Review: Fallout 3

Warning: this review will go on for quite a long time, and cover many different broad subjects. Feel free to skim over parts; that is, if you want to be a complete douche.

Fallout 3 is developed by Bethesda, creators of Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls. The game takes place in 23-something or other in Washington DC and the surrounding area. Nuclear war has nearly wiped out humanity Perhaps not the most original concept, but this is made interesting by the fact that the war seems to have taken place in the 50s, because it's what the desolate world looks like. I think the trailer is a perfect example of this.

I try not to make a habit of reviewing anything until I've finished it. That's why I haven't told you the upcoming Watchmen movie will be awesome, even though I know it will be.

So I thought this review would be quite a long time in coming as soon as I passed the two hour mark. The reason being is that I expected to be in this game for no less than a week. I knew immediately that this was going to be a game that sucked up my free time like a vacuum cleaner with a pufferfish on the end, and suck it did.

I'm not a huge, huge fan of the RPG genre, and I hadn't even heard of the Fallout series before this. And I will admit to my shallowness by saying that the reason I first became interested in this game was because of this single picture:

Can I get a "Boom, Headshot?"

The excitement had been building to a fever pitch until four days ago, when I got to Gamestop at 10:00 in the morning to pick up my collector's edition copy of the game, complete with Vault-tec Lunchbox and Bobblehead.

And after four days of shooting at people, being shot at and subsequently dying, I can officially say that Fallout 3 met my feverishly high standards.

The game starts out with... well, your birth. Can you think of a better way to begin a great game? Here you choose your race, hair style, color, chin length, forehead size, eyebrow fluffiness and so on. The sheer amount of choices is staggering.

Soon (But not too soon) after your birth, your father (Voiced by Liam Neeson, who I think did terrific) escapes from the vault in which you were born, and it's up to you to find him.

In the first five or six hours of gameplay, I basically wandered around the Wasteland, until I got bored and decided to head into the core of DC. Then... I got my Caucasian female ass handed to me by Super Mutants. They all look like this scary motherfucker here:

The game plunged me into DC a little too early, I think. I really wasn't ready for the onslaught of creatures. But perhaps that was only because I wasn't playing the game right. Early on I was playing it like any conventional FPS. That is, running straight in with guns blazing and expecting to get back out alive and with all my ammo. This is what mainly got me killed.

But soon I came to grips with the unique combat system and actually began to feel refreshed by it. As you can see in the picture above, using the Vault-tec Assissted Targeting System (VATS), I could que up individual body parts, see the chance to hit and fire. This lead to much glee and dismemberment. However, sometimes the system can get hung up on rocks or other debris, when it was cleat that your gun wasn't aiming at anything other than the Raider with an AK.

I think the thing I like most about Fallout is the freedom and openness it gave me. I could choose my own path, skills, perks, dialogue and perhaps most important of all: fighting style.

I'm confronted with this situation frequently, so I'll use it as an example. Say I have a building in front of me filled with around six hostile Raiders that will shoot me on sight. I know their numbers, but I don't know their armaments. At any given time, there are about fifteen different ways I could deal with this situation. I could take my time and try to snipe them all from a distance. I could sneak around and try to perform silent kills to take them all out. Or, I could run in with a minigun, lactating testosterone, and try to kill them quickly before they take out their flamethrowers and burn me to a crisp. (Guess which one I picked)

There is also the aspect of "Karma," the system by which your interactions with characters is shown on your wrist. You can either choose to be a merciless, unstoppable badass devil who cares for no one but himself, or you can be a patron flower child, giving out alms to the poor and water for the thirsty. The game gives you bonuses for whatever side you choose.

I somehow ended up becoming a lesser Archangel, simply by disarming a couple bombs and giving out some water to beggers.

Of course, being evil has its advantages and disadvantages. I nearly armed the bomb I disarmed, which would have subsequently destroyed the town. At the last minute, I thought better of it and saved the town instead. By saving it, I used the town many, many times during the course of the game.

Fallout really made me care about the characters in it, even to the point of pulling out some real emotion that wasn't online-caused. I once help fix this election for a small-town mayor, who agreed to pay me after it was done. When it was over, he paid me with a measly 25 Bottlecaps (In-game money. And yes, they are actual bottlecaps.). Needless to say, I was pretty pissed and nearly shot him before thinking better of it.

I think the moment that I truly realized this isn't just an ordinary game was when I walked inside the ruins of Fairfax. It gave me a chill, not only because it's near where I live, it's also that I've walked along its streets before.

Fallout is an extremely easy game to get distracted in. I could be simply heading to a nearby radio station when I discover a town and decide to investigate further, finding out that they have a nasty problem with someone named the AntAgonizer, which leads to me proceeding to convince to give up her evil ways. After which, I find a town populated only by children, which subsequently sends me off to rescue three of their own, imprisoned by the motherfucking king of the fire ants.

Yes, this actually happened. I could not make this shit up.

I do have a couple complaints, though. The ending came out of fucking nowhere in the middle of a gunfight. I was still sitting in my chair waiting for the next quest to start until the credits started to roll. Many expletives followed.

Also, the amount of money I got and its worth in the game are both pitifully small. I feel like the design team was trying to emulate the current economy of the US, a attempt they unfortunately succeeded at. I don't get Bottlecaps off dead bodies, and instead I have to find bottlecaps in metal boxes and the like.

Wow, this is getting long... lemme wrap this up. Fallout is a game that sucked me in and refused to let me go until I paid it. It fills its niche beautifully, and I plan on replaying it to get all the mini-quests completed and get the "Evil Douche" achievement.

I give Fallout 10 headshots out of 10.

I'll leave you now with the opening cinematic for Left 4 Dead, which looks to be another game I'll be sinking my time into this November.