Review: Fallout 3
I’ve been holding off on putting thought to paper (well, keyboard to bits) for awhile because I wasn’t sure how to approach this.
Without a doubt, Fallout 3 is one of the biggest titles of the year, perhaps the game of the year. Unlike other big name titles it isn’t all about the graphics – but has gorgeous graphics and oozes style; it focuses on a familiar – but not overdone (here’s looking at you Call of Duty 5) post-apocalyptic world; a story driven game – rather than a series of “quests” that just happen to get in your way (Far Cry 2 anyone?); and it is in the style of role playing-first person hybrid which thanks to the V.A.T.S. (“Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System”) gives you the choice of manual or automated firing thus not requiring you to be a trigger-junkie.
For me the most enjoyable aspects were the sci-fi elements. It isn’t the first sci-fi RPG out there but the sheer number of fantasy RPG’s (quality or otherwise) eclipses those that spring to mind. There is something satisfying leveling up and being more efficient with a plasma rifle.
With advances in “gaming technology” its nice to see lots of games benefiting from it. In particular, Fallout 3 is big. I could phrase that better – its fucking big. To walk from one side to the other of the map without going indoors, you’d get no loading screens, but it would take a least half an hour (“real world” time) to do so – and that’s before factoring in combat, repairs, looting, quests, and all the things you’d actually do in the game itself. I really got a sense for how massive the game is.
So seemingly it does everything right? Yeah, well almost. According to my save games, it did take me roughly twenty hours to complete, but a lot of that involved dicking around to see how many ways I could tick certain people off or explode super mutants with mini-nukes. If you drilled down to the core story of the game, even venturing out for some of the side quests the main story would be abruptly over in under ten hours. By todays “standards”, ten hours certainly isn’t anything to scoff at (again, Call of Duty 5 proves that), but the majority of that time involves traversing the Wastelands on foot, and storyline does conclude very suddenly and unfortunately in a way that does not give credit to the rest of the game. Okay, I’ll stop beating around the bush, the ending was balls.
There are other problems too. The level cap is set to twenty, which does take some time to get to – I had finished the game at level 13 – but finishing a few more of the side quests wouldn’t have made it that hard to reach the cap. The real problem however, is that at level 13 I was indestructible. Armed with a heavily (self-repaired and thus self-upgraded) unique plasma rifle, and protected with Enclave Telsa Armour, nothing but several Deathclaws could take me down, and at that stage I had only ever seen one at a time. It wasn’t a matter of difficulty so much as I was single shot killing everything because of the mechanics of upgrading/repairing guns, combined with a high energy weapon proficiency.
Despite the flaws of the game, it was genuinely fun to play. I’ve spent many more hours going back to save games near the end and detouring to explore the rest of the Wastelands and to finish off side quests. I played it on PC so I can’t vouch how the experience is on a console (available on PS3/Xbox 360), but the overall game play should be so similar that I’ll give it a universal highly recommended – go out and get it, or at least find somebody who has it to take a look at it for yourself as there is no demo available.
Bottom line? If you like RPG’s, get it. If you like shooters, get it. If you like a good story, get it.
