<center>[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ]</center>
Exploration and visuals
<center>“It's a wide-open world ... It's all about exploration and discovery.”
Emil Pagliarulo, author of the controversial “Fallout 3: What’s it really about” NYT bestseller.</center>
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Exploration is an undeniable strength of all Bethesda’s sandbox games and Fallout 3 doesn’t disappoint on this front. You have a huge world filled with all kinds of different places to visit. 85 locations, to be specific. A lot of locations are incredibly atmospheric like the Dunwich building and the Museum of Technology and simply must be experienced.
The war-torn environment is superb. Broken buildings, highways, and bridges, interiors, ruined subway stations, the remains of the capital city are done nicely and convincingly. It’s a fantastic work, even if it’s off the mark by 200 years.
Armor sets (particularly the raiders armor), clothing, and weapons are very detailed and well designed (insane attention to details, I’d say). I built a steam-operated Railway Rifle, which came with a nice idle (or poor condition, perhaps?) animation: the rifle’s steam engine starts coughing and sputtering, my characters hits it a few times and the engine starts working properly again.
Unfortunately, the previously mentioned design decisions cripple the exploration a bit. It’s relatively easy to acquire the best equipment and max your key skills before you see half of the gameworld. Considering that many places don’t have any “reward” other than killing and looting whatever inhabits them, it would have been nice to have something else to do there other than sight-seeing and looting.
For example, the Dunwich building has a great atmosphere and design. Very well done audio tapes lead you from one spot to another until your reach the obelisk room where Jaime attacks you, forcing you to kill him. You can’t help but think “That’s all?” Giving you an option to talk to Jaime or to find the book mentioned in the tapes or even do anything with the obelisk gaining some silly perk would have greatly improved the overall design and made exploring more interesting and rewarding.
The combat
<center>"Violence done well is fucking hilarious."
Todd Howard, a boy-genius</center>
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Unfortunately, the combat system is mediocre at best and the only thing that could be described as "fucking hilarious" is Bethesda's failure to come up with something interesting and engaging.
Fallout 3 has two combat modes: real-time and slow motion. The real time mode is a mediocre shooter. You hunt things down with your cursor and shoot them until they die. Your character skills don’t affect things much or at all (apparently Bethesda’s target audience gets disappointed and confused when bullets don’t follow the cursor and are too young to remember Deus Ex ). No cover options a-la Gears of War or Mass Effect, no aimed mode. Right clicking does zoom in a bit, but it's basically useless. The real time mode eats ammo like popcorn.
The slow motion mode, called Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System or VATS for short, is equally uninspiring. It's a horribly conceived attempt to capture Fallout's turn-based targeting and atmosphere. At any moment you can click V and go into the VATS mode which freezes time and allows you to target the different body parts of foes, displaying your "to hit" % chances.
Anyway, you select several attacks (based on the weapon stats and your action points), click ok, and that's where this pretty good idea turns to crap. Instead of simply letting you target body parts, Bethesda went for cinematics. The slow motion mode kicks in, grabs the camera control away from you and shows you exploding heads and flying limbs. Considering the action focus of the game, you'll have to watch flying and exploding heads - in slow motion - a few hundred times. The slow motion thing would have worked for some rare critical shots, say one in twenty, making it special rather than ordinary. Having to watch it each and every time is extremely painful and annoying. When you are out of action points, the game kicks you back into the real time mode, and you can either continue shooting or run away and wait for the action points to be recharged. Rinse and repeat.
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Also, while in the VATS mode, you only take 10% of damage for some reasons, which doesn't make much sense. Considering that VATS is a generally much more effective way of dealing with your enemies, it becomes almost a cheat "insta kill" mode against single enemies.
Now, at this point I expect to hear some "Turn-based is unrealistic too!!! It allows you to kill things while not taking any damage at all!" type arguments. It's true that you are not in any danger at all during your turn. However, when your turn is over, you are a sitting duck and that's where the tactical aspect comes in. You have to prepare for the enemy's turn while you have the chance. The enemy's turn is what balances out your own. Bethesda’s VATS doesn't provide it. You are free to take a few shots in VATS, then hide behind a wall and wait for the enemy to come to you while your points are quickly recharging. Nope, that’s not tactics son, that’s an exploit.
Overall, the VATS idea had merits but was butchered during the execution. Still, the combat is challenging*, dying is easy, and blasting things with a large variety of weapons is rather entertaining. The first mod that removes the mandatory slow-motion, flying and exploding heads, and damage reduction from VATS will greatly improve the game.
* Some people complain that the combat is too easy and that they go through the game without dying and ever using stimpaks. I have no explanation for this phenomenon. Could be a bug, could be a different (leaked?) version.
Karma
<center>”That's really an AI thing. There is no guard system, there is no police system, basically you alert the opposing team when you kill someone or steal something.”
Pete Hines, a leading expert on karma and dharma.</center>
Fallout 3’s karma is a busy little feature, constantly watching and judging you. The game is watching too and will respond accordingly. Good characters will be hunted by Talon mercenaries and will be rejected by evil NPCs. Evil characters will have to answer to Regulators and won’t become friends with good NPCs. Let’s ignore the instantly traveling wasteland news aspect of karma for now and look at the big picture. So far, so good. Now, let’s add ridiculously easy ways to change your karma and watch the system as it departs the world of good design and flies straight out of the first available window.
