Review: Knothole Island DLC for Fable 2
Downloadable Content (or DLC) is becoming more commonplace in games, and is still a major source of contention among gamers. Some people see it as a way to squeeze more money out of customers, others see it as a way to expand on a game without delaying the initial release. The price also plays a big part in people's opinions. Gamers rarely complain about free DLC, but content that costs money will have detractors even if there are many hours of gameplay for only a few dollars. Fable 2 was released late in 2008, and the Knothole Island DLC was released only a couple months later for 800 Microsoft points (or $10 U.S.). Does this DLC provide enough bang for the buck, or will the quests fizzle out? Read on for our short review.
The Knothole Island expansion updates the town of Bowerstone with a submarine and its captain, who anxiously waits for you to pay the required 800 points to journey to his hometown on Knothole Island. He offers you a few gifts, but there is no requirement to visit Knothole Island, and your actions there don't have much affect on the rest of your game.
Once on Knothole Island, you will have to help the town by fighting through three dungeon shrines to find the three weather totems. There are also ten books to find along the way (much like the silver keys in the main Fable 2 quests). This is the core of the expansion, and can be done in less than a couple hours. Compared to the main story line, it feels very small and inconsequential. With only three weather types, the island never finds a happy medium, and seems to always be struggling from heat, cold or flooding. There is one benefit for those who might have made a *cough* significant sacrifice *cough* in the main story, but even that doesn't feel worth the $10 asking price.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend this expansion to anyone at the current price point. The unique items available from Knothole Island are okay, but nothing amazing. The amount of time it adds to the game is certainly not worthwhile, and the good/evil decision at the end of the weather quests won't make you take pause like the one at the end of the main story line. If someday it is available for 400 Microsoft Points, I could recommend it for any big fan of Fable 2, but as for now, you won't be missing much by skipping this DLC.
banana87654321 wrote:
This is really more of a problem if you've already completed the game, we suspect. If you were to visit Knothole in the middle of your main adventure (and you can), the tasks and combat challenges would probably feel quite a bit more substantial. As a post-game piece of content, however,nike golf some of your actions lose weight. This is particularly obvious when a character tempts you down the "evil" path with 10,000 gold. That's almost certainly a picayune payment to anybody who's completed the main quest, and it weakens the moral dilemma you'll face after three to four hours.Though the central quests failed to blow us away (that's a weather joke, right?), Knothole Island fits perfectly into Albion. Even now, it continues to lure us back with fun potions, rare weapons, undiscovered dig spots and the strangest looking bard in the entire game. He looks positively spoony.
alan wrote:
A means to enact our own will upon the outcome of a game. That is what we as gamers were effectively promised by Peter Molyneux before the release of Fable II. As great a game as Fable II is, it is debatable whether his team really achieved this. While the crisp, colourful, slightly cartoon-styled graphics of the game set a humorous tone for the game, its story was an epic tale of a boy (or girl)’s quest for revenge. At the time of release, way back in October, Fable II brought its refreshing formula back to the stage, and once again gave gamers the opportunity to have them hailed as a heart-warming hero, or feared as a terrifying tyrant.golf shoes Three months down the line, the game, which was once cemented firmly in our disk trays (and in some cases the cause of a major malfunction), is now buried at the bottom of old-games mountain, trapped in played/finished purgatory, if you will. Is the newly released Downloadable Content, Knothole Island, a reason to rescue Fable II from such an inconsequential fate? Well, the answer is yes...for a while.Reopening the metaphorical old tome of a case and dusting off the ol’ girl, I slide Fable II into the disk drawer and after applying the recent patch and being greeted with a hefty sum of money, reflecting the time I’d spent away, a small, unassuming notification alerted me to the fact that I had a new quest: Knothole Island’s Big Freeze. Brushing with renewed excitement for the game, I hurry to the quest area. After all, I can’t let the people of Knothole freeze, can I?Dashing to Bowerstone’s river, expecting to see a ship of great grandeur to sail me away to distant, faraway lands, I am slightly disconcerted with the presence of a submarine that wouldn’t look out of place in the Bowerstone Inn, where my girl made her millions all those months ago. But enough of the story, I don’t want to give the game away. (Or deprive Lionhead and Microsoft of the millions that they will make from this just-over-500MB download, regardless of its gameplay value.)The first visuals of Knothole Island you are met with would have been much better appreciated were the game released for its original intended release date. They are, to say the least, festive. With Christmas long gone, the content has missed its mark with the festive aspect. The graphical styling is snowy and wintry as you look out over a sigh-inducing frozen lake ripped directly from every film with winter as a theme.
Embarking on your first quest, as set by the snooty chieftain of Knothole Island, you engage in some relatively easy fighting, flit-switching and it is soon realised that the expansion is about the extremes of nature and the elements, as after the first stage of the quest is completed, Knothole Island becomes a heat-stricken, arid environment complete with a convincing heat wave. It is important to note here that the dog was used to dig up a key in one part of the quest, so I was left to wonder what would have happened if I had chosen one of the other two options at the end of the previous storyline.
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