Sarcastic Gamer.<blockquote>You can play the game as a straight up shooter and totally enjoy it. The game also allows you to stop the action and target specific body parts of enemies during a fire fight. The games unique feature is the V.A.T.S. or Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System and with a press of a button, you can stop the action, survey the battle, pick your spots and unload. While the VATS system could be perceived as slowing down the action, in reality it just makes blowin’ stuff up more fun. Just wait until the first time you drop a grenade at the feet of a baddie and you watch him, or her get blown sky high in glorious slow motion and you’ll be hooked.</blockquote>Pocket-lint, 9/10.<blockquote>There are, obviously, a few flaws. That good old Fallout humour has all but been lost entirely, meaning Fallout 3 is almost universally quite a serious world. Since you’ve so much freedom too, you can easily find yourself trapped in a situation where you’re up against enemies that can easily overpower you. Neither are major minus points, in fact the latter has been clamoured for after the scaling system of Oblivion, so don’t put too much weight on these two minor failings.</blockquote>Sky News, 9/10.<blockquote>These are top quality titles that deserve and demand not just gamers' money, but also their time and devotion.
In the case of Fallout you can magnify that tenfold, because this isn't so much a videogame as a slice of life - a perfectly constructed glimpse of a post-apocalyptic setting which cannot be rushed through or simply played - it has to be experienced.
But this isn't just a visual feast: borrowing much of its structure from developer Bethesda's previous Role-Playing Game, Oblivion, Fallout 3 offers countless hours of quality adventuring, with plenty of entertaining side quests and a rewarding main storyline which for once avoids the kind of clichés that so often undermine epic adventures.</blockquote>suite101, second review, 8/10.<blockquote>In previous instalments of Fallout, V.A.T.S was a useful tool, in Fallout 3, it is essential for your survival. Put simply, it is a tool which allows you to target different parts of an enemies body, and this allows you to creatively close a battle. V.A.T.S also allows you to observe your enemies’ deaths in gruesome, full-on, slow motion, gratuitous animation- hence the game’s 18 rating.</blockquote>Robotronic Dynamite!, A+.<blockquote>My meaning is actually quite simple: Fallout 3 feels, more than any game I can recall, like the evolution of the medium. Instead of being bound to the designer's linear will, I'm free to make my own way. In his infamous essay arguing against video games as art, Roger Ebert cited the observer's control over events as a key reason as to why video games were not art. I would offer this game as the antithesis to that argument. Were it not for the tremendous freedom the player enjoys in Fallout, its commentary on mankind's natural inclination toward petty barbarism and its message that doing good is its own end would be completely lost because it's the choices the player makes that reflect these themes.
Fallout 3 isn't perfect, but to list any complaints seems an obtuse task. Much better to use my time reflecting on what an amazing game Bethesda has put together.</blockquote>MyPS3, 9.5.<blockquote>A lot of Oblivion's bugs have come across into Fallout pretty much as they were. Rag doll style corpses have the occasional habit of dancing a post death jig all over the floor, AI really isn't all that crash hot, and the town people have a bad habit of behaving like robots. This was no more apparent when at one point two AIs where stuck walking into each other. Eventually one of them won the battle of repetitive-animation-wars and pushed the other one off the edge of a walkway, killing him. What was even better was finding a skeleton somehow lodged through a wall, going nuts with its collision physics. Getting too close to said skeleton resulted in a whole lot of high speed health loss and death.</blockquote>PC Gameplay magazine (provided by The Dutch Ghost), 90.<blockquote>Chasing your father is perhaps not as epic as sealing the gates to a demonic dimension, but it is only the beginning that will eventually develop to an intriguing story.
Fallout 3 perhaps doesn't have the pure tactical depth that made the original games so revolutionary, but Bethesda has succeeded in transferring the Fallout atmosphere perfectly to the next generation.
Also the game doesn't have the size and length of Oblivion, but the replayability (with different endings) and an interesting world make up for a lot of it.
To round off and to go back to the question at the beginning of our introduction, yes, Fallout 3 is a better game than Oblivion, and yes, even the old fans that were so skeptical against the many changes could be pleasantly surprised.</blockquote>
In the case of Fallout you can magnify that tenfold, because this isn't so much a videogame as a slice of life - a perfectly constructed glimpse of a post-apocalyptic setting which cannot be rushed through or simply played - it has to be experienced.
But this isn't just a visual feast: borrowing much of its structure from developer Bethesda's previous Role-Playing Game, Oblivion, Fallout 3 offers countless hours of quality adventuring, with plenty of entertaining side quests and a rewarding main storyline which for once avoids the kind of clichés that so often undermine epic adventures.</blockquote>suite101, second review, 8/10.<blockquote>In previous instalments of Fallout, V.A.T.S was a useful tool, in Fallout 3, it is essential for your survival. Put simply, it is a tool which allows you to target different parts of an enemies body, and this allows you to creatively close a battle. V.A.T.S also allows you to observe your enemies’ deaths in gruesome, full-on, slow motion, gratuitous animation- hence the game’s 18 rating.</blockquote>Robotronic Dynamite!, A+.<blockquote>My meaning is actually quite simple: Fallout 3 feels, more than any game I can recall, like the evolution of the medium. Instead of being bound to the designer's linear will, I'm free to make my own way. In his infamous essay arguing against video games as art, Roger Ebert cited the observer's control over events as a key reason as to why video games were not art. I would offer this game as the antithesis to that argument. Were it not for the tremendous freedom the player enjoys in Fallout, its commentary on mankind's natural inclination toward petty barbarism and its message that doing good is its own end would be completely lost because it's the choices the player makes that reflect these themes.
Fallout 3 isn't perfect, but to list any complaints seems an obtuse task. Much better to use my time reflecting on what an amazing game Bethesda has put together.</blockquote>MyPS3, 9.5.<blockquote>A lot of Oblivion's bugs have come across into Fallout pretty much as they were. Rag doll style corpses have the occasional habit of dancing a post death jig all over the floor, AI really isn't all that crash hot, and the town people have a bad habit of behaving like robots. This was no more apparent when at one point two AIs where stuck walking into each other. Eventually one of them won the battle of repetitive-animation-wars and pushed the other one off the edge of a walkway, killing him. What was even better was finding a skeleton somehow lodged through a wall, going nuts with its collision physics. Getting too close to said skeleton resulted in a whole lot of high speed health loss and death.</blockquote>PC Gameplay magazine (provided by The Dutch Ghost), 90.<blockquote>Chasing your father is perhaps not as epic as sealing the gates to a demonic dimension, but it is only the beginning that will eventually develop to an intriguing story.
Fallout 3 perhaps doesn't have the pure tactical depth that made the original games so revolutionary, but Bethesda has succeeded in transferring the Fallout atmosphere perfectly to the next generation.
Also the game doesn't have the size and length of Oblivion, but the replayability (with different endings) and an interesting world make up for a lot of it.
To round off and to go back to the question at the beginning of our introduction, yes, Fallout 3 is a better game than Oblivion, and yes, even the old fans that were so skeptical against the many changes could be pleasantly surprised.</blockquote>
Obviously he's played a lot of Fallout 1&2 
