Fable is a role-playing game that dares to be fun. For this, it will no doubt draw scorn and derision from the unwashed hordes of Hardcore Role Playing Gamers. Its developers should not lose any sleep over that.

Like nearly all role-playing games, Fable is set in a medieval fantasyworld that looks like New Zealand, only with more Tudor architecture. All the doors are heavy and made of oak. Chickens wander freely. You can have any kind of roof you like, so long as it is thatched. It looks and smells like Tolkein, and this much will please the Hardcore Role Playing Gamers.

The game tells the story of a little boy who grows up to be a powerful fighting warrior wizard. As we first meet him, he is hanging around the village on his sister's birthday. He has no money and has not yet bought her a present. We learn that by tootling around the village running errands and being nice to people, we will earn Gold Coins.

We nod in recognition, confident that we are sitting through yet another edition of the archetypal role-playing game introduction, the Boring First Quest. At this point, playing in their basements, the Hardcore Role Playing Gamers are still quietly pleased.

Then a funny thing happens. We learn that, although we can talk to everyone we meet, we only really need to talk to the people with the greenish glow about them.

Some background here: Role-playing games are notoriously full of Non-Player Characters, or NPCs. The job of an NPC in a typical game is to wander around the landscape looking busy and getting in your way. When you talk to a typical NPC, he or she will say something like this:

"I like soup! Soup is great! Doesn't today look like a great day for soup? Soup soup soup! Mmmm mmmm good!"

After that, you will regain control and will walk away cussing under your breath. Moments later, you stop to talk to another NPC, who wishes it would rain more and rain is good. It can go on and on like this for hours before you meet the one NPC in the whole village who has useful information.

In Fable, all that is completely removed from the action. Or, rather, it's there if you want it, but if you want it you are dumb. The greenish glowing people are the useful ones, the others are best left alone, and a helpful glowing map in the upper right corner of the screen points out where all the greenies are hiding. Thatched roofs notwithstanding, this is a prime example of 21st century efficiency.

So it isn't long before the birthday stuff is out of the way and the monsters and the looting and the wizardry take centre stage. This begins with a bang, when evil raiders storm the village and massacre everyone except you, the little boy. A friendly hero rescues you and takes you to the Guild of Heroes, where you train to be just like him. And then a sweeping story of good and evil blah blah yada etc.

The story is not the point. The point is that when you square off against your enemies and whack them with your sword, you feel your hands rattling with the bad-ass ACTION of it all. The point is that zapping your enemies with magical lightning feels crackly and powerful. The point is that, as you grow up and learn to cast bigger spells and shoot bigger arrows, you can see the difference in the lines on your face. The point is that being a sweet friendly helpful fighting wizard makes all the NPCs like you, while being a miserable evil bad-ass makes horns grow out of your forehead.

The point is that, instead of tracking numbers and hit points and levels like you do in most Role-playing games, you feel like you're actually playing a role. It really is fun. You will like it.

So why only three brown recreation fun squares? Blame the pictures. Fable is deeply, unrepentantly ugly. Everybody looks and moves like a creepy marionette. You can see the lines where the sheets of thatched roof are stuck together.