Xbox Original Version of Fable: Downloading vs. Buying a Copy of the Game

Recently, Microsoft started up the Xbox Original service on Xbox Live Marketplace. Xbox Originals are a bunch of original Xbox titles that you can download onto your Xbox 360. These games cost you around 1,200 Microsoft points, which comes out to around $15 per game not to mention they will take up around 1GB to 3 GB of space on your system. There are eight games to download on Marketplace and right now I'm going to review one of those games off Xbox Originals and that game is Fable. Is it worth downloading or should you just go and buy a physical copy?

Every Xbox owner should know Fable. The game was a pretty highly anticipated back then and went on to sell a ton of copies. The game is an action adventure set around sword fighting and spell casting such as hurling lightning, fire and even sending enemies flying backwards in an almost Star wars force like action. The beauty of Fable was the open ended game play where you could choose to do quests whenever you wanted. You could also go about owning businesses to make money or even own a house and get married. Theres a ton of things to do in Fable and it was no question that Microsoft would definitely bring this top seller to Xbox Originals, but how is the downloadable version?

First of all, I can say that going from Xbox 360 games to Xbox games can be an eye sore. Graphically Fable is just like how it was back on the Original Xbox. The only problem is that for some reason, every now and then you will run into really weird glitches that definitely did not exist on the physical copy. Sometimes when you change your outfit in the game, your character will turn color which in my case it was always green. When it happens, you would have to save, quit the game and re-load it again. At one point late in the game, my character actually had the map tattooed on him.

You will also run into periodic sound glitches as well. I've had times where a characters voice would be like two seconds behind his lips or there would be no speech at all. You will also find really random and loud sound crackle and pops for no apparent reason. I've played the downloaded version on different televisions and the problem still happened. They were very seldom so it's not like it was constantly happening over and over.

For the most part though, the game is pretty solid outside of the few glitches listed. It's still everything I remember and love about Fable. If I could go back and change my mind, I might just do it. For around the same price I could probably buy the game and not have to deal with any annoying glitches or bugs. They are fairly minor but still hinder the game sometimes. I don't think it's worth $15 and the hard drive space. I'm not saying all Xbox Originals are bugged but Fable is the only one I've tried and hopefully it's not an indication of the rest of them.