let the facts get in the way of your little 'statement of fact'.

Maybe not Japanese storytelling as a whole, because they have some rather intriguing myths contained in their history, but just anime. God, I hate anime.
 

Sol Invictus

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That would really depend on the anime you're watching. It's like saying "I hate all Hollywood movies" just because you've only seen Jerry Bruckheimer movies, which are the equivalent of Dragon Ball Z, and Pauly Shore movies, which are the equivalent of Sailor Moon or some other dubbed crap you might have seen. There's definitely a lot of 'pretentious' stuff like Hellsing and Steamboy (which was overhyped, and turned out to be rather rubbish), and then there's underrated greats like Samurai Champloo, with mature storylines, intriguing characters that much of the teenage anime community seems to despise because some of them can't seem to grasp concepts with any amount of depth.

Anime is just a term for "animation", specifically animation made in Japan. Like movies, CGI and cartoons, anime is not made equal. To lump all anime into a single category is to say that South Park and Family Guy are the same as Captain Planet.

The problem with anime isn't the anime itself. For the most part, the problem is the community. There's way too many DBZ fans, and they outnumber everybody else. It's the same with books, is it not? In the fantasy community, for instance, there's millions of Harry Potter fans, with far too few George R.R. Martin fans in comparison.
 

Chefe

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I've seen clips of so-called "good" anime, and I know how the hardcore crowd hates Dragonball and such. I just don't find the appeal in it, and look at it as second-rate animation. The characters are just strange, IMO, and the situations they find themselves in are equally awkward.
 

Chefe

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Can't remember the names, wasn't that important, and it was a while ago. They were just clips on the internet. Well, I do remember seeing cowboy bop and trigun.

It doesn't matter to me if you like it, but personally I simply hate the artistic style.
 

Sol Invictus

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Cowboy Bebop's "Edward" (the weird little girl/computer hacker) is a pretty annoying character, and it's the main reason why a lot of people can't get into it. Other than that, though, the storylines, dialogue and interaction between the characters are pretty good.

Trigun is just weird. It's a comedy set in the Western Steampunk setting as evidenced by the guy with the steam-powered body in the first episode, among other things, lacking any of the emotional and philosophical aspects you might find in something like Evangelion, Last Exile, Berserk and GunGrave which are 26 or so-chapter story arcs, rather than episodic serials. There are good serials of course, like Samurai Champloo as I previously mentioned, which is a 'period drama' and elucidates quite a bit on Japanese culture during the Edo period, to the more light hearted stuff like Bleach.

There's also really crazy stuff like FLCL. That stuff is spazzed out.

As for Dragonball, it's the definition of bad. It's like watching Power Rangers every week except the battles against the monsters rage on for several episodes. The animation's bad, the characters look absolutely ridiculous (ridiculous muscle-ripped bodies and spikey hair, anyone?) and there's no depth to it whatsoever. Big following, though. It's the anime equivalent of R.A. Salvatore's books.
 

RuySan

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Of course...Captain Planet is so much better than South Park, so you're right.

Something off topic, are you a Sol Invictus fan (band) or are you just into Roman mythology?


Sol Invictus said:
That would really depend on the anime you're watching. It's like saying "I hate all Hollywood movies" just because you've only seen Jerry Bruckheimer movies, which are the equivalent of Dragon Ball Z, and Pauly Shore movies, which are the equivalent of Sailor Moon or some other dubbed crap you might have seen. There's definitely a lot of 'pretentious' stuff like Hellsing and Steamboy (which was overhyped, and turned out to be rather rubbish), and then there's underrated greats like Samurai Champloo, with mature storylines, intriguing characters that much of the teenage anime community seems to despise because some of them can't seem to grasp concepts with any amount of depth.

Anime is just a term for "animation", specifically animation made in Japan. Like movies, CGI and cartoons, anime is not made equal. To lump all anime into a single category is to say that South Park and Family Guy are the same as Captain Planet.

The problem with anime isn't the anime itself. For the most part, the problem is the community. There's way too many DBZ fans, and they outnumber everybody else. It's the same with books, is it not? In the fantasy community, for instance, there's millions of Harry Potter fans, with far too few George R.R. Martin fans in comparison.
 

TheGreatGodPan

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The only anime I've ever seen that didn't completely suck is Excel Saga, which is ridiculous and made me laugh.
 

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