I have been an avid fan of Fallout since Fallout Tactics, the last of the Fallout series a few years back. I would miss school/classes just to continue my game.
Fallout 3 has been hailed as one of the great games of 2008. The third in the Fallout series, this game has been constantly compared to Oblivion. I personally feel that Fallout 3 is a unique game.
You're set in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC and grew up in Vault 101, a vault designed to protect citizens from the nuclear holocaust. Your vault was never to be opened, and its citizens were to live there forever. One day, 200 years after the nukes fell, your father escapes and it's up to you to go out into the nuclear wasteland to find him. You must face the horrors of the outside wasteland and discover the truth about your father and Vault 101.
The gameplay is very solid and very well-done. Fallout 3 advertises itself as a hybrid between being a first-person shooter and an RPG, and both elements are clearly visible. Although you move and fight in real-time instead of a turn-based environment, the game incorporates many RPG elements, including leveling up, character stats, and managing an inventory.
As you level up you increase your skills -- such skills as lockpicking, computer hacking, accuracy with various types of weapons, persuasion through speech, medicine, and so forth. These skills have a direct effect on gameplay. Better lockpicking skills make it easier to pick locks, higher medicine skills help you to heal yourself more effectively, accuracy skills make the bullets hit closer to the mark, and so forth. Although the skills like lockpicking are typical for RPGs, incorporating an accuracy skill into an FPS is a bit frustrating early in the game, before your skills are high. Despite aiming dead on, every now and then a bullet will miss. Despite being an annoyance, this doesn't last long and isn't all that frequent.
As you level up, you also gain perks. Perks give your character another unique bonus apart from stats. Some perks will boost a specific stat dramatically, but others will have more subtle effects, such as allowing you to slowly recover HP while outside in the daytime, or having a mysterious guy in a trench coat shoot enemies for you occasionally.
The combination between RPG and FPS elements makes Fallout 3 an interesting game. The gameplay is not linear and obvious, but rather up to your discretion and your ability to survive.
A large part of the game revolves around combat. There are two approaches to combat: like a standard first-person shooter (or third-person, if that's what you prefer), or VATS.
As a first-person shooter, the concept is identical to every other shooter out there -- you aim and fire. You reload. Nothing new here. Standard combat feels a bit shaky and unresponsive at times, making it a bit difficult to time your shots properly when you most need to.
One of the biggest hypes about Fallout 3 is VATS. Basically, VATS is a method to introduce turn-based combat into this first-person shooter world. When you enter VATS, the world pauses and the enemies around you are visible. You can then aim for a specific body part on each enemy (head, torso, arms, legs, etc.). The game will provide you with the chance (as a percentage) of hitting that target. You can choose to shoot different body parts or even different enemies, if you wish. You queue up targets that you want to aim for. How many targets you can queue up depends on how many Action Points you have (which is determined by your stats) and the weapon you're using. Sometimes you will only be able to get one or two shots off, other times you'll be able to get as many as six.
Upon exiting VATS, the game enters a cinematic in bullet time where you can see the shots you chose being fired. Sometimes they'll hit, others they'll miss. The bullet time sequences are nice and gory (in fact, there's even a perk to make it gorier). The scenes never really get old, since there's a good amount of variety in the angle shown and the way that the enemies are shot.
Although in theory you could play the entire game using either one of these combat techniques, in reality you'll probably end up using both, with a tendency to use VATS more often due to it being more accurate and reliable. Combined, the combat in this game becomes really fun and invigorating, while still maintaining that lovely feel of an FPS/RPG hybrid.
Like many other games, the combat ranges from being overwhelming at times to single enemies. You may be fighting a horde of Super Mutants, or you might be picking off a mutated roach in a random encounter. As you level up and progress in the game, your stats increase and your access to weapons and ammo improves, so combat will gradually become easier and quicker.
