

Instead you’ll look after Seren because you care. You’ll also gain XP from some of these actions, to add to those you’ve racked up blasting baddies and collecting orbs on the road, but the pared-down RPG skill-tree and leveling system feels tacked on. And while in different hands these sections may have been a little too saccharine and pointless, in Fable: The Journey you’ll take pride in getting Seren’s hide glowing in the afternoon sun. Here you can pull arrows from her flank, heal her wounds and infections, brush her down and feed her. This depth of feeling gives the game’s occasional stopping points a little more emotional depth. You’ll want to look after her and care for her. Seren may not display a huge amount of personality, but Gabriel’s love for her is clear and massively infectious. Not since Shadow of the Colossus' Agro has a video game steed won us over quite so completely. Yet it’s Gabriel’s relationship with his horse Seren that really pulls at your heart strings. Even the bit-part players are wonderfully drawn. With Gabriel’s gradual acceptance of his role in Albion’s fate and his touchingly filial relationship with both the tribe leader and Theresa, Fable: The Journey draws you into its world.

Undoubtedly pitched at a younger audience, it’s less bawdy and edgy than previous entries, but it remains completely charming. Freed from the choice-based nonlinearity of its RPG predecessors, Fable: The Journey is able to deliver a focused, authored storyline with properly defined, likable inhabitants. As a game Fable: The Journey may be lacking, but as an experience it’s utterly beguiling. But Lionhead’s real triumph isn’t in sidestepping and obscuring Kinect’s inadequacies, it’s in delivering a truly great story, with central relationships you’ll truly care about. There’s cart sections, various different spells to cast and manipulate, whizzy mine cart rides, boss fights and even some light puzzle solving. Yet with just these limited tools Lionhead constantly mixes up the gameplay in subtle ways, meaning that you’re rarely doing anything long enough to get too bored or frustrated. Meanwhile, when there are several enemies charging at you or hiding behind barrels, getting numerous spells off in the required direction is tricky, to say the least. All you have to do is push your hand out towards the screen. In the moments where you're required to cast a single accurate spell, your actions are interpreted for you.
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As your adventure progresses it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re learning how to steer more subtly and accurately, but the truth is that the game’s AI lends a helpful, guiding hand. Attempt to steer around corners and the odds are you’ll zig-zag around in a desperate attempt to get the damn thing traveling straight. "Customs operates a little differently in Albion." Indeed, it’s done a better job than you would expect, building the game around a limited number of interactions and obscuring Kinect’s weaknesses with some convincing smoke and mirrors. The studio could only play with the cards it was dealt.

Yet the responsiveness and accuracy of the actual gameplay is annoyingly fuzzy. And although you have to sit very upright, it does spare your legs from extended, achey play sessions.
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You can sit down while playing now, that’s a plus point. And while tech improvements have been made and Fable: The Journey represents perhaps its best implementation yet, it remains weak. You simply cannot escape the fact that the motion sensing device’s limitations dominate your experience. Any review of a Kinect game invariably ends up being a review of Kinect.

When it comes to actual gameplay, when it comes to interactivity, Fable: The Journey is poor. It’s a Kinect game, one where your time is split between steering your horse and cart around the varied environment of Albion and chucking magic at the land’s numerous nasties.Īnd there’s the rub. To reunite with his tribe Gabriel must help Theresa back to the Tattered Spire to defeat the threat once and for all.