There is a thirsty person outside of Megaton who will accept as much clean water as you can spare, increasing your karma for every bottle. Your robot-butler can give you as much clean water as you need. See where I’m going with this? These thirsty people (there is one outside the Rivet City too) give you a convenient “do whatever you want, then pass some clean water bottles around, and you’re holier than the pope” card.
If you are a good person, who’s being discriminated against by evil people, all you need is to steal something. Items that don’t belong to you are marked in red. Fill up your bag with someone else’s stuff and you are soon the scourge of the wasteland. Pass some drinking water around and you are a saint again. Another potentially good, but butchered idea, that hopefully will be fixed by mods.
Occasionally, the karma system doesn’t get the latest memo about the gameworld changes and slaps you with evil points for doing good things. Overall though, it’s a step into the right direction, but it will take way more than one baby step to get there.
And in conclusion
<center>“Fallout 3 will be very, very different from Oblivion (or any other TES game). It won't be "Morrowind with guns". It won't even be "Oblivion with guns".
Steve Meister, an aspiring prophet</center>
It’s a good and entertaining action RPG provided you can ignore the fact that it was supposed to be a Fallout game and mentally block that aspect of it, and if you can do the same about the silly “amusement park” setting. The game looks pretty good, offers you a huge world to explore with many atmospheric locations, challenging combat, and quite a few interesting quests.
Compared to the first two Fallout games, Fallout 3 is a pale imitation that may anger many fans of the original games. However, comparing Fallout 3 to similar games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Gothic, Two Worlds, Assassins Creed, etc presents a much more favourable reaction. I think that it’s the best game Bethesda have produced since the Daggerfall days and that really says something about the game. The most important feature of the game is the promise of great things to come from Bethesda in the future, so let’s get those monkeys out of the office and kick some ass. God knows, it’s been long overdue.
Technical notes: Surprisingly, the game runs flawlessly (a single CTD due to some alt-tabbing) on my 3 year old computer.
Pentium D processor 930, Dual Core, 3GHz, 800FSB
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM, 533MHz
nVidia GeForce 6800, 256 MB
Special thanks to my buddy Andy who single-handedly restored my faith in the British education system.
<center>[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ]</center>
Exploration and visuals
<center>“It's a wide-open world ... It's all about exploration and discovery.”
Emil Pagliarulo, author of the controversial “Fallout 3: What’s it really about” NYT bestseller.</center>
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Exploration is an undeniable strength of all Bethesda’s sandbox games and Fallout 3 doesn’t disappoint on this front. You have a huge world filled with all kinds of different places to visit. 85 locations, to be specific. A lot of locations are incredibly atmospheric like the Dunwich building and the Museum of Technology and simply must be experienced.The war-torn environment is superb. Broken buildings, highways, and bridges, interiors, ruined subway stations, the remains of the capital city are done nicely and convincingly. It’s a fantastic work, even if it’s off the mark by 200 years.
Armor sets (particularly the raiders armor), clothing, and weapons are very detailed and well designed (insane attention to details, I’d say). I built a steam-operated Railway Rifle, which came with a nice idle (or poor condition, perhaps?) animation: the rifle’s steam engine starts coughing and sputtering, my characters hits it a few times and the engine starts working properly again.
Unfortunately, the previously mentioned design decisions cripple the exploration a bit. It’s relatively easy to acquire the best equipment and max your key skills before you see half of the gameworld. Considering that many places don’t have any “reward” other than killing and looting whatever inhabits them, it would have been nice to have something else to do there other than sight-seeing and looting.
For example, the Dunwich building has a great atmosphere and design. Very well done audio tapes lead you from one spot to another until your reach the obelisk room where Jaime attacks you, forcing you to kill him. You can’t help but think “That’s all?” Giving you an option to talk to Jaime or to find the book mentioned in the tapes or even do anything with the obelisk gaining some silly perk would have greatly improved the overall design and made exploring more interesting and rewarding.
The combat
<center>"Violence done well is fucking hilarious."
Todd Howard, a boy-genius</center>
<table align="left" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Unfortunately, the combat system is mediocre at best and the only thing that could be described as "fucking hilarious" is Bethesda's failure to come up with something interesting and engaging.Fallout 3 has two combat modes: real-time and slow motion. The real time mode is a mediocre shooter. You hunt things down with your cursor and shoot them until they die. Your character skills don’t affect things much or at all (apparently Bethesda’s target audience gets disappointed and confused when bullets don’t follow the cursor and are too young to remember Deus Ex ). No cover options a-la Gears of War or Mass Effect, no aimed mode. Right clicking does zoom in a bit, but it's basically useless. The real time mode eats ammo like popcorn.
The slow motion mode, called Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System or VATS for short, is equally uninspiring. It's a horribly conceived attempt to capture Fallout's turn-based targeting and atmosphere. At any moment you can click V and go into the VATS mode which freezes time and allows you to target the different body parts of foes, displaying your "to hit" % chances.
