What I Hate About You 1.21.08: Fable 2

Posted by John De Large on 01.21.2009

This week I'm going to hate on my current favorite game in honor of the new DLC.

GAMERTAG HALL OF FAME
-World Champion: Atomic handjob
-Intercontinental Champion: Crunchy Ass Hairs
-Here comes a new challenger!: Squidwards penis

JDL APPROVED
-Axe Dark Chocolate Spray (Good for smelling like chocolates and chocolate-esque things)
-Applebee's 10 oz. Steak Burger (To get full fast and enjoy all of the flavors of steak in a nice burger, eat this)
-Boston Market Creamed Spinach (Warm, filling and if you drop a dollop of sweet potato or blue cheese in there and mix it all up, you'll want to thank me)

THIS WEEK'S QUOTE TO SAY WHILE DOMINATING IN TEAM FORTRESS 2
"It was a fucking miracle and I want you to acknowledge it!" - Jules Winfield, Pulp Fiction

Now....

Unable to focus my hatred on just one thing this week, I'm going to pick apart something I love. I think it's been unfair to lob complaints at things I don't like, when plenty of things I love have glaring flaws of their own, plus it's more mature than BAWWWW-ing about things that other people love, appearances or megalomaniacal preachers.

After watching an enormous amount of Zero Punctuation this week, I felt this column would be a good opportunity to shield the game of my dreams from some of Lord Yahtzee Croshaw's complaints, address them, then turn around and stab the game in the back with my own complaints.

So, without further adieu, Fable 2, this is What I Hate About You.

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BANNER!

(Crud, it isn't working for whatever reason. I'll have to make a new one.)

Oh well. "Take it away, myself."

POOCHY D
The dog in Fable 2 is a handy little mutt. He (she?) finds treasure and attacks downed enemies. Books will improve the probability of these things occurring, which I find to be silly, unrealistic and un-neccessary given that you can choose to praise and/or scold the dog. As long as the option to say "Good boy!" or "Ah-ah! No!" exist, why must we rely on books to improve our dogs skills? For every time the dog finds a treasure, you should praise or punish him, with each gesture increasing or decreasing respectively how often he'll find you treasure. Same goes for attacking people, praising and punishing makes the dog a lot more realistic.

Here's something else, I don't like that you can't choose the breed of dog or even the type of pet to help you in your quest. How cool would it be to have a snake or an eagle to find stuff for you or eat an enemy with it's fangs or talons? Plus, (speaking from experience) why can't I have a Rottweiler? They're faithful to their owners, good with kids if the owner is not an ass and few people survive a fight with one. You could even swap out the tracking and treasure hunting features to make him a loveable killing machine.



The last complaint I have about Poochy is that you can't lose him until the end of the game and even then it's treated as a punishment/consequence.

Now, I love dogs, I have 3 of my own and they're members of my family as far as I'm concerned, but I keep thinking, what if Fable 2 had stuck me with a cat? I hate cats. If I'd gotten stuck with a cat, I'd've been looking to swing it by it's tail. So, I imagine Fable 2 players who HATE dogs (the pillocks that they are) are looking at the dog and going "WTF? Get away from me!" There are reports that you can somehow strand the dog, but nothing is confirmed yet. They should just give you an option to take the dog or shoo him off for dog at the beginning of the game.

Ah, that's just mean. They should make you find a new owner for the dog before you can ditch him.

WELL, AT LEAST IT'S NOT COLLEGE
The game's Spire environment/mini-game/sidequest/life stage is something else I hated. In the Spire, an ominous looking tower crackling with magic, you are the equivalent of a prison guard. While you're there, you can choose to do your job and torture the prisoners or not be a dick and spare them, at the expense of lost experience (described as lost memories in the game).

As the aforementioned Hero For All Of The Time Yahtzee Croshaw once mentioned, you can remedy the loss of experience by "swatting the nearest gnat (just hitting enemies)." Since no one cared about losing experience, or since it was easy to come by, how about this instead?

For doing your job and tormenting the poor prisoners, you get to escape quicker, say in 2 years time if you're a really evil fuck. If you choose to be a shitty prison guard it takes longer for you to get out or you get lumped in with said prisoners. Gee, lookit that, that was real hard to come up with: something for the story and it made use of gameplay mechanics.

WHAT KIND OF SOUP?!?!
So I got a sword with a lightning coursing through it's blade, grouped together a bunch of kids, put on a robe, turned the safety off and prepared to give 'em my best Anakin Skywalker impression.

What I found is that no matter how hard I swung my sword, I couldn't kill any of the little brats, all of them just kept asking for my autograph.

