Having been a great fan of Bethesda’s earlier RPG series, The Elder Scrolls, I was eagerly waiting for Fallout 3 and their decision to make it into a FPS/RPG hybrid. Not having played any of the previous Fallout games, I was not concerned with any drastic changes they might have made, so this review will come from the perspective of a Fallout noob.
Fallout 3 starts with your character being born. Your father’s face is the first thing you see and through tutorials that take you through your childhood, you form a bond with him. So when he leaves the Vault that you have lived in your whole life and that no one ever leaves, it is a dramatic shock and spurs your decision to look for him. When my pop (voiced by Liam Neeson) left, I wanted to find him and find him fast.
Until I stepped outside. After being cooped up inside for all your life and for the hour or so before it happens in-game, emerging from your insulated home and seeing the devastation of the nuclear war really is a shocking moment. It also made me forget all about dear old dad and get out there and have some fun. Which is what a real person might do in such a situation.
There lies the best part of Fallout 3: the sheer epic scope of the game. Many times, I have booted it up with the intent to do a certain quest or task only to get sidetracked by a new location or quest that I have never seen before. It happens so frequently that I am thinking of getting checked for ADD. There are so many quests, locations and just things to look at that I am already thinking of my next playthrough.
Which brings me to the other joy of this game, which is choice. So many quests have multiple ways to complete them. Save a town from a nuclear warhead or detonate it and kill dozens of people? Forge a treaty with a group of settlers and a family of cannibals or become a cannibal yourself? Or simply blow them all to hell? Usually, if you can imagine it, you can do it and that’s the kind of game I love to play. I am choosing to be a darling little angel right now, but on my next playthrough, I am going to raise me some hell.
The combat system in Fallout 3 is engaging and has yet to get old for me. It doesn’t really play like a normal FPS, although you can play it that way if you like. Instead, it plays kind of like Knights of the Old Republic, where you can pause the action and make combat selections with the action halted and then execute them in a cinematic fashion. You do this using ability points that you regenerate over time, so you can’t rely on it solely, but they recharge quickly so it does do the bulk of your work for you.
And when I say cinematic, I mean it. The graphics in this game are highly detailed and seeing the scenery of a bombed out school playground can be very haunting. On the other hand, seeing a vicious dog take a shotgun blast in the face and flip end over end in slow motion can be hysterical and I laugh just thinking about poor Fido McFlip Flip, as I have dubbed that particular canine victim of mine.
As for its shortcomings, there are a few. The inventory system takes some getting used to and the interior environments suffer from Copy and Paste Syndrome, so it can be easy to lose your way sometimes. Other than that, I have no issues with Fallout 3.
I can’t recommend a game like this highly enough. Fallout 3 is everything I hoped it would be and more. I foresee myself playing this game even a year from now. I told my little brother about it and he bought it and we just spent 20 minutes on the phone comparing notes and its amazing how different our respective games are turning out to be. Such is the power of choice and that is the strength of Fallout 3.
GamerSushi Score:
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Fantastic. Now I am even more eager to get my hands on this one. ( recieved PC copies of GTA IV and World at War for Christmas so I’ve got to manage my way through these 2 first ! )
Fallout 3 really is the entertainment of the 21st century. It’s more like an interactive movie, with epic interactiveness.
Yes, Fallout 3 is indeed an awesome game. I can’t wait for the DLC. Especially “Broken Steel” which will raise the level cap, add new perks, allow you to continue playing with the same character after completing the main quest and a continuation of the main quest (at least I think that’s what the quest line of Broken Steel is) This A is well deserved.
I would recommend playing a neutral path. The fun thing about this game is that its supports it with its own trait and achievement. It’s great because you can individually choose which path of a quest you WANT to do not just automatically choose the proper alignment and if you start to tip to one side simply go on a killing spree or donate some cash.
And with the GECK out now, we can expect to see tons of user-generated content. And it’s nice that even when you’re a good alignment, you’ll still hear about the bad things you did on the radio or from the people it affected.
Game of the year from this end as well. This game is the real deal.
