Fable 2 wins top honors in X-Play's 'Best of 2008'

by Griffin McElroy on Dec 10th 2008 12:00PM

The moment you've all been anxiously anticipating is finally here! The winners of X-Play's "Best of 2008" awards have finally been announced -- though perhaps a bit prematurely, as Calvin Tucker's Redneck Jamboree won't be hitting store shelves 'til next week. Fable 2 took the gold in the "Game of the Year" category, beating out Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Metal Gear Solid 4, Grand Theft Auto IV, Left 4 Dead and Resistance 2.

X-Play made some solid choices for the winners of other categories -- The World Ends With You took home "Best Handheld Game", Rock Band 2 clinched the "Best Music/Rhythm Game" category, MGS4 won "Best Action/Adventure Game", and Fallout 3 beat out Fable 2 in the "Best RPG" category. So, for those playing along at home, Fable 2 is the best game that came out this year -- but not the best RPG. Can someone whip up a Venn diagram to try and explain this one to us?

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Tags: Action, adam-sessler, best-of-2008, fable-2, g4tv, Lionhead, Lionhead-Studios, MGS, Microsoft-Game-Studios, morgan-webb, RPG, x-play, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (100)

What game had a better story to you? Just curious.

Honestly I would have given it to Fable 2 or MGS4.

TWEWY, Apollo Justice, and NMH had way better stories than GTA, and Harvey Birdman was the best written game I've played for a long time.

Fable 2 over Fallout 3 for GOTY is a terrible call.

The explanation is simple : XPlay sucks

WAIT! Why didnt Travis Touchdown win best new character?

why is there such a fuss?

since when has x-play ever been an authority in any capacity?

Yea, in real life, maybe. But this is the internet, making a fuss is our job.

What would we do if we weren't RAGING on the internet over someone's opinions?

Speaking of opinions, they're like assholes, you know. The internet has no shortage of them.

@Zetross

Everyone's heard that before, it's lame. It's even more lame due to the fact that you were the one who used the word "opinions".

@Gonorrhea

You stink.

Yeah, I misspelled your name, wasn't intentional. And there's no need to be immature about it, Mr. Poopy-pants.

You see, Fable 2 is game of the year because it was a top contender in ALL categories. Fallout 3 may have been the best RPG, but it was a terrible music/rhythm game. Fable 2 on the other hand, I was so sure it was going to beat out Rock Band 2 there.

Fable 2 is pretty awesome. Not Fallout 3 awesome (not even GTA IV awesome) but awesome nonethless.

Good show, chaps.

Also, I'm kinda sad that Prince of Persia isn't making it onto any of these lists. That game is fucking gorgeous and plays smooth as the Sultan's finest silk. Guess it just came out too late.

While I am surprised that Fable2 won GOTY, I must admit that it is the first game that I've played in a very long time that sucked time away like a vacuum/Taiwanese hooker.

I'd stop playing and realize that it was dark out, 8 hours later and that I was starving from not eating. Fable2 - Best weight loss game 2008.

I know its got its detractor, but I actually like XPlay. While I don't think that Fable 2 is the GOTY, XPlay has been known to spread the love around with its superlatives. During E3, they named InFamous the best PS3 game shown, but named LittleBigPlanet the overall best-in-show...uh LBP is the best in show but not the best PS3 game? What other platform is LBP on?!

WOW! No Gears2 or Resistance 2! Fable 2 is the best game with a 2 behind it. CONFIRMED!! Rock Band 2 gets a close 2nd. How many 2's is that?

G4 still shows X-play? I thought they canceled it for more lost reruns.

I can get behind this. Fallout 3 did the RPG stuff better, and as an RPG is spectacular. However, it doesn't have the level of polish that Fable 2 has and is less approachable to non-RPG gamers.

Fable 2 was the worst game I played this year.

I'm sorry, I don't get it, maybe someone can explain to me how this game is fun. You get next to no character customization. Sure you can buy houses and crap but thats about all you can really do with your money. The minigames where you gotta press A when the dot is in the green are all boring, repetitive, and totally uncreative. The storyline is halfway decent but its too short.

Is it because you can have sex with just about every NPC in the game? Are people that starved for sex? Because I actually think it might have been a better game without the stupid "screen goes black and people make funny noises" sex scenes because if they had been omitted I could have let my 10 year old play the game and he might have found it mildly entertaining.

Please, what am I missing here?

Immersion?

I could go on for hours bitching about how stupid Fallout 3 or Far Cry 2 can be, but I would still recommend it to my friends if only because it would be a shame not to experience Africa/Wasteland for all the climate the place has...

Yeah, I tend to get immersed in a game more when I can actually pick what my character looks like.

The whole point of Fable is that you don't get to pick your appearence, your character morphs depending on your actions and abilites. I thought that was a far better system than Fallout 3's terrible customisation.. but it's not like you even saw your character in that game, so it wouldn't have even mattered if you couldn't customise them.

