NightstrikerX

User Score
7.5

Presentation - 8.0
Gameplay - 9.0
Value - 5.0

- Introduction -

If I was to describe my experience with fallout 3. I'll have only one word to use, long. Very long. After netting 1200 achievement points and well into 230 hours with the game now. I feel although the amount of time I put into this game, plus my experiences with one of the first roleplaying games I've ever played gives me a very indepth view of the fallout world as a whole, as well as the latest addition. Fallout 3.

Incase you've never played fallout 3 before, I'll give you a little bit of a background to the game; You play the Lone Wanderer. A Vault dweller of Vault 101, where the overseer looms over the dwellers with a omnipotent presence. You spend the first bit of the game with your father, living though small parts of your childhood as those "memories" of your childhood define your character as a adult. Everything in vault 101 however was brought to chaos as your father left the Vault. Something that the local population believes has never happened before.

Afterall, those born in Vault 101, die in Vault 101. Never to leave.

- Presentation -

Fallout 3 is wrapped in a beautiful gritty presentation of a future where nuclear war has devastated most of everything. It presents itself strong and captures the audience very early, infact it's one of the few games of which I began to care for the fate of the characters, and not just the main characters either. Often areas are littered with Holotapes that tell the story of a traveller whom has had some sad fate befallen on them. Amazing Storytelling.

Graphics wise, playing on the xbox 360 I have to say was a visual treat. I normally don't have much to say about the graphics but I'll keep it brief. In terms of art style it has what feels to be a futuristic steam-punk feel. Micro-technology what it appears today, isnt' what it is there. A Handheld computer is bolted to your wrist, appears like a 80's atari display and is lovingly called the Pipboy 3000. All the technology looks it was pulled from the 50s, given a futurama spin on it and rendered in the game. Amazingly allowing the viewer to get a feel for a past time, while knowing they are in a future time at the same time.

The sound for the game is respectable, while I never noticed it often. Sound effects were there and you can easily differate the sound of grenades bouncing along the ground, to the twang of a trap being sprung, every gun produced its own unique sound. While this does sound like it's a amazing job. As I said before, I never noticed it often. At least not often enough.

Music in the game is divided in two groups, the theme musics. Which play during battle, or whenever something important may be happening. Then the radio, which gives us two choices. Enclave Radio, and GNR radio. Enclave radio is a a presidential soundtrack on repeat, President Eden gives us his two-cents. Followed by American Patriot music, it loops very occassionally and while fun to start, after you hear it enough times. You'll never want to hear it again. Galaxy news radio on the other hand is a "live" broadcast. Although that's a very vague term, they always play the same music and Three-dog never has anything new to say, unless you recently have done something.

That's cool. But do you have anything by Billy Joel? No? Dang.

Overall, Fallout 3 can immerse characters in the game very well. You'll begin to grow attached to your own character and the friends your character has made. You may even start to care for the fate of those characters. It does a decent job presenting itself in audio, and a great job presenting itself visually. I give it's presentation a 8.

- Gameplay -

Bestheda Gamestudios must subscribe to the "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" magazine of WRPG development, because at first glance. Fallout 3 appears to be Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Replace trees with rocks, buildings with rubble, Goblins with Ghouls and Swords with Guns. The end result feels similar to Oblivion, however the changes made. Changes the game dramically. But this review is not about Oblivion, it's about fallout. So let's get to what makes fallout special.

Combat in Fallout is a mixiture of First-Person Shooter with very heavy roleplaying elements. Combat is played as a Action RPG, shooting up enemies while hiding behind a wall or crouching behind cover is not uncommon, nor is running around with a sword slashing up your enemies uncommon either. But what makes this system unique is the inclusion of VATS. Vault-Tec Assisted Targetting System. What VATS allows the player to do is pause the game, cycle though targets and body parts. Que up attacks and unleash the fury. The Camera zooms into the best perspective, animations slow down and you watch the carnage that your attacks unleash. Hit the head hard enough and watch it fly off your enemy. Surprisingly. It never gets old.

While VATS never gets old. Staring at his ulgy mug will.

The roleplaying elements involve building your character, aquiring items and equipment, and going on the occassional morally grey quest with option to screw the rules or be everyone's hero. I've noticed while the quests are very numerous. The choices in those quests will always be limited to being evil, being neutral, or being good. Yes, you can save poor Bryan Wilks from his infestation of Red-Fire Ants. Then ship his poor self to become a slave or live with his family. The choices are very limited and often rushing in headstrong will result in a mission failure. I cannot tell you the amount of times I tried to finish Blood Ties in a ruthless bloodbath only to end up with "Quest Failed" looming over me taunting my every action.

While character customization is fantastic, I feel a heavy loss at the fact that traits have mysteriously disappeared from the captial wasteland. You remember those traits? Being Heavy Handed meant you punched like a super mutant, at the cost of your critical % rate. This is offet by having a Perk every level instead of every 3 levels like in Fallout 1 and 2. But between SPECIAL, Skills, and Perks. You have quite the number of customizations to build, or screw up your character. Let's break it down.

