Review: Fable Heroes

As common as arcade/DLC tie-in games are, I was honestly surprised when word of Fable Heroes arrived, only for the game itself to arrive shortly after.  Acting as a tie-in title to the upcoming Fable: The Journey, the game is a multiplayer party/hack-n-slash title, featuring characters from across the preceding three games and upcoming fourth stylised in the form of ‘Hero Dolls’, a collectible item from within the other games.

Players journey through locations featured in the Fable series – presented in a simplified ‘toy-like’ form to fit with the ragdoll-ified heroes – and fight familiar enemies such as Hobbes, Hollow Men, Balverines and Chesty the Chest. Fighting through the horde each character is equipped with a light and heavy attack with their weapon of choice, tailored to their character; the Hero has his sword, Reaver his pistols, Hammer has her… Well her hammer, and so on. Each character also has a super attack, which is powered by taking away part of your health. The two primary attack levels feel unbalanced, however – the light attack takes a few strikes to take down basic enemies, and the heavy attack must be ‘charged’ before use, meaning you’ll be doing a lot of backpedaling to get far enough away from enemies to use it without geting hit in the meantime. The super attack is handy at smashing through large groups of enemies, but with limited health to begin with it’s a dicey choice in some situations.

In addition to the hack-n-slash nature of the game, you’ll find yourself collecting gold in-game to put towards the Skill Board – presented at the end of each level, it allows you to upgrade your skills and power, and unlock additional playable characters. You’ll earn a certain number of dice-rolls from each level allowing you to move around the board somewhat randomly, taking on perks as they present themselves.

This game is definitely one structured for co-operative play. Offering both local and LIVE multiplayer, four players can participate at once. Even if you choose to play solo, you’ll be presented with 3 NPC followers (who will incessantly steal all the Gold, the greedy little computers). throughout each level you are presented with both standard powerups and special ‘moral choice’ powerups – good powers generally benefitting all players in a minor way, and evil powers normally punishing, such as a ‘hot potato’ styled lightning cloud that zaps whoever is in possession of it. It’s not nearly as world-changing as the moral options in the preceding games, but it is a hard mechanic to integrate into a game like this.

Overall I found Fable Heroes somewhat lacking in the elements that attracted me to the Fable franchise in the first place. Gone are the moral choices, upgrade planning and character customisation, as well as the weapon variety that let you choose your combat proficiencies. Being able to rotate between melee, ranged and magic attacks was a joy to do in battles as the Hero of previous titles, but even the Hero himself in this game is cut down to one attack. Beyond that some of the characters are just not fun to use – Reaver with his pistol is just not combat-capable, especially with NPC buddies. Setting those details aside, the game itself just feels too slow-paced. Characters sort of meander around with no sense of urgency, which doesn’t help the game keep you focussed. I’d say play it if you’re eager for any amount of Fable or for the tie-in unlocks for , but otherwise let it be.