Yes, you can all laugh at me and say that I'm late to the party by playing Fable in the year 2008. Go ahead, point at me and whisper to your friends about how I'm playing a game from last generation instead of immersing myself in that which is HD gaming. I'm cool with that. I'm cool with being the butt of your jokes. Want to know why? Fable is a pretty good game.

Last generation, I was one of those people that didn't own an Xbox. I thought it was the worst machine on the market, and in my Sony loving ways, I never imagined ever owning one. My friends all seemed to jump on the Microsoft bandwagon and enjoyed rubbing it in my face about how great Xbox Live was, how Master Chief filled his suit, and how Fable was going to change the way we played video games forever. I scoffed at the first two but took notice in Fable because it was the game I probably followed the most through the Xbox's life span. The game where if you punched a kid when he was younger, he'd still have the scars after he'd grown up. The game where if you planted a seed one day, you could return years later to find a huge tree had taken its place. Alright, it was none of those things.

Peter Molyneux made some pretty big promises when it came to Fable and most gamers saw right through them. I think we all knew the hardware wasn't at the point where you could actually get away with all of the real-time elements he was promising, and we had all braced ourselves for the disappointment that would follow its release. On release, the casual game buying public bought into the hype, the hardcores nitpicked every promise that was made but not fulfilled, and everyone had something to say about Molyneux's scope. It was a PR disaster, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Fable was a bad game.

While I never did get around to playing Fable back in 2004, I always felt like I was missing a piece of game history. A piece that in a way, did change how games were made and produced. Developers quickly learned to not overextend themselves, and I think it really has forced a better overall game development process. Where gamers are no longer fed empty promises, and elements that could never work. Well, in most cases anyways.

With that in mind, I sat down with Fable last night and played it as a game that was no longer tarnished by all of the hype behind it. Where I wasn't looking for all of the links between the years of my character or how the world wasn't evolving before my very eyes. I opened the box, threw it in my 360, and played it as a standard action rpg and had a pretty great time. At its core it's a fun game and that's all that really matters.

After putting about 5 hours into Fable, I can say that I'm going to sit down with it today and try knocking off as much of it as I can. Sure, I have Castle Crashers, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Too Human, and a ton of other games I could delve into, but with Fable 2 on the horizon I really want to get myself caught up with the world of Albion.

Now that you know that I'm reliving 2004. What are you going to play this weekend?