To begin, something everyone does at the very beginning of the game. As a toddler you have to assign your SPECIAL Stats. Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Newcomers to the series will have a harder time understanding what these 7 stats do and how they affect your character unless they read though the manual. The Childrens book is no help and often your at a loss of how to assign these skills. This however is absolutely crucial and even veteran players of fallout can often mess up their entire characters by assigning points incorrectly.

After your done assigning your Special, fastforward to when your 16 and assign what Skills. Skills determine your proficiancy with tools and weapons of the wasteland and are fairly straight forward. Giving you a half-decent explaination. Unlike in Fallout 1, 2. Fallout 3's skills only max at 100. However, some skills carry a incredible value behind them while others are nearly worthless. Barter for example, allows you to increase the amount of caps earned though trade. While it sounds useful, repair not only allows you to maintain your own weapons better. But repairing enemy weapons at selling them, even at lower prices due to a low barter skill. Can still net you more than enough caps than you'll ever need. Weapon skills luckily, are very interchangable and you can go though the entire game, at various difficulty with any of the weapons. So you never really need more than one combat skill.

Finally, we get to Perks. Perks are assigned every level and can dramatically alter your character. From being able to assign extra SPECIAL points, to increasing how much XP earned, to allowing you to bathe in sun to regenerate health. Perks allow you to really customize your character. They are simple to understand and give you a detailed discription in the manual, and a brief one in the game itself. There's not much to say about perks aside from what I've already said.

Lastly, we have Karma. As stated before, quests usually fall in the Good, Bad, and The Neutral catagories. Almost every action you take will change how people view you. This will change your relationship to many people who may be evil or good themselves. This aspect dramatically increases it's value. Which I'll explain in the next section. Although, why is it you always have a bounty on your head?

Finally, we get to the story of the game itself. Fallout 3's Story involves the Lone Wanderer looking for his/her father in the captial wasteland. It's very open ended so you'll find yourself taking many sidequests and interacting with many people. Alot of people were disappointed with the ending. Myself included, since there is not much to really discuss outside of "My character lost his/her daddy! Help me find him!" I'll leave story untouched for this review.

Overall, I had alot of fustrating and fun moments with combat. I didn't like the over-reliance on stimpacks in combat, but VATS helped me out with that. Some AI got me annoyed but then again, it was normally them being dumb. So I used it to my advantage. The RPG elements are sown together very tightly, while I'll mourn the loss of Traits, the amount of perks that Fallout 3 offers to change your character around is more than enough to compensate for that. Newer players may have a harder time with some of their characters, to the point of restarting the game. But never fret, the game is flexible enough that even if you screw your characters build over. You can still beat the game, there are enough items that can modify your character enough that it's generally never too late to change what you are. So with this flexibility in mind. I'll have to give fallout 3's gameplay a 9.

- Value -

It may shock you that dispite playing the game though 5 or so times. I didn't find awhole lot of value with the game. The games main quest can be beaten in 6 hours, which is hardly worth the price-tag for it. The side-quests are fun, yes. But after you've checked out the two endings, both good and evil. You'll generally skip them again unless your after XP or Perks on a new playthough.

After the 3rd playthough I was completely bored with the characters and really wanted to go around killing everyone in sight (Which was good because I was aiming to be evil). What should be like a ton of replayability falls flat as the quests are very, very stiff. In a game with as much flexibility as it's character customization and combat systems have. You'll think the quests would be flexible too. Sure, I can murder this guy or choose not too. But who really cares, because once I get going on my next quest. I'm never really going to interact with those characters much, they never evolve again from that point of the quest finish. When I begin to care more for characters in holotapes I'll never see, or in rare cases shoot on sight than the people who are currently living. We got ourselves a problem.

Another value dropping thing is the ungodly amount of bugs in the game. Almost every quest is bugged in one way or another and I must have spent a good 2 or 3 hours just figuring out how to fix some of these bugs so I can get rewarded for quests. Often NPCs would disappear on the map without a trace and the only thing saving my sorry butt from a eternity of fustrating incompletable quests is my itchy save button finger.

Overall, Fallout 3's value is average. It has good replayability and I can almost guantanee most people will play it more than once. But after that, you'll hardly touch the thing again and wonder why you waited in line day 1 and spent 70 bucks on it. I give it's value a 5.

- Overall -

Overall, I was pleased with Fallout 3. It took the universe of Fallout and expanded it without attacking my precious east-coast of Nevada and California (Don't worry Vault 13/Arroyo. You'll always have a special place in my heart). It gave me a great cast of characters and alot of fun with the combat system, even taking FPS which has been used to the end of it's rope and added a fun twist onto it with VATS.

I can't help feeling a little bummed that I didn't find awhole lot of value with the purchase of the game. Anyone with a weekend to themselves and a couple of cans of redbull can achieve the same results I did in a weekend by renting the game over buying the game. Which is kind of sad when you consider this game should be over 200 hours of gameplay.

Overall, the points tally to 8 + 9 + 5 = 23 out of 30, or

7.6 out of 10.