Fable II (Xbox 360)

The AI is good, there are a few moments where the dog seems to become confused but these are few and far between. The enemy AI varies depending on the creature or human opponent and they have various levels of morale, something like Hobbes will run away if pressed too hard. Certain bandits won't budge even if you slaughter their friends and colleagues.

Finally Lionhead have given players a chance to play online with each other or on the same screen cooperatively if a friend pops around to play. The catch is that you're a guest in the other heroes' world and whilst your character abilities are those of your hero - your appearance and weapons are those of the henchman you can choose from when you bring up the multiplayer screen. There are no lobbies and everything is jump-in/jump-out in design. You can set your ambient orbs (representations of other players in the game, to everyone, or just friends only), converse, trade and interact with them.

See a friend, you can ask them to join your world.

You can choose how much gold and xp you award to your henchman and they will gain a portion of your income every 5 minutes as well.

There are a few lag issues with the game until you apply the update, even then they don't go away fully. It is however a great game to play with a friend and whilst you're not the central hero if you join another person's session, it's still a right step forwards in terms of cooperative multiplayer, since you can combine certain Will spells with another player to create combination magic as well as cooperatively battle enemies with flourishes and style.

There's one more feature that I've left until last, it's called 'Safety' and it is there to prevent accidental death/maiming of npcs and so on in your game. It's also there to stop people from coming into your Fable 2 session and ruining your world. With Safety off a player can rampage through Albion and kill people, end your married life and basically destroy your character's ideal world. Now it's all well and good if you're an evil sod bent on bringing fear into the populace's hearts, but, if you're a good guy it's going to be hard to repair the damage that's been done. You have been warned.

As Lionhead have said, it's all about choice.

So whilst it isn't a perfect game, it's a fun one and it's a good one and if you can't be bothered to read the review above as to why. Yes, it's worth getting, especially if you like a darker kind of fairy tale where you are definitely the central character. It's obviously setup for a sequel and Lionhead have said its part of a trilogy so we'll have to see where and how that goes.

With dlc (downloadable content) looming on the horizon as well only time will tell.