Bravo, definitely getting this game this week!
Given the sushi gaming scale, I say this is a A – at best. I will not say this defines a console. While it seems to have been perhaps as big a hit as oblivion if not more, Oblivion has more content. I put oblivion over this game. Obi can have an A but fallout, IMO, is an A-
I agree with you on the combat system, its weird, it doesn’t really get old. VATS is oddly fun LOL
The game has so many of those “copy paste” moments in it. They also could have refined a few things. As for graphics, I dunno. While character details are great and things like the megaton nuke explosion are amazing looking, Fallout 3 on Ultra cant scratch Oblivion. But then again its comparing the beauty of a forest to…a wasteland so ya know, to each their own.
Lol Fido McFlip Flip! I personally love the Tenpenny Massacre. That’s my name for going inside and killing everyone in Tenpenny Tower. You should try it sometime, especially when you get to a level 20 like me, where you can one-shot everyone in there. The deaths are hysterical.
I would mention here how me and a friend both got it and didn’t like it after 2 hours or so of playtime. We both took it back to the store in the end (well, he tried to get a steam refund and failed)
I used the money to buy Bishock for £5 and spent the rest on gummi bears, Worth it.
As I said before, I would mention all that but when I do bad things seem to happen to us.
Actually, it probably has something to do with the fact that neither of us likes any form of RPG and only tried it because it had so much hype…DON’T HATE ME *hides*
Fallout 3 has to be the best game I’ve played since Assassin’s Creed. And from my point of view, that’s saying something. And don’t worry Anthony, I’m speaking as a Fallout noob myself. It’s got awesome graphics, great story, and you really feel like you’re walking around a post-nucluear Washington. You get an emotional attachment to the characters in the game, and in my case, you really care about what happens to them. If you guys don’t mind, I want to go into detail because I don’t really get to talk to others about stuff like this.
The story is amazing. When I booted the game up and left the vault, I figured it was going to be a typical post-nuke story. Society is in shambles, and you’ve got to save the land from an army of raiders that just want to piliage and plunge the world into darkness. And then, I thought it was going to be a game where you would follow your Dad around the entire game, just to get to the end and find out that the main bad guy killed him. But it’s so much more than that, and I’m glad. When you have a video game like Fallout 3, you can’t just create a setting, you have to create an enitre world from the ground up. And that’s what Bethesda’s done. The one thing I concentrate on during a quest is that I need to realise that there is no one ‘bad guy’, because nothing is what it seems in this game. The Enclave, for example, seemed like a ray of hope when I started the game, but now that I know a littel more, they’re just kinda shady. The characters all stand out, you’ll never meet someone who is like another other person. It’s just amazing what they’ve done in terms of story.
The graphics and the feel of the game are to die for. Sometime’s, literally. I can’t tell you how much the game creeps me out sometimes. Along with this game, Left 4 Dead is a game a got for Christmas, and I have to say that it’s no where near as scary as Fallout 3. I’ve screamed and jumped out of my chair on several occasions. The way a Super Mutant will throw open a door and lunge at you, how a Mirelurk will sneak up on you, the way a Feral Ghoul runs right towards you from out of nowhere, when you step on a tripmine without knowing it, and of course when a Centuar walks over to you from a mile away. Scares the be-Jesus out of me. I love the way it looks, how you can walk around a monument and say, “Wow, that’s really something.” And I really love how you can be anywhere in the world, turn around, and still be able to see the Washington Momument and the Captiol Building in the distance. Truly remarkable.
Then, of course, there’s the actual gameplay itself. I love how everything makes sense like how you have to eat or sleep to heal, how you get radiation poisioning from stuff you eat or drink, however you interact with people, and then how you have to repair things after use. V.A.T.S. is a ton of fun to use, and the cinematics of blowing body parts off of enemies is priceless. Nothing like watching the head roll off of a raider that thought he was tough and cool.
