Although Fallout 3 has been released for a few years now it was only recently that the Game of the Year Edition was released. Along with the original game you also have five DLC packs — The Pitt, Operation: Anchorage, Broken Steel, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. For anyone who did not hear much about the original release of the game Fallout 3 is a free roaming hybrid RPG/First Person Shooter. Bethesda Studios, who brought us The Elder Schrolls Series and most recently Oblivion gained the rights to create the sequel and change it from the top down view the series is used to into the game we see today.
Back story for the game includes atomic bombings being dropped all over the world and turning everything into a wasteland as the game likes to call it. This all happens at some point in the 1950’s. The world has been brought down to the level of people scavenging to stay alive and not even having clean water because everything is contaminated. Throughout the adventure the player will interact with robots, scavengers, ogre type super mutants, and ghouls who have essentially had their skin burned off from radiation poisoning. You start the game being born in a vault (Vault 101 to be exact) with your father and your able to see yourself as a baby and up until your teen years when your father mysteriously leaves the vault. No one is allowed to enter or leave the vault so this quickly becomes a big problem, in the end your character leaves the vault and attempts to find his/her father. The basis of the game is to find your father out in the wasteland of what used to be Washington D.C. The entire government is in shambles and essentially everyone is left fending for themselves. What little is left of the government immediately appears to be corrupt in saying they want whats best for the people but always appear to have an underlying motive.
Gameplay wise your able to play it as a shooter but you would not feel the full experience the game has to offer. Fallout 3 has the Pip Boy which allows you to control your inventory, check updates on quests, hear audio files, as well as lower radiation levels and heal fractured limbs. You also have the V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) system which will allow you to freeze time and target body parts on your enemy with percentages to dictate your ability to hit that body part much like you would expect from an RPG. You will also quickly find out that while the world in Fallout 3 is a wasteland it does have a very lifelike feel to it. If you walk into someone house as 2am you will find them sleeping, stores close at night, open at specific times and people always seem to be busy other than a few static people who are always in specific areas. Another RPG like aspect that many people could miss out are the many conversations that you can have many different kinds of people. You have the option to be the nicest person or the worse person and your “karma” is always looming to show which way your leaning most.
I am a bit dissapointed in the karma system though it never truly feels like it what you do really makes a huge difference other than which achievement you will end up getting at certain level intervals. If you are a nice person occasionally people will walk up to you and give you presents (none of which ever seemed very good) and if your evil certain groups will attack you on sight. What I was looking more for was entire towns running away from you screaming or shop owners refusing you service for being evil, or if your nice groups of people could even begin to worship you as a savior. It seems that games lately have enjoyed adding morality but they never seem to make it in depth enough to make the player really feel that the decision they make matters. It is always simple to know what is the good or bad decision, but we all know in life we do not always know what is best. Sometimes what appears to be the best decision at first could turn out to be very wrong in the end. This morality system reminded me a lot of the first Bioshock when it was only to save or harvest the little sisters to show if your good or bad. In Fallout 3 the depth of the decision is the same only they mask the decision behind a few conversation options instead of just pressing a button blatantly showing the outcome.
RPG’s are known to be notoriously lengthy and depending on how you play Fallout 3 that could be the case but depending on the player you could finish it very quickly. The first thing you must ask yourself is are you the type that runs through a game or are you the type that explores and does every side quest offered? If you run through the game and only play the main story it can be finished in 20-25 hours. If you want to enjoy every bit of Fallout goodness than you will be sitting in front of your controller for awhile to the tune of 60+ hours. One feature that I still have not been able to decide if i like is the fact that during your time searching for your father if you do not follow your quests exactly and begin to explore off the given path you might just end up finding him and skipping multiple quests(the game will flash 3-4 quests as being completed once you enter a certain area). While this is very realistic in that it is entirely possible to stumble upon him in real life the designers are in essence hurting the player for exploring the huge world that is offered to them. I admire the developers for allowing that to happen but I would love to know if it is something they would do again in the future or if it was considered a bad call. The story certainly does feel engaging but even though it will take 20 hours to complete it still just does not feel long enough, you will just be getting into a groove then all of a sudden you see credits roll and are thinking there must have been more to do. Well yes you still have hours upon hours of side quests but most of them feel random and some can get rather repetitive. If your considering this game a shooter its very lengthy and probably has the best story of any shooter you have ever played but in reality it really isn’t a shooter its more on the RPG side. My best recommendation would simply be to hold yourself back a little and play the game linearly for the first 5-10 hours so that you do not miss out on anything. You can still explore to an extent just do not go too far from areas your supposed to know about. I found myself chasing all the outlined arrows for hours wondering what the next place I would discover would be like.
Another element that is a welcomed feature are the activities of lock picking and hacking computers. The lock picking mini game is done perfectly you have a bobby pin and screwdriver and you move both in hopes of opening the lock but be sure to not destroy all your pins they can become hard to find. The computer hacking is more of a guessing game that can become bothersome a more interactive mini game would have been welcomed in its place. Each level you gain (level cap at 20 normal game 30 with DLC) you attain points to apply into these skills (as well as many others) and you are able to choose one perk each level. The perks can range from increased accuracy in VATS to extra gore in battle. You also have medical abilities to help heal yourself in battle and the skills to repair your own equipment so you do not have to pay other waste landers outrageous prices to fix your items.
This game has so much potential for success and as far as sales and overall presentation Bethesda has succeeded in honoring the Fallout name and even taking it to another level. My biggest complaint is the main story I wish that more time had gone into fleshing that out and lengthening it instead of all the time spent to increase the number of side quests. Many gamers once they see the credits will turn off the game and be done with it. By the time you have completed the main story you have only seen about half the world they have created for you. I have about 80 hours into the game and I still have things left to discover. Some options for this would have been spreading out some quests so that you will at least view 3/4 of the world by playing the game following the quests that are given regularly. I am sure what many of you are thinking now is that only means hours of added running with nothing in between but that is not the case, Fallout is filled with things to do all over the wasteland all that needs to be done is some rearranging of the map to have some of the many side quests most will never see in between the main quest locations so that the player always has things to do. The fast travel system also helps a lot in this aspect because the player is able to immediately teleport to any location they have already been to.I would have preferred if this was explained more in the game possibly an item gained after completing a mission or purchased it adds a lot to the realism and keeping the player in the game. These few design changed to the map could have easily doubled the length of playing the main quest and no player would ever feel that useless items were added in order to simply add length to the game.
Things I liked:
Things I do not like:
As you can see the positives outweigh the negatives by a very large amount, I made a point to point out a few negatives because I feel many other reviewers overlooked them. This is certainly a game that everyone can find something to like about it. You will probably never completely “finish” the game simply because of all the side items that have been added to explore but that is ok,it gives the game more of a lifelike feel. I certainly recommend the game my only side note would be to purchase the game for PC if you have one that is powerful enough because you will be able to avoid the frame rate problems that appeared to pop in at the most annoying of times even when installed on the consoles hard drive.
Score: 8.8/10
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