Fallout 3 reviews round-up #1

Per

Per

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GameShark. B+<blockquote>Given all this, is Fallout 3 worth playing on the PC? Clearly the answer is yes whether you’re a fan of the first two games, a fan of Bethesda’s past work, or a fan of other PC RPG-shooters with a story, like Deus Ex and BioShock. Don’t let the fact that there are undeniable problems with the plotting and some of the game mechanics sway you. This is a good game. It’s a really good game. It’s only failing is that it has a mark of greatness upon it and, ever so cruelly, fails to completely achieve it. </blockquote>Eurogamer. 10/10<blockquote>Fallout 3 has been by some margin the most enjoyable game I've played since BioShock - a game with which it shares a similar artistic vision and ambience. Despite so many worries, Fallout 3 almost effortlessly succeeds in its central aim of reviving a much-loved brand to appeal to the vast majority of players. It's a thrilling, all-consuming experience that will absorb you for weeks, whether you're attracted by the action, the adventure, or the role-playing, as you fall in love with the relentless excitement, incredible atmosphere, sense of place and sheer choice.

Bethesda has once again delivered a game of life-affirming brilliance that will be heralded as a classic, and talked about for years to come.</blockquote>1Up. A<blockquote>If you seek to break the world, you'll occasionally find a way -- which is understandable, given the limits of time and tech -- but it does pull you out of the otherwise broad and engrossing experience. Faults be damned, though; this is the kind of hugely ambitious game that doesn't come around very often, and when it does, you'd be a fool not to play it and enjoy the hell out of it and look forward to the day (next-next-gen?) when the fidelity of open-world RPGs takes another big step closer to the uncanny valley's far side.</blockquote>Thanks to Mike and Jabu.
 
It seems one thing many of these will have in common is that they begin by declaring greatness, then start picking enough nits to build an electric nitmobile, then go back to greatness.

Small note: since there'll be a big bunch of these and we get them from various sources, we may not always get the news credits 100% right with respect to who was first with what, hope that won't be a big problem if so.
 
Pope Viper said:
If you seek to break the world, you'll occasionally find a way -- which is understandable, given the limits of time and tech --
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WHAT. THE. FUCK?
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Hah like you expected better.

"This is a great game given it comes from Bethesda. {Insert small nitpciks}. Great Title from Bethesda that will be talked about for years to come"

I certainly will talk about it, just not in the way they want me to talk about it. Fuck this game.
 
The original Fallout games (especially the first one) felt like they had artistic integrity. Bethesda could never fill the shoes of Black Isle in that department, and although I haven't played Fallout 3, Oblivion is a good example that, Bethesda is a game studio that wouldn't dare to push the boundaries and make any claims on intellectuality at all. It's a sad day for games' artistic credibility, especially when almost all of the gaming press is celebrating it as a wonder of game architecture. Is it strange of me to feel really really really sad about the state we're in?
 
It makes me wanna play it and write my own review (certainly, it will not be a possitive one)
 
Per said:
It seems one thing many of these will have in common is that they begin by declaring greatness, then start picking enough nits to build an electric nitmobile, then go back to greatness.
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Actually I found very little criticism in the Eurogamer review. No complaints about wacky animations, pathfinding problems, general ai issues or the voice-overs, besides stating that its way better than Oblivion's.


And everybody seems to positively love VATS.
 
I think I will come to enjoy it in its own way. I mean, I thought fallout was a travesty from the ideals put forth in wasteland when I first played it.
 
I've been lurking NMA now for about four years, and have remained cautiously optimistic about Fallout 3 for the entirety of its development. I picked it up at a midnight launch and have about seven hours into it now.

I honestly have no idea what game these people are reviewing, as its certainly not the game I've been playing. Even looking at it as just a game, and not a Fallout sequel, its rubbish. Complete and total rubbish. The FPS elements are terrible when compared to an actual shooter (Which you'd think they would try and emulate), the RPG elements are downright pitiful, your stats effecting things they shouldn't and not influencing the things they should. The writing is passable at its best and downright atrocious most of the time.

The fact that its receiving such high scores saddens and sickens me. The gaming industry is dead if this piece of shit is considered a shining gem.
 
If you seek to break the world, you'll occasionally find a way -- which is understandable, given the limits of time and tech --
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Maybe some of the game reviewers don't understand this, but bugs in this game are not due to us not having fast enough processors or new enough graphics cards, the bugs are due to crappy and lazy coding. Given 4 years to build a game using a pre-existing engine you would think that they could get enemies' animations to react to gunfire. You would think that enemies you had shot 5 seconds ago wouldn't start a friendly conversation just because you looked at your pipboy and put away your gun. You would think that for a game claiming to be immersive an enemy would die sometime before receiving his 32nd bullet to his unarmored head.

What's next, are crappy voice overs a result of the limits of tech.
 
Fallout 3 has been by some margin the most enjoyable game I've played since BioShock - a game with which it shares a similar artistic vision and ambience.
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oh noez. apart from the setting and level design bioshock was ... well ... subpar IMHO.
 
By limits of time and tech, he's referring to the insanely difficult job of finding every bug in the code for such a massive and open world. You have no idea how difficult it is to account for *every single action* a human might take to break a quest or the map boundaries just for the heck of it. Or what actions might trigger an unintentional break in the game. Combing through code for bugs becomes harder and harder as the possible permutations in a game increase.

A good example of this is when bug-testing for an online FPS, game designers will have testers all run to various corners of the map and fire simultaneously at the sky to see if that will crash the game or cause some unexpected error to crop up.

They spend months and months doing this sort of boring junk to find bugs. And with FO3's open-ended quest system a whole new layer of complexity is added.
 
sonicmerlin said:
By limits of time and tech, he's referring to the insanely difficult job of finding every bug in the code for such a massive and open world. You have no idea how difficult it is to account for *every single action* a human might take to break a quest or the map boundaries just for the heck of it.
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Maybe it should've been left an isometric turn-based game. All the time spent failing to iron out the bugs in the "massive and open world" could've been spent actually crafting something of legitimate quality.
 
Because no doubt isometric perspective = quality, while first person 3D = fail. What an unbiased, open mind you have. Good to see you've skipped the N64/PSX, GC/PS2/XBOX, and PS3/X360/Wii generations of video games altogether.
 
sonicmerlin said:
Because no doubt isometric perspective = quality, while first person 3D = fail. What an unbiased, open mind you have.
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How much of an "unbiased, open mind" do you think Bethesda had to making this game not first-person?

And nobody complains about it being 3D. Nor do I think you're understanding the argument properly.
 
sonicmerlin said:
Because no doubt isometric perspective = quality, while first person 3D = fail. What an unbiased, open mind you have. Good to see you've skipped the N64/PSX, GC/PS2/XBOX, and PS3/X360/Wii generations of video games altogether.
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First person 3D has it's place, but that place is not Fallout because it's at odds with the design intent of the original games. That's my opinion, yes. Still, if Bethesda or anyone else had made an honest, passionate attempt to create a worthy Fallout sequel, I could easily overlook the choice of first-person 3D. Pure third-person 3D I would find even more acceptable.
 
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