Fallout 3 Review
Enemies are varied, but there are some unwelcome additions.
The main quest in Fallout 3 can be ploughed through in about 30 hours or so, but the chances are that it'll take you much longer. Indeed, if you complete the game in this length of time then you're almost certainly playing it too quickly. Most people will take far longer - if only for the fact that it's so easy to get distracted by things. There are so many places to visit and things to do - and it seems that every time you head out to accomplish one thing, you find three others you'll want to do later. Once it grabs you, Fallout 3 is one of those games that gets into your head and lays eggs. You'll be at work, or on a bus somewhere, and you'll find yourself meticulously planning where you'll go and what you'll do when you next boot up the game. When you finally do rush home and play, you'll find that time whisks by - it's 2am, and you've still not explored that old military base you saw. So you keep on playing, and find yourself zombified at work the next day. Not that this will stop you from making further plans - or returning to the wastes that very same evening.
As you can probably gather, I like Fallout 3 a hell of a lot - and as a long-time fan of the Fallout series, I had my fair share of reservations about the way this game could have turned out. There are, however, a few problems that need to be mentioned. The biggest single problem is the scriptwriting, which varies in quality throughout the whole venture. Most of the time it's fine, but every once in a while you'll hit upon something that's wincingly overblown, or else simply not appropriate for a Mad Max-style wilderness. The worst offenders here are the Brotherhood of Steel - the guys in power armour who dominate the game's artwork. In previous Fallout adventures, the Brotherhood were a group of isolationist, technology-obsessed knights who looked after themselves and pretty much ignored everyone else; they helped you out when they had to, but only when it served their own interests. Here they've become shining protectors of the downtrodden. That's not such a terrible shift, but their righteous pseudo-Jedi dialogue is really quite cringeworthy. "Steel be with you!" cries the guard to the Pentagon, with apparent sincerity.
Bethesda's attitude to radiation is also a little unbalanced. The melancholic tone of Washington's ruins and the ramshackle depiction of the few human settlements are bang on the money as far as Fallout tone goes - so why ruin that by including a weapon that fires miniature nukes? Firing one of these babies will wipe out an entire room - but you'll be fine to loot the bodies two seconds later, since they only leave a tiny amount of radioactive fallout. On a similar level, the studio does a pretty good job of depicting ghouls - the poor mutant survivors of WWIII who now resemble zombies - as put-upon victims, rejected by society. Again, this was a trait of the previous games - so why deflate that by including "feral ghouls" who act like the zombies from 28 Days Later? Don't even get me started on the character who can mysteriously turn into a ghoul in the space of a few hours, if you're mean enough to nuke Megaton - the town built over an unexploded bomb.
Some quirky dialogue jars with the rest of the game
These instances of Bethesda dropping the ball are certainly irritating, but the truth is that they will only really hurt hardcore Fallout fans. The use of the word "only" in that last sentence will probably put a few noses out of joint, but it's true: most people who play this won't care a bit - because they never played the original games in the first place. That will be of scant consolation to those of you unhappy with the direction Bethesda has taken, but perhaps you'll take comfort in the fact that the original classics are surely bound to receive new attention in the months following Fallout 3's release. Personally, I'm having a ball with this game. I've been playing it pretty much non-stop since our review copy arrived at the office, but I'm sure as hell not going to stop any time soon. There are elements here that are significantly altered from the first games - some pleasant, some not - but I ultimately find the game to be a good thing: it's a different experience, yet one with many familiar ingredients.
And for the rest of you... well, you have a treat on your hands. As I said up at the top, this is a massive game: in a month that's seen the release of five or six of the year's best titles, I reckon this is the absolute peach. It's packed with interesting places, with choices to make, with that nebulous sense of adventure you only find in the best RPGs. And after a long wait, it's finally here.
VideoGamer.com Score
9Score out of 10- Jam packed with surprises and interesting quests
- Enormous, highly atmospheric world to explore
- Strange depiction of radiation
- Dialogue suffers in comparison with previous games
User Comments
dammu
somthing like a shotgun or assult rifle the game gets good also the amount of ways to tackle a quest definantly in the top 3 in game of the last year
mydeaddog
Jax0r1337
i loved(past tense) this game, alot. mostly becoz i owned, hard. i know this might sound extreme but the level 20 cap ruined it for me. and the closed ending didnt help. i sincerely hope that theres going to be dlc released in which u can attain higher levels, or ill be trading this game in for one that lets u decide when to stop levelling up, and that lets u decide when to stop playing.
wowwwwwzer boy
jacob
RoranTK
No point writing it down all in comments , i just wnna give +1 to all those who say its a great game , +2 to those who say its AWESOME-EPIC , n +10 to all those wastelanders who say its the GAME OF THE YEAR ;)
Steel be with u all
TRBO RAD
TRBO RAD
FantasyMeister@ Lolly
It's the same as any RPG, you can walk around town for hours and not kill anyone, or stay outside and hunt things down to your heart's content.
