ARSON News Reviews Fallout 3

To be entirely honest from the start, I didn’t have high expectations for this game. I usually go onto Metacritic, and read user reviews before I decide to purchase anything, and people flamed this game quite a bit. Their problems with it ranged from the random crashing, to the walk speed, to the fact that it is Oblivion with guns. I will agree, the game crashes a lot. I was doing one of the quests (which for spoiler reasons I will not reveal the nature of) and the game crashed 9 times in the same room. Frustrating as it is, there are also long stretches with no issues, so I got some time to calm down about it.

As to Oblivion, yes guys, it is the same engine. It has some of the same problems, and still has the horrendous movement system. Your options are to walk slowly, or run walk at a brisk pace, there isn’t any kind of inertia or speed up system to give it a good feeling. I noticed, however, that even being built off the same framework, they fixed most of the problems. The NPC’s are less boring: their lines are often witty, sarcastic, and sometimes sad. The women actually occasionally look like actual women, some even… attractive, for the Oblivion engine.

But at some point I should talk about the game itself. At the beginning, it does a great job of drawing people in, but still left me somewhat unsatisfied. Now, I realize making the Vault/tutorial section longer would upset many people who just want to move onto the game, but it felt empty to me. Regardless, the coolest moment of this game was when I stepped outside into the "wastes" - the post-nuclear remains of Washington D.C. You start out in a rigid, clean environment, where everything is happy and good (except for the fact that you live under the rule of an insane dictator), but when you step outside, what greets you is quite different. In a way, the contrast is beautiful, and I commend the artists here on their work, but it is intensely sad to wander about post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. and see the last remnants of a great civilization.

For all its wacky humor, it keeps you playing, and I could never tell what I coming around the next corner. Because of the level cap, you can’t perfect all of your skills, so most hardcore gamers will be playing the game through several times as different characters. Fallout 3 has the coolest weapons of any game of late, however. There is something intensely satisfying about watching a mutant run up to you with a nail board and firing off a mini-nuke and watching him blow into 50 pieces (especially in V.A.T.S.). The game got bonus points in my book for not overdoing the blood, but also allowing you to knock off someone’s arm from 200 yards away.

The game really needed some sort of preset weapon switching system. Pretty annoying to have to use my hunting rifle at long range, assault rifle when they get closer, and a melee weapon at close range, all the while having to pause the game, wait for the Pip-Boy to load up, scroll through a huge menu of weapons, pick out the one I want, and then go back. It's possible to bind the weapons to the D-Pad on the Xbox 360 release, but almost impossible to use due to the strange sensitivity of the controller. The worst thing in the world is sneaking up behind someone undetected and accidently pulling out a bright, flaming sword instead of your silenced pistol.

The radio in the game is quite annoying. It adds realism to the game for exactly five minutes, then you realize that no radio station could stay on the air playing so few songs. There are two stations: one playing, at most, three patriotic songs and one playing, at most, five 1950s songs. You can get another station which plays classical violin music by completing an optional quest, but you're unlikely to even encounter the quest until you're at a high level (and at that point, you've probably destroyed the creepy-patriotic station), so you'll be spending most of the game with your radio off; this is probably for the best, anyways, since Three-dog's "news" gets more repeatitive than the music.

Overall, despite its flaws, it’s a game I would recommend to anyone who likes first-person shooters or any role-playing-style game. Its one I enjoyed thoroughly, and will spend a long time with - there are so many different ways to go about playing it. And as a bonus, there are three expansion packs with more rolling out soon, so users will be able to get more enjoyment out of their game; a objective they echoed with the release of the G.E.C.K, a tool which allows users to create their own expansions.

Here are the final results:

• Gameplay: 7/10
• Graphics: 10/10
• Music: 10/10
• Immersion: 9/10
• Everything Else: 6/10
• Overall: 9/10