The main quest of the game is decent. At first, you'll find yourself out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to go on, but as you explore a bit, the game becomes pretty linear. You are bounced around and referred from place to place as you attempt to find your father. Although finding your father starts out as the main purpose of the quest, the quest evolves to take on other objectives as you play. For the most part, the main storyline is very linear, and even if you choose a unique approach, you'll still end up in the same place eventually.
The main quest isn't too long, and could be completed in a couple of days of casual playing if you're persistent enough. Parts of the main quest are pretty fun and invigorating, but others tend to be a bit tedious and frustrating. How easy the quest is mostly depends on how strong your character is, what difficulty setting the game is on, and how avid of a gamer you are.
Also worth noting is that once you beat the main quest, the game simply ends, which is a bit frustrating if you wanted to keep playing.
However, one of the biggest appeals to Fallout 3 is the ability to stray from the main quest. At just about any time you can choose to wander off and explore. In fact, exploring is hands-down one of the most fun parts of the game. The world is very large and filled with many different interesting areas to explore, including other vaults, a haunted building, other towns, and famous Washington D.C. landmarks. Fallout 3 contains other extras, including "special" weapons which are fun to find and more powerful to use.
The game does come with about ten side quests that are fun. Once you find the side quests, they are mostly pretty linear, although some will give you options of how to carry out the quest in unique ways. None of the side quests are as in-depth as the main one, but they're all fun in their own right. Not all of the side quests will appear as a quest, and many times you can find something fun to do if you just talk to a character and learn what they're trying to do.
Don't be afraid to stray off from the main quest and go somewhere you're interested in. If you take your time and really explore the game, there's enough there to keep you busy for weeks.
It's very interesting to see the former capital city in ruins, and it's very cool to see the effects it's had on the survivors there. It's an eerie premise, but Fallout 3 successfully captures that and puts you into a scary world. The backstory to the game is very deep and fun to learn about, and you'll constantly want to learn a bit more about the Fallout world.
Once you get used to this world though, many inconsistencies and odd circumstances will become evident. The first thing I wondered was how, after 200 years, only a few buildings were around. The game felt like the nukes had fallen only ten years ago. There are other inconsistencies that you may notice that are a bit disappointing as well. The main quest in particular is filled with glaring plot holes. The ending of the game will likely leave you intensely dissatisfied, and many of the plot holes really become apparent there.
You can basically choose between a "good" path and an "evil" path as you run through quests. The choices are pretty obvious ones -- to be good, help out nice and desperate people. To be bad, be selfish and try to gain something for yourself. A lot of the "bad" choices aren't really evil, but more of immature and bratty.
Even though the game keeps track of how good or evil you've been, there aren't many lasting effects from your choices. An immediate effect will be seen through dialogue from your choices, but once the quest is over, that's really about it. You can enslave a doctor in a town, and afterwards the only difference will be that she's not there anymore. None of your choices really carry over into other towns or into any other quests. Everything feels very separate and irrelevant, which was disappointing.
The only "lasting" effect comes at the very end, where a cut scene reflects on if you were a good character or a bad character. No real information is given.
Fallout 3 is about as difficult as you want it to be. Because the game doesn't force you into tough situations, you can either take the game slow or you can rush into areas and fight a tough battle. It's really up to you. The game even has difficulty settings, so if it's much too hard for you or too easy, you can adjust it to something that you like better. The range of difficulty can go from hilariously easy to extremely difficult, so there's plenty of room for customization here.
As you level up, the game will get easier. As your weapons aim better and you have more health, the challenge won't be there as much, but you can always try to find ways to make it more challenging.
The graphics for this game give the world a very eerie feel. The game really teleports you into a city that has been nuked. The world is very gray, filled with a lot of dust. Buildings are in ruins, rubble litters the landscape, and the sky is always hazy. The graphics are pretty stunning if your computer can handle them.
The sounds for the game are perfect, eerie to make you really feel like you're trying to survive in a wasteland.
My Final Take
Fallout 3 is a wonderful hybrid of an RPG and an FPS.The world is large and extremely fun to explore, even though its fast paced and fun. There is a lot of depth to the game. Overall its a great game.
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