Personally I don't think Fable 2 deserved GoTY, but it certainly deserved it over Fallout.

Well I'm not going to argue that Fallout 3 deserves to be Game of the Year. But just check metacritic for the amount of games released in 2008 that score higher. Not to mention, on metacritic, how VAST the difference of score is between the professional reviews, and the user reviews.

I'm not the only one with this opinion. Of course, arguing about these kinds of list is kinda silly, its all subjective. I was just surprised that Fable 2 got the top honors considering how horrible I thought the game was.

I imagine Fable 2 didnt win best RPG to avoid redundancy. So since the game of the year was an rpg theyd have to settle for the second best rpg.

Which is bullshit Fallout 3 shoulda been goty.

Good. Molyneux and the others at Lionhead deserve it for all the hard work and dedication they put into Fable 2. So glad MGS4 didn't win. I hated that game with a passion. So boring.

WTF?! Dead Space wasn't even in the running??! That's nuts. Dead Space was MY GOTY hands down.

Seriously? They didn't even mention NMH? Fuck you G4, fuck you.

NMH was a nominee in the "Best New Character" category.

So shitty that they didnt win btw.

Fable 2 = The land of invisible walls. This game would have been great on the xbox... maybe.

Left 4 Dead over Gears 2 for best shooter and best multiplayer?

The XBL community obviously disagrees. Gears 2 clearly ranks higher.

Can somebody answer my question?

Why is Joystiq posting about X-Play's picks for games of the year? Since when has anyone cared what X-Play said? I haven't heard a good review from them in over 5 years.

I would have to agree with their rankings. I can see how Fable didn't win Best RPG too. It is a great RPG, but the parts that mark the traditional RPG genre are, IMO, better implemented in Fallout 3. However it can be argued that Fable as a whole is better than Fallout.

I play both of them on a PC, and from what I have seen there is just a bit more polish in Fable. It's also more stable than Fallout.

this happened last year too, its because the xbox fanboys MUST have their exclusive win GOTY... last year COD4 won best shooter, but halo3 won GOTY. its pretty obvious that people just wanted their exclusive to win.

i havent played either of them, and im suprised resistance is on there, i thought the single player sucked compared to the first one, and online hasnt really hooked me.

What? How did that xbox hating thing make sense? Oh wait - you are giving us the omgxplayizsobiastoxbox cry fest.

how is it a cry fest? plus its just the x-play awards, i dont even watch that show... let alone G4. but it goes to show how the users voting have different motives when the game of the year cant when in its own genre.

I remember a similar situation back in '04, where Half-Life 2 won best FPS but lost to Halo 2 for GotY.

You made the redneck game joke, but you could have made it serious and said Persona 4. It still has one of the highest meta-ratings of the year, and I doubt anyone was expecting much with how little hype it had leading up to it.

I refuse to care about what any top 10 list says if it is released before the end of the year, because as Persona 4 seems to have proven, you never know what might end out being great.

bull. shit. fable 2 beat mgs4, gears 2, and fallout 3? no, just no.

Award for channel most aimed at 10 year olds with ADD, that's full of crap: G4TV

Award for awards that people don't give a damn about: anything involving video games that's older than 24 hours

WipEout HD > Braid
Seriously, do the guys on G4 even play PSN games?

I want to see Banjo Kazooie win some awards somewhere. That game is just too awesome to not win something.

That list isn't too shabby. The only one I truly disagree with is the hand-held game. Chains of Olympus was absolutely stunning, and Crisis Core, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin and Professor Layton are all vastly superior to the World Ends with You, in my opinion.

Fable 2 seems like an odd choice too, but hey, why not?

These goty awards always seem like such fake bullshit..

Good thing TWEWY won! I would have given it Best Story too.

Maybe is just me but GTAIV story was pretty good.

Here's Adams reason why Fable won GoTY.

The world ends with you huh.

I would have give it to God of War Chains of Olympus,Professor Layton or Loco Roco 2.

Kirby, FFIV and Chrono sadly are disqualified for being remakes.

Actually Fallout 3 was an insult to any fan of the series of Fallout (You didn't know one existed did you?)

The problem was that the Raven Rock base was nothing like the Enclave would have done, there were so many times the PC could have been killed by a number of events that in reality would have occured, such as the Vertibird shooting at him for once in their lives. The fact he was allowed to roam the halls and wasn't simply escorted was also stupid beyond reason.

And many other issues existed too, such as the ability to skip half the story by wandering, as well as most if not all of the vault stories and issues (even the first one...)

So no, Fallout 3 was insultive and the only reason people like it was because it was Oblivion with Guns.

- Cere.

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Fable 2 wins top honors in X-Play's 'Best of 2008'

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