Anyway, you select several attacks (based on the weapon stats and your action points), click ok, and that's where this pretty good idea turns to crap. Instead of simply letting you target body parts, Bethesda went for cinematics. The slow motion mode kicks in, grabs the camera control away from you and shows you exploding heads and flying limbs. Considering the action focus of the game, you'll have to watch flying and exploding heads - in slow motion - a few hundred times. The slow motion thing would have worked for some rare critical shots, say one in twenty, making it special rather than ordinary. Having to watch it each and every time is extremely painful and annoying. When you are out of action points, the game kicks you back into the real time mode, and you can either continue shooting or run away and wait for the action points to be recharged. Rinse and repeat.
<table align="right" width="310px" bgcolor="#333333" border="1"><tr><td><center>
</center></tr></td></table>Also, while in the VATS mode, you only take 10% of damage for some reasons, which doesn't make much sense. Considering that VATS is a generally much more effective way of dealing with your enemies, it becomes almost a cheat "insta kill" mode against single enemies. Now, at this point I expect to hear some "Turn-based is unrealistic too!!! It allows you to kill things while not taking any damage at all!" type arguments. It's true that you are not in any danger at all during your turn. However, when your turn is over, you are a sitting duck and that's where the tactical aspect comes in. You have to prepare for the enemy's turn while you have the chance. The enemy's turn is what balances out your own. Bethesda’s VATS doesn't provide it. You are free to take a few shots in VATS, then hide behind a wall and wait for the enemy to come to you while your points are quickly recharging. Nope, that’s not tactics son, that’s an exploit.
Overall, the VATS idea had merits but was butchered during the execution. Still, the combat is challenging*, dying is easy, and blasting things with a large variety of weapons is rather entertaining. The first mod that removes the mandatory slow-motion, flying and exploding heads, and damage reduction from VATS will greatly improve the game.
* Some people complain that the combat is too easy and that they go through the game without dying and ever using stimpaks. I have no explanation for this phenomenon. Could be a bug, could be a different (leaked?) version.
Karma
<center>”That's really an AI thing. There is no guard system, there is no police system, basically you alert the opposing team when you kill someone or steal something.”
Pete Hines, a leading expert on karma and dharma.</center>
Fallout 3’s karma is a busy little feature, constantly watching and judging you. The game is watching too and will respond accordingly. Good characters will be hunted by Talon mercenaries and will be rejected by evil NPCs. Evil characters will have to answer to Regulators and won’t become friends with good NPCs. Let’s ignore the instantly traveling wasteland news aspect of karma for now and look at the big picture. So far, so good. Now, let’s add ridiculously easy ways to change your karma and watch the system as it departs the world of good design and flies straight out of the first available window.
There is a thirsty person outside of Megaton who will accept as much clean water as you can spare, increasing your karma for every bottle. Your robot-butler can give you as much clean water as you need. See where I’m going with this? These thirsty people (there is one outside the Rivet City too) give you a convenient “do whatever you want, then pass some clean water bottles around, and you’re holier than the pope” card.
If you are a good person, who’s being discriminated against by evil people, all you need is to steal something. Items that don’t belong to you are marked in red. Fill up your bag with someone else’s stuff and you are soon the scourge of the wasteland. Pass some drinking water around and you are a saint again. Another potentially good, but butchered idea, that hopefully will be fixed by mods.
Occasionally, the karma system doesn’t get the latest memo about the gameworld changes and slaps you with evil points for doing good things. Overall though, it’s a step into the right direction, but it will take way more than one baby step to get there.
And in conclusion
<center>“Fallout 3 will be very, very different from Oblivion (or any other TES game). It won't be "Morrowind with guns". It won't even be "Oblivion with guns".
Steve Meister, an aspiring prophet</center>
It’s a good and entertaining action RPG provided you can ignore the fact that it was supposed to be a Fallout game and mentally block that aspect of it, and if you can do the same about the silly “amusement park” setting. The game looks pretty good, offers you a huge world to explore with many atmospheric locations, challenging combat, and quite a few interesting quests.
Compared to the first two Fallout games, Fallout 3 is a pale imitation that may anger many fans of the original games. However, comparing Fallout 3 to similar games like Morrowind, Oblivion, Gothic, Two Worlds, Assassins Creed, etc presents a much more favourable reaction. I think that it’s the best game Bethesda have produced since the Daggerfall days and that really says something about the game. The most important feature of the game is the promise of great things to come from Bethesda in the future, so let’s get those monkeys out of the office and kick some ass. God knows, it’s been long overdue.
Technical notes: Surprisingly, the game runs flawlessly (a single CTD due to some alt-tabbing) on my 3 year old computer.
Pentium D processor 930, Dual Core, 3GHz, 800FSB
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM, 533MHz
nVidia GeForce 6800, 256 MB
Special thanks to my buddy Andy who single-handedly restored my faith in the British education system.
<center>[ Page 1 ] - [ Page 2 ] - [ Page 3 ]</center>