But it’s also a love/hate relationship. It’s a really adicting game, and you want to play it until it’s done, but it really loves to piss you off sometimes. I don’t like how ammo is really scarce, and how you can’t seem to hold on to many caps for very long. Also, some of the combat is very unrelistic. When I’m shooting a missle at a target as big as a Super Mutant Master, I shouldn’t be missing by using V.A.T.S. Also, when I blast a shotgun off in a guy’s face when at point blank range, I don’t care if the guy is a Super Mutant Brute, his head should come off. And when you cripple an enemies head and their eyes get covered in blood, they shouldn’t still have dead-on aiming. Maybe I’m just being a stickler, and I admit it works both ways (I wouldn’t want to die from one shotgun blast), but that’s just how I feel.
And the voiceovers, while awesome (I can’t believe they got Liam Neeson and the guy who plays Mr. Linderman in Heroes to do some voice work, it was amazing to hear), can sometimes be dissapointing. All of the children are done my the same boy and girl actor. Similarly, the men are voiced by the same four guys that seem to take turns with it. While they might change their voice a bit, you still notice it. Same goes for the women in the game. It’s not like they had a lack of voice actors to hire, so I just feel like hearing the same people with different characters is a little unnessary. And sometimes the dialogue is a bit choppy in parts, such as when the characters might repeat something, but by using different words.
Lastly, I don’t like how for as many caps as you have to spend just to stay alive, you only get so many for certain things. Usually, I have to make a few trips to Craterside Supply just to make it through a quest or two, so it’s not like I can wait around for a quest to reward me with caps. And selling junk you collet around the Wasteland does get you some caps, but only like 100-200 a trip. I know that bottle caps don’t come in a abuntant quantities in a post-nuke world, and that you can get a perk to increase the amounts you find, but sometimes I feel like I’m scrounging around just a little TOO much.
But all and all, Fallout 3 is an amazing game. I’m still just on the third main story quest, but I can tell this a game that deserves coming back to. I give it A, and I’d give a minus, but the good stuff about the game is just…too good.
Awesome review, Anthony. Sorry I take up so much space, but you can tell I’m a bit of a game nut. Till next time. 🙂
This makes me want to pick up a copy even more!!!
Got this game for christmas, also agree that it’s great. As to CoryS’s comment, later on in the game I have plentiful ammo and caps, although I loath to waste ammo. I’m on the quest Paradise lost, and have alot of caps and ammo without scrounging too much. Anyway, karma is another factor I like about fallout, you can be good, bad, or in between. Each comes with its own benefits, so creating good and bad characters are always fun. 😀
Yeah, I do suppose that I’m little too early in the game to be making large judgements like that. I just get a little peeved when I’m hard pressed for things. But, alas, such is life.
CoryS,
The reason ammo is scarce is b/c its also like a survival horror game. Makes things more tense.
Did you review this on PS3? If so could you confirm wheter or not its glitchy as hell because this is the only thing that has put me off buying it. Also you’re good at thinking up imaginative names for pets!
[quote comment=”3527″]CoryS,
The reason ammo is scarce is b/c its also like a survival horror game. Makes things more tense.[/quote]
Trade technology to the Brotherhood Outcasts in Fort Independence. I’ve got more stimpacks and 5.56mm ammo than I know what to do with.
Great review, excellent game. Not my choice for Game of the Year, but it’s damn close. Bethesda managed to make a world that’s far more consistent than the settings of the first two Fallouts, and I think the game benefits greatly from that.
[quote comment=”3533″]Did you review this on PS3? If so could you confirm wheter or not its glitchy as hell because this is the only thing that has put me off buying it. Also you’re good at thinking up imaginative names for pets![/quote]
Yes, this was on the PS3 and I have not had a single glitch once.
Haven’t even got to Fort Independence…can’t wait!
[quote comment=”3601″][quote comment=”3533″]Did you review this on PS3? If so could you confirm wheter or not its glitchy as hell because this is the only thing that has put me off buying it. Also you’re good at thinking up imaginative names for pets![/quote]
Yes, this was on the PS3 and I have not had a single glitch once.
Haven’t even got to Fort Independence…can’t wait![/quote]
OK! 🙂 I’ll prolly get it at the weekend and then I might know what this Fort Independance thingy is!