GamersGlobal played Fallout 3 at the Leipzig Games Convention and updated some of their impressions from E3:<blockquote>V.A.T.S. no longer felt too mighty, and in fact, we were able to cripple the limbs of a super mutant without killing him, as it should be. Still, a successful V.A.T.S. shot can instantly kill an opponent if the damage to the limb brings his overall hitpoints to zero. For example, we shot 2 times at the left arm of a raider; the first shot hit and made him lose his weapon, the second shot crippled his arm, at the same time killing him. We are STILL not quite convinced about V.A.T.S., because our standard tactic was to try to get very near the opponents, who didn't seem to hit us much better than over a greater distance, and than entering V.A.T.S.: With this tactic, the relative low range of our pistol or hunting rifle didn't count, and we could hit our target with a to-hit probability of 80 to 95 % percent. The opponents, on the other hand, do not have V.A.T.S. Also, the Action Points still filled up pretty quickly, so running away from a Super Mutant for half a minute would replenish them to the maximum, allowing us to fight him effectively again. But to make this clear: the fighting no longer felt far too easy or flawed. As in Oblivion, opponents will run or swim towards you in order to reach you, or fight from afar when they have appropiate weapons. Some will throw grenades at you, others will fight you with poles or clubs.
Overall, we liked the PC interface better than the Xbox interface, for obvious reasons: You don't need to scroll to get to a specific weapon in your PIPboy (which you acticvate by pressing TAB), you simply click on it. Most actions like V.A.T.S. are confirmed with "E", which is also used for "use something". There are specific graphical settings (sliders) for the distance actors (npcs), items, objects (whatever the difference is), grass, shadows, light, specularities fade. You can also chose the level-of-detail distance for objcts and trees. Of course, most buttons Fallout 3 uses on the console gamepads are mapped to the keyboard. For example, you can apply Stimpacks by pressing "2" or switch to the world map by pressing "F3".</blockquote>Spotted on the BGSF.
Overall, we liked the PC interface better than the Xbox interface, for obvious reasons: You don't need to scroll to get to a specific weapon in your PIPboy (which you acticvate by pressing TAB), you simply click on it. Most actions like V.A.T.S. are confirmed with "E", which is also used for "use something". There are specific graphical settings (sliders) for the distance actors (npcs), items, objects (whatever the difference is), grass, shadows, light, specularities fade. You can also chose the level-of-detail distance for objcts and trees. Of course, most buttons Fallout 3 uses on the console gamepads are mapped to the keyboard. For example, you can apply Stimpacks by pressing "2" or switch to the world map by pressing "F3".</blockquote>Spotted on the BGSF.
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