Write-Up
Write-Up:
Apparently 2008 was a great year for gaming and I missed out on two of the biggest titles. Both Fable II and Fallout 3 won numerous awards and as such, both have had Game of the Year editions released since. Like I reviewed Fable II in anticipation for Fable III this fall, this week I’ll be looking at Bethesda’s Fallout 3 in anticipation for Fallout: New Vegas. The Game of the Year edition of this title comes with all 5 of the game’s DLCs and I’ll be covering each of those throughout the week in separate videos. Now, I know I’m not the only one that missed out on this title upon release, so if you haven’t played it yourself, or if you’re a long-time fan, let’s check it out. Released in 2008 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, here’s Fallout 3.
Being an incredibly rich and immersive RPG, I don’t want to drop too many details about the plot to spoil what is going to happen, so I’ll try to be as generic as possible. The year is 2277; 200 years have passed since the tragic events that destroyed the world as we know it with nuclear war, forcing all survivors into massive underground shelters called vaults. The game opens with one of the most interesting and creative character creation sequences I’ve yet experienced as you see the world through the eyes of a baby escaping their mother’s womb as she dies giving birth. You are a survivor, born in vault 101, a vault that has been sealed for many years. No one is allowed in, no one is allowed out… Ever.
The first hour or so of the game is played at various stages of your character’s life, from learning to walk as a toddler, to your 10th birthday party, to the day you take a skills assessment test that determines what job you will undertake for the remainder of your miserable life inside the vault. Your father, the doctor and scientist that delivered your birth, has escaped the vault without telling anyone. You follow suit and the remainder of the story revolves around searching for your father, finding out why he left, and potentially assisting him in whatever endeavor he was involved with in the first place. Without revealing too much, the story is essentially about saving the world.
Fallout 3 is simply a MASSIVE title. I played through on the medium difficulty setting and completed the primary story without all of the side missions or fully exploring the game-world in about 25 hours. I could have EASILY spent at least double that had I had the time to do it. On top of that, I’ve got 5 DLCs that I can tackle in addition to everything I already missed out on, but I did run into a little quirk with the that. The Xbox 360 version of the game comes on 2 DVDs. The first contains the game and the second contains all of the DLC. Apparently you are supposed to put the 2nd DVD in first to install all of the content, and then play the game off of the first disc. Well I played through the entire game before I realized that I needed to install all of the DLC, so I didn’t get to play through some of them at the right points in time. The instruction manual tells me that I should have inserted the 2nd disc first, but I never read the manuals first anyway. I think this should have been a bit more intuitive.
The entire game takes place in the wastelands that remain in what used to be Washington D.C. The game world is massive and incredibly immersive as you are forced to survive with little resources and you are truly in control of how the game will play out for you as the world is completely open for you to explore and participate in any and all of the missions and side-missions at your leisure and all of your interactions, be it through dialog or physical actions, will determine how the story plays out for you. Will you be a vault dwelling hero, a thuggish scavenger, or drug addict on the run from the law? The choice is completely up to you.
Fallout 3 is just a straight hard-core RPG with elements of a first person shooter and survival horror thrown into the mix. You constantly have to worry about ammo, weapons, repairs, health, radiation poisoning, inventory management, and staying the hell alive long enough to complete your objectives. Early in the game your father gives you an item worn on your wrist called a Pipboy 3000. Not only is this used as your only form of light in this extremely dark game, but it also acts as an interface to manage pretty much everything in the game. Through the PIpboy you’ll manage your quests, the world map, your large inventory of items, aids, weapons and armor, as well as manage your health and radiation levels. You’ll pretty much pull this bad boy up every couple of minutes as you play.
As you explore the massive wasteland, you’ll discover new locations that will be automatically added to your map when you get close enough to them. Once you’ve discovered a new location you can instantly travel to it again whenever you like through the Pipboy interface which is a godsend considering how long it takes to walk anywhere.
Along with worrying about your health and ammunition, you also need to be concerned with item degradation. Over time, all of your weapons and armor will degrade, dealing less damage and offering less protection over time until you repair it. You can pay another to repair your gear for you or you can repair it yourself with parts from other like-items which is extremely important as it makes your gear better and frees up some of your inventory.
Like all RPG’s; as you kill enemies, complete quests and use special abilities during conversations, you’ll earn experience, which will level you up. Each level allows you to allocate points towards various stats and skills, as well as allow you to unlock a new perk. Perks are special buffs that provide exceptional bonuses to stats and abilities and really allow you to tailor your character and game-play style to your liking.
Finally, something pretty unique to the title is the Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System, or V.A.T.S., that allows you to essentially pause the real-time combat and aim at various body parts of your enemies. Each shot will burn action points based off of what weapon you are using at the time, and then you’ll watch a series of bullet-time action sequences as the computer executes your aimed shots for you. Each limb of both you and your enemies has a certain amount of health, and when that runs out the limb becomes crippled, imposing a status ailment of some sort until a stimpack is used to repair it.
The graphics in Fallout 3 are pretty good, though much of the time you can’t appreciate them because the game is so damned dark. Probably half of the game is spent inside caves, buildings and caverns, and all of them are so dimly lit that you can barely see a thing. For this reason I constantly utilized the “wait” command that allows you to fast-forward through time for a series of hours. This way I could actually walk around in the daylight when I was out in the wastelands. One thing that bothered me though is that you can switch to a third-person view, but it’s very impractical and looks very generic and out of place, as you can’t control the camera. Why spend a long time creating the face of your character in the beginning if you can’t even move the camera to see what you look like?
The animation for characters faces while they talk is a little stiff and doesn’t look all that great either, but every line of dialog in the game is voice acted, and there are even some celebrities including Liam Neeson. Like Mafia 2 the game’s soundtrack is loaded with vintage 1940s tracks, that when combined with the retro look of the buildings, clothing and decorations, create a pretty amazing environment; but I didn’t really understand what the 1940s had to do with the plot considering it took place some 300 years after that.
Is Fallout 3 the best game ever? Well, not to me at least, but it is pretty good. I didn’t find it AMAZING like many others have, but it is pretty enjoyable and gives a lot of bang for your buck. The story didn’t draw me in like I was hoping it would, but the wastelands of the former DC, the characters, the situation and the way it is all presented really gave me the great immersion that I was looking for, especially considering that I’m watching a great show on the Discovery Channel called The Colony which really reminds me a lot of the types of things you see and participate in while playing through this game. With at LEAST 25 hours of game-play without including all of the side missions and none of the 5 downloadable contents included in the Game of the Year edition, you’re going to have your hands full for a very long time with this title. If you are looking forward to Fallout New Vegas this fall, there isn’t a better time than now to pick this bad boy up and get yourself ready to rock and roll. I had many discussions on my Facebook and Twitter accounts already surrounding this game, and if you aren’t following me on those networks, you’re missing out. What was your favorite feature of Fallout 3? Stay tuned for my reviews of the 5 DLCs and leave your questions and comments below!
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Price: $59.99
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**This title was provided to me free of charge from the publisher to review for you.
This is a Great Review. The war started in the 50′s and technology in the game developed along the lines of what the people of the 50s thought the world of tomorrow technology would be like. Example: Robots maids, nuclear cars. The dlc adds new level cap and enemies from broken steel make the game a lot better. There are a ton of mods for the computer version of this game that add hours more of game play to the game.