Fable was all about choices and Fable Heroes is, well, not so much. It’s another in a recently odd line of puppet titles. I have to wonder if it’s because the violence they perpetrate in video games can then be chalked up as fantasy and the game gets a lower rating. While I was playing this for review an outside observer stated that the game was rather violent. Considering that the whole point of the game is to kill everything in your path, that wasn’t surprising. I also, joking, said "yep, it’s all about killing and plundering." That is also the case as your main actions in the entire game are to kill enemies and pick up loot before other party members can. In fact, the amount of gold you pick up in a level determines if you ’win’ the level.

Social commentary aside about the content of the game, Fable Heroes returns us to the world of Fable, but as puppets where up to four players play both cooperatively and competitively play in this hack-and-slash adventure. Work together as heroes of Albion to defeat familiar foes and new enemies while collecting as many gold coins as possible to unlock upgrades, characters, and items in both this game and Fable: The Journey for Xbox 360.

Starting out you can choose from a handful of puppets and head out on your adventure. The world map is set up like a board game where you can move to the first level and then take on the mission there. You can’t progress unless you beat the current mission but you can always go back and replay another level to get more gold for more upgrades. At the end of each level you have a choice of left or right. That means you then have to go back and play each level twice (probably to lengthen the gameplay time). On top of that you then have Dark Albion which offers again, the same levels to play through twice again. Repetitive? Definitely.

On top of that each level is very much the same. Move forward until you encounter a horde of enemies and destroy them to proceed. In between those battles you have barrels, crates and some other destructible items that will cough up coins. Yes, cliche, I know. So the whole game is pretty much a side-scrolling hack-and-slash. At the end of each level you will either fight a boss or encounter a sort of mini game, like kicking chickens into the goal, which again prompted the observer to tsk tsk me and say "what did those chickens do to you?" I explained that in a previous mini-game they exploded trying to kick me, so I’m just having my revenge.