all games are not created equal

These games were both pretty hyped, wayyy before their release. But Fable 2's hype was definitely less misleading than Spore's.

Spore was probably the biggest let down I have ever experienced ever. Maxis bragged about complex civilizations, having fun as an animal lad, slowly taking over your planet, and then taking your space craft to visit and/or invade other people's worlds. But there were so many let downs.

To start off, Cell Stage was absurdly simple, just requiring a few clicks and stuff. They cut more than 30 parts before releasing this stage: There were multiple types of cilia, spikes, etc, with which to customize your critter.
Next, the creature stage involved just two main things to do: play Simon to make friends, or just kill them. (I guess you could wander around and stuff, but really.) The game seemed to want you to just rush to the next stages, as there was nothing to do if you intended to stay in the creature stage for a while and have fun.
Then, tribal stage was a big of an extention of that, making it into a simple strategy game. I can't really complain much, because my vision of tribal stage was just all the creatures around a campfire building huts, which wouldn't be too interesting either.
Then, Civilization stage was one of the first really entertaining moments. It was pretty fun building cities made around a certain theme, and then building armies/religious mind control rays/trade vehicles and taking over the world. I guess they could've done some more with the actual civilization, such as having different buildings to construct, or being able to organize events or something.
Finally, the Space stage was a lot of fun, but it was a complete let down. First of all, they completely did away with the multiplayer aspect of the game, or perhaps I just misunderstood that interview. However, exploring the galaxy and getting the various medals and ship upgrades was quite fun, except for the single-use items, which is just mean. (Specifically, the T-Score contraptions.) Lets not even talk about the ecodisasters and pirates.. There were some other miscellaneous let-downs that occured, but this paragraph is way too vast.

When I borrowed Fable 2 from a friend, it was a pretty fun experience on the whole. Perhaps I am just partial to these sorts of choose-your-destiny RPGs, but it was really great. I only got up to around the point where the large mammoth-woman is recruited, so I am probably not correct, but the story seemed to get slightly 1, 2, 3-ish, similar to Zelda with its "Get the fire gem then the water gem then the leaf gem then the..." plot. But Zelda did it well, so who says Fable can't.
However, my favourite part of the Fable series has always been how you can just go and ignore the main plot and just have fun. You can do odd jobs, (which were a bit dull, but not completely awful) get married, get in trouble with the police, get new weapons and armor, kick chickens, get everyone in town drunk, go hunting for treasure, rock out on the lute, and all kinds of things.

Mainly because Spore went all the way for "main storyline" part of the game, as opposed to how Fable has an extensive "do silly, unimportant, fun things" section, Fable 2 is a better game.

Maxis will completely redeem themselves if they make a more mature, complex Spore-esque game.