FABLE - By Telstar
                   (PC Graphic Adventure)

                  Reviewed by Jenny Perry

At the beginning of this point and click adventure you are warned
that not everyone or everything is quite what they seem - you will
discover this with a vengeance at the end of the game! You play
the part of a village lad called Quickthorpe. Your world has been
rent asunder in the far distant past, when a benign, non-corporeal
alien race called the Mecubar lived on your planet. The Mecubar
had an advanced technology which enabled everyone to live in peace
and harmony - but somebody always has to spoil things and a man
called Ishmael and 4 of his friends plotted to usurp the Mecubar
and take over their technology for evil purposes. This plot was
discovered and 4 of the ringleaders were turned into monsters and
banished into the 4 torn sections of your world together with one
jewel but Ishmael escaped and no more was heard of him.

Now your village elder has asked you to collect the 4 jewels which
he believes, together with a special key, will join the 4 parts
of your planet and reveal the secrets of the Mecubar, and to kill
the 4 monsters ruling the different sections.  You can explore
your immediate environment with the help of a useful map and find
some useful objects and a lot of red herrings - I spent the whole
game trying to find an inventive use for chilli peppers. You will
also meet some friends and make a few enemies; there were also a
couple of characters who didn't seem to be of any importance at
all and I'm still wondering why they were included in the game.

The monster in this section of the game is an Ice Giant - when you
defeat him you can hitch a ride with a friendly - but hungry -
eagle.  You are plonked down on the outskirts of a large swamp by
a house watched over by a lizard guard, who reminded me of an
unhelpful version of the swampling in Simon the Sorcerer.  You
can chat away to him, but he's a master of non-information so
you may decide to explore the swamp, where you will find a
present for the guard, a swamp-siren, and a large and deadly
spider. After dealing with that lot you can enter the house,
then ascend the misty path up the mountain to a city with an
impregnable gate. Two hours (and a phone call to Sue) later I
actually got into the city! Here is your next major foe - a snake
who was so easy to dispatch that I didn't think of the method for
another hour.

A quick trip in a flying ship later and you end up underwater by
the Engulfed Fortress, where Medusa lives. Now I suppose you
would expect a red herring undersea but this section of the game
includes a humdinger of a herring, which I wasted an awful lot of
time on. You can also try being tempted by a sea siren to see an
interesting death (yours). If you can bribe a fish guard you
can enter the cave system in which Medusa lives. This was the
only occasion that I needed to make a map. There is a
major-looking location here that you don't really need to visit at
all - but it looks very pretty and you can find another way to die
here if you try hard enough.  After dealing with Medusa you can
descend to the Land of the Shadows, where you promptly go to jail
without passing Go or collecting œ200! Funnily enough, when you
escape from your cell you can have a nice chat to your guards and
one of them will even give you a gift. After crossing a chasm and
a lava river you can slay the final monster and obtain your last
jewel.

When I completed the final puzzle, I was so amazed by the end
film that I phoned the software house to check whether that was
really the only ending, which it was. However the unexpected
finale did explain many of the illogicities of the game. The
controls were easy to use, the graphics were pretty and overall I
enjoyed the game. Minimum requirements are DOS 5.0, 486 CPU,
8MB Ram, SVGA card and double speed CD-ROM.








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