The Xbox Games With Gold April 2020 offerings will include Fable Anniversary, another strong addition to the subscription service that seems perfectly timed for a period where many consumers have a lot more time on their hands – and, as a result, more time to weigh some pretty difficult choices in-game. Xbox Games With Gold has been on a run recently that has seen some strong inclusions to the service’s library, with Batman: The Enemy Within and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 joining last month.
Fable Anniversary is a remaster of the game that started the franchise and launched it to fame in the mid-2000s. While some would argue that the game has aged rather poorly given how heavily it leans on its freedom to make choices – something that’s a lot more common in RPGs in the modern era – others still believe it holds up and maintains a certain level of charm that sets it apart from other, more grimdark iterations on the genre. There’s no disputing that the Fable name still holds some weight among RPG fans, though, even after the series’ failed attempt at entry into the card game genre.
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Xbox announced its Games With Gold April 2020 lineup earlier today, and Fable Anniversary appears to be the most appealing option available to subscribers of the service. It’s not the only game on offer, however, as Microsoft’s service will also be adding Porject Cars 2, Knights of Pen and Paper Bundle, and Toybox Turbo. While none of the other games are as well-known as Fable Anniversary, they’re still niche additions that should appeal across both the RPG and racing demographics of subscribers.
With that said, it’s certainly not the historically strong addition many fans have become accustomed to using the Xbox Games With Gold service over the past several months. It’s actually reminiscent of the Sony PlayStation Plus Free Games iteration that saw the company faced with a lot of backlash due to offering games that only appealed to very niche demographics. In that scenario, Sony actually changed which games it offered to mitigate the criticism it was receiving – and judging from early response to this announcement, not everyone is as high on Fable Anniversary as the anchor of Xbox Games With Gold April 2020 as Microsoft might have hoped.
Still, Fable Anniversary is exactly the type of game that belongs on services like this. It’s hard to justify its price tag given the minimal amount of additions to the remastered content, which is certainly dated by today’s standards. As a library addition to a subscription service, though, Fable Anniversary feels like a much more welcome journey into a nostalgic time where people were just as interested in a hero who could freely fart and chase chickens as they were in one who could liberate the world from evil.
Source: Xbox Wire
