I was as pleased as these guys to play Fable: The Lost Chapters.

I find myself increasingly on the downside of the technology curve these days, mostly because I limit myself to one console system (the venerable PS2) and I don’t own a portable. The upshot of this technological lag is that games that are old to some are brand spanking new to me. Take Fable, for example. Bucho’s been playing this game for over a year and I only started two weeks ago. However, I think I came out on top in this scenario because my first Fable purchase was the expanded content game Fable: The Lost Chapters.

Fable: TLC is the PC version of the hit XBox game released by Microsoft games. It includes extra chapters and missions beyond those included in the original, including a completely new region accessible through the teleporting cullis gates. Having never played it on the X-Box, it’s tough for me to tell you where the new content starts and ends, but I understand that issues raised in the original are resolved in the final chapter. Microsoft deserves some credit for this game: if I hadn’t known that this was an expanded version, it would have been tough for me to discern this truth. The transition from original to expanded was very smooth and made me think that either the extra chapter was intended and never executed in the original, or the programmers did an excellent job of back-writing foreshadow into the first few chapters.

Damn I look heroic.

There were some odd things about this game that took me some time to figure out; most notably that hardware acceleration of the sound effects caused all sorts of problems. The intro screens are all off-center, but square up once the actual game beings. There are also some instability and freeze-up issues during the skill selection process that can be over come by alt-Tabbing to the desktop then returning to the game. I guess it is a Microsoft product after all, and I might feel cheated somehow if it didn’t have weird programming flaws within.

It would be pointless for me to tell you how good this game is or how it plays since I’m pretty convinced the number of people who read this site and don’t own an XBox is on the slimmish side. For those of who have played the original on the XBox, I’ll tell you that the expanded chapter adds maybe 4 or 5 hours to the game time. I am led to believe that there are also new expressions as well. Unfortunately I can’t tell you how many expanded missions there are in the first few chapters. Sorry.

I call this one “Airguitarist in Briefs and Pimphat”

If you haven’t played Fable, you absolutely should. There’s simply no excuse. If you’ve spent $50 on the original XBox version, well then you might want to wait for the PC version to drop in price first. Unless you’re hemorrhaging cash, at which point you should buy this game on your way to see a doctor you diseased freak.