Game Content Review: Fable 2 Knothole Island

After a few delays, the adventure of Fable 2 can finally continue with the first set of downloadable content; the nostalgically titled Knothole Island. It promised much, but past experience from the original Fable's sub-par additional content raised some doubts among fans. Could Knothole Island reinvigorate Fable 2, or would it prove to be another example of dud content?

Unfortunately, Knothole Island is almost certainly the latter. While the island itself is beautifully designed and intricately detailed, almost everything else about it feels thrown together. Not only do the three new quests amount to little more than fetch quests, but they're incredibly short and all do-able in under an hour. The characters are entirely forgettable, failing to reach the standards of the witty and interesting characters from the main game and a swift reminder of why the skip button was included for non-playable characters wordy dialogue. There aren't even any new enemies to freshen things up.

The technical issues and bugs that saw Knothole Island pushed back over a month haven't been fully ironed out. During the short time you'll be playing the expansion you'll notice that frame rate issues are now much more common both on Knothole Island and in mainland areas such as Bowerstone and Oakfield, even if you've install the main game onto your hard drive. How they've managed to delay it for a month and still not manage to fine tune it despite it's small size is a little pathetic, really.

The only real strong point of the Knothole Island pack is the amount of new toys available. There's an assortment of new clothes, a bulky arsenal of new weapons - including a novelty Halo rifle - and a bunch of augmentations to customise them with. There are even new potions which alter your physical appearance allowing you to gain weight, grow taller, or instantly beautify yourself, making detailed character customisation much easier. You'll also have the opportunity to revive your dog if you gave him up at the end of the main quest, although that probably cheapens two of the three endings a little.

But once you've played around with the new toys, that's it. They're just gimmicks; novelties that don't add anything to the game experience as a whole. They're fun at first but they have the lifespan of a flea, which effectively summarises the whole of Knothole Island.

As the first downloadable content for Fable 2, Knothole Island is a big let down. It's short, repetitive, and not half the expansion that Lionhead cracked it up to be, although to be fair nothing is half the anything that Lionhead will hype it up to be. The only people I can imagine having any interest in this are the ones who bought the limited edition of Fable 2 just so that they could having the satisfaction of wearing Master Chief's armour, because clearly they're the only ones willing to waste good money on in-game novelties. To put it bluntly; even if you enjoyed Fable 2 this probably isn't worth your time, and won't be until they make it free.

4/10

Yes, I know it's short, but what am I supposed to do with an hour long game add-on?

Totally forgot he was meant to review Braid - tomdoodle16@live.co.uk