I would guess that to hunt down and kill everything in each area in Fallout 3 would take about 250 hours (not including respawns). That's just the hostiles, you can kill friendlies too.
If you've played any of the Elder Scrolls titles like Oblivion then it's the same thing here in terms of stuff to kill.
Lolly
Audiokyle
The most enjoyable part of the game for me was when I got my money back and bought Quantum of Solace.
sumthing
Fallout=success
its that simple people
chris
Bullet to head
James Player
In fallout 3 you start of being born into a blurry room with your father watching over you, you then proceed through the ages of 1 year old, 10 years old, 16 years old and 19 years old. This process I believe is very clever, by having the player born they can develop a deeper immersion into the game itself, whereas, in oblivion for example, you are brought into the game in a cell, regardless if you are wishing to become the kindest ****er imaginable, which I thought was kind of retarded at the time. Anyway, in fallout 3 after progressing through the different ages, having your 10th birthday party, doing you ?GOAT? test at 16, which basically consisted of telling me I was going to be a chef, and at 19 when you discover your father has left ?the vault? your sacred place of birth, for reasons unknown, and your tasking with finding the useless ****er. At this point I?d like to bring something to light; I played this game from the start twice, the first time, all smooth, the second time, not so smooth. I started off being born at a different camera angle from the first time, seeing ?my farther? looking not at me like the first time, but at something to the bottom left of my screen. The nurse in the background decided that she was going to go for a walk without moving her legs, and proceeded to go through a medicinal cabinet. And that was just at my birth. After choosing my second character, with a friend, to look like the ugliest dike imaginable, we came up with something that remotely resembled a small Chinese woman that had ran face first into a giant wall of sh*t coated bricks. This was sweet because I wanted to know if the ?overseer?s? daughter, from my first go, turned out to be a dude if I was a chick; I was wrong but oh well. After becoming the biggest dike of the century, ?my father? proceeded to make the comment for the second time, that I looked like him, well I know the visions blurry, but he isn?t that ugly, not being gay but my character looked retarded. When I got to choose my attributes, strength etc. I decided to choose full strength, zero intelligence and charisma, 10 stamina, 10 agility, and 7 luck with the rest at the lowest possible; after all I needed the strength to match my macho character.
Anyway deviating a bit, the outside world of the vault is a post-apocalyptic landscape, it looked pretty good on my small screen but that was just outside the vault. On my first character I decided to become the most evil sun-of-a-bitch since the rise of Jesus. I killed shop keepers, hookers, blew up megaton etc. The usual. After placing a charge on the atomic bomb in megaton, a town you find at the beginning of the game, I proceeded to tenpenny tower, to watch it explode, because I am an evil sun-of-a-bitch I killed everyone in tenpenny tower with nothing more than a lead bar, which was coooooooool. After this I played through the game, killed a few ghouls and the occasional scavenger humanoid to retain my ?very evil marauder? status. And then things got a bit weird, at first I shot a ravagers, ranger , r-something guy with my rock-it launcher, in the face for less than a metre, which caused him to be launched 60 feet into the air, landing on a invisible wall somewhere above me, leaving him able to shoot me, but not working visa versa. I then had to reset the game from my last save to rectify this minor setback. Again a problem, I was walking through d.c. with my trusty lead pipe when, oh sh*t, the game froze, this doesn?t normally happen in games, and I can imagine you ps3 fan boys now, ?loling? at your computer, to the resounding ring of, ?you shouldn?t have gotten a sh*ttin? Xbox then douche tard? first things first I?m not going to get into an argument about the online and multiplayer split-screen capabilities of the xbox360, which are far superior to that of the ps3, but anyway. Second thing, this is a brand new game, bought the very morning, this sh*t doesn?t happen to any of my other games? This was a major let down, the game play was good, if not slightly monotonous, V.A.T aiming thing, headshot, next target, repeat etc, but the game itself was so crammed up the ass with bugs it was annoying! Almost as annoying as when you?re trying to chase someone down with your melee weapon, when they can run faster than you! ARGH! Haven?t finished the game yet, it may make up for it later in the game, but I don?t know, not holding my breath.
To conclude, good game play, not allot of replay value, even though you may feel the urge to rectify your choice mistakes, like I did. But let down by the surprising number of bugs, and I?m not talking about the piss weak ?whatever the their called? that manage to take over vault, when you can one hit them. Ha Ha Ha.