Now, here I am, trying my hardest to be completely evil as possible (okay, not evil, more like indifferent with evil tendencies). I figure killing kids is pretty high up the evil food chain, since it's a page out of the villian's book. I get really fed up, because when I get a hankering for baby soup, I want some damn baby soup, not some moderator to tell me that I'm going too far.

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS HALFWAY CROOKS
If you want to live out the fantasy of being the greatest hero of all time, then the game's main story is for you. It has you performing all sorts of heroic feats, saving the lives of innocents and performing every manly cliche (even if you're a woman) before stopping short of thrusting the American flag into the tallest mountain possible (even though the world of Albion is just a small island based on the UK).

There's no real way to progress in the storyline as an evil fuck, which is annoying. There should be options to backstab your partners and absorb their power, maybe even join up with Lucien at the end. As is, just being evil and sticking to the story makes you vengeful at best and indecisive at worst.

DLC.... DELICIOUS LEPROSY CANDY?
The DLC looks yummy. I want all of that. Suits of armor, 24 shot rifles, biker jackets and I can get my dog back in my Heroic-savior-of-Albion file!




+




Unfortunately, they tease you with new free goodies. Yeah, they were free and the submariner was both pretty cool and seamlessly inserted....

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Okay, so this argument's going nowhere, I just wish I had the DLC dammit.

LIGHTNING ROUND

Check it, Cloud hung onto his cross dressing gear.

Here's where I bitch about things in one paragraph or less.

-I don't know if it's because I play Fable 2 so much or if the game requires more juice from my batteries, but ever since I started playing it again, I'm changing my batteries every damn day.

-How come I can't get a chicken dinner in a medieval game? There's wenches, scallywags, brewskies, meat pies, but no chicken, potatoes and spinach with a side of bread like I can get at Boston Market! Just the other day I sat down to a similar meal thinking how much HP this'd restore while not making me a fatty moo (y'know like every food item in Fable 2).



-Forget the gnat swatting, go to the apothecary and get some potions that give you experience. No longer rare treats like in the previous Fable, experience potions are available for pocket change.

FUN THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU'RE IN ALBION
Currently, I'm creating a big fat bisexual woman who gets drunk, wields a cleaver and pistol, has some hair on her upper lip and goes around killing anyone wearing the colors blue or green. It's quite fun.

To really enjoy the game and the hero, you're playing, you really have to make them someone you enjoy playing as, whether that's a loner, murderer, hero, savior or a drunk, you'll enjoy the game 10 times more and overlook it's flaws if you can laugh once in a while.

That said, you'll never laugh harder than when you're controlling an insane drunken bisexual lunchlady.

Another fun thing to do is JDL's Ultimate Get-Money-Fast trick. Not, it's not the clock thing, just listen up.

-Find a weapon store that's having a sale or go to Bowerstone Old Town where you can get a discount if you were good as a child.
-Buy as much of their weapons as you can.
-Go to the rich part of town, Fairfax Gardens and sell the weapons to a trader for 20% to 35% above the market price.
-???
-PROFIT!

Say you bought $2000 rifle for half off, then you sell it back for $2600. You just made more than double what you put up to buy the rifle. Not bad, eh?

FUCK, MARRY, KILL IV, CHAMPIONSHIP EDITION
This week is the winner's round, where we'll play a game of Fuck Marry Kill with girls of gaming. The women to choose from this week have all won prior games in past columns. Last week's What I Hate About You FMK III saw another tie between Yuna and Lulu, as voters chose their favorite girls from FFX to sleep with and marry. Last week's tiebreaker was to see who'd been killed the least, which in this case would make Lulu the winner.

The clear cut losers of each round have been Aeris, Selphie and Rikku, with Aeris in dead fucking last.

The silver medalists were Yuffie (who did better than expected), Quistis (who did okay) and Yuna (who almost made to the final round).

Therefore, your choices for this week are:

Tifa




Rinoa




Lulu




Pick one to kill off, one to have sex with, one to marry. All of this is hypothetical of course, since they are fictional characters. For your vote to count, your picks cannot be used more than once. The person who provides the best explanation gets special mention in the next column.

Also! I seem to sense I'm not the only foodie out there. Got a recipe, food combo or eatery to endorse? Let me know, I'll try it out provided it doesn't have sour cream all over it and I'll mention it in the JDL Approved section if it's yummy enough.

Trip out of state next week. Fret not, though, 'cause I'll be back with something else to hate on, because I'm Y2JDL.

And that's What I Hate About You.