Fallout 3 reviews round-up #55

[Per]

Some sites called and said they want to review Fallout 3 too.

GameZone, second review, 9.5.<blockquote>Very few gamers are familiar with the Fallout series since the first two games were available only on the PC. Thankfully, much like it did for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Bethesda Softworks brings us an action-packed role-playing game that takes us into an alternate reality version of America.

The minute you step out into the wasteland that was once American soil, you know you will never forget the things you will see and do in this world. Fallout 3 is a game that hits all the right notes and excels in being a role-playing game that wishes to challenge the genre to bring something bigger and better.</blockquote>Aeropause Games/Technologypublic, 4.5/5.<blockquote>Unfortunately, there is not much else in the way of good voice overs, by any of the other characters outside of the omni-present DJ, Three Dog. As a matter of fact, I think most of the voice work by other characters was done by the same twelve people at Bethesda. Every other mercenary and caravan trader seems to sound like the same guy looping over and over. With a budget like Bethesda had with Fallout 3, it seems like they put all their eggs into the star power and less into the support roles.

Fallout 3, does present a masterpiece on how to set up mission structure, moral choices and solid combat, all laid out in a horrible, yet intriguing post-apocalyptic wasteland. Bethesda has made broad steps to cater to the old guard, as well as new visitors to the Fallout franchise.</blockquote>Forge, 5/5.<blockquote>Built on the engine of orc/rat/elf-slayer Oblivion, developers Bethesda have taken the lessons learnt from their previous fantasy epic to make one slick RPG-action game. Experience isn’t gained from hoping around on one foot, but from the simpler model of awarding experience points for successfully achieving stuff.

Immense in its scale, the moral grey-zones of this game will have you coming back to it again and again, and that despite the first play-through holding a solid 50+ hours. It’ll remind of what RPG’s should be about; looting, killing and not actually finishing the storyline. Brilliant.</blockquote>UGTV blog.<blockquote>There may not be any critical misses but there are certainly areas where Fallout 3 misses the mark. While the team at Bethesda worked very hard to stay true to the spirit of the Fallout series, it certainly feels different from its predecessors. It lacks the a little of the wackiness, pop culture references and raunchy jokes that made Fallout 2 so endearing.

In general, Fallout 3 serves up a really meaty and fulfilling experience. Because of the way in which it blends action and RPG elements, it should appeal to most gamers save those with the most narrow of tastes. The plasticity of the character creation, quest solutions and sheer scale of environment will mean that after your first play through you’ll want to start all over again just to see what else you can do.</blockquote>Texas TeamPlayers, 9.4.<blockquote>If a person has not played the first one, the mechanics of the game may seem a little odd. They are explained, but a person new to the series might need a little more time to get used to the mechanics.</blockquote>Tampa Bay Online, 4/4.<blockquote>The genius of this game is contained, at the very least, in the different ways you can play. If you like, you can just roam around as in a first-person shooter, fighting raiders, mutants and worse.

However, the wasteland is also filled with characters with whom you can interact. You can spend all sorts of time role-playing if you want to. For example, in one town, an evil man wants you to help him blow the place up. You can help him, tell the sheriff about him to see what happens or even end up killing him.</blockquote>reverend mo/jo's blog.<blockquote>Travel times are about the same, and random encounters happen just as often. Except now, instead of staring at some dull map, you’re experiencing the world. You truly are wandering through a barren wasteland, constantly checking your periphery for nasty critters (or worse). It makes journeying in the world fun, instead of just something that has to be done.

I’ve seen none of this depth in Fallout 3’s conversations. In fact, some dialog options don’t even make sense. Your character is bizarrely aware of things he has no business being aware of.</blockquote>

 

[AskWazzup]

It’ll remind of what RPG’s should be about; looting, killing and not actually finishing the storyline. Brilliant

Isn't that what mmorpg's are about?

 

[Ixyroth]

The lobotomy parade rolls on...

 

[Leon]

Oh Christ, I read the title on the front page as "round-up #65". That was more frightening than it should have been.

 

[Ravager69]

Immense in its scale, the moral grey-zones of this game will have you coming back to it again and again, and that despite the first play-through holding a solid 50+ hours. It’ll remind of what RPG’s should be about; looting, killing and not actually finishing the storyline.

This one made my day.
The closest you get to moraly grey is mercykilling. Shoot the guy in the head and spare him the suffering or beat him to a bloody pulp with a baseball bat?

As for the "nature" of RPGs...I *think* there's more to 'em than looting.

 

[shihonage]

For example, in one town, an evil man wants you to help him blow the place up.

Psst... I can't tell you this town's name, but it rhymes with "Shmegaton".

 

[Forhekset]

Except now, instead of staring at some dull map, you’re experiencing the world. You truly are wandering through a barren wasteland, constantly checking your periphery for nasty critters (or worse). It makes journeying in the world fun, instead of just something that has to be done.

Imershun ftw.

 

[Eyenixon]

Except now, instead of staring at some dull map, you’re experiencing the world. You truly are wandering through a barren wasteland, constantly checking your periphery for nasty critters (or worse). It makes journeying in the world fun, instead of just something that has to be done.

Imershun ftw.

Funny how it is that the focus of Fallout 1 and 2 wasn't on the destroyed environment itself but its societies, instead of exploring a desolate countryside you were exploring the desolated remains of society in various towns and settlements.
So Bethesda decides to shift the emphasis to the world itself (dungeon crawling Fallout) and everything that made the original games so great suffered.

Backwards thinking in my opinion, everyone seems so fascinated by the open world but completely oblivious to the towns themselves, of which there are painfully few and tend to be inhabited by tiny amounts of people. Well, they're totally oblivious to it until they give pluses thinking that everything horrible about it is good for whatever reason.

 

[Westbend]

Dear God. Thats it. Im finally convinced that the apocalypse is nigh. God damn people are just to damn stupid to barely breathe and find their own ass with a map. The movie Idiocracy is right and its god damned depressing.

 

[Protean]

Backwards thinking in my opinion, everyone seems so fascinated by the open world but completely oblivious to the towns themselves, of which there are painfully few and tend to be inhabited by tiny amounts of people.

True, there were more settlements inhabited by more NPCs, all of which were more interesting.

Doesn't change the fact that travel from one place to another was crap. Try to look at the bright side: Bethesda improved the travel portion of the game.

 

[Karak]

How is that a fact?...I think it was handled perfectly fine.

 

[scypior]

Doesn't change the fact that travel from one place to another was crap. Try to look at the bright side: Bethesda improved the travel portion of the game.

While I was switching from normal in-game screen to the world-map screen, and started travel, I got that feel of distance.

Now it's lost, so while I think it definitely could be improvement, it is not.

 

[Eyenixon]

Backwards thinking in my opinion, everyone seems so fascinated by the open world but completely oblivious to the towns themselves, of which there are painfully few and tend to be inhabited by tiny amounts of people.

True, there were more settlements inhabited by more NPCs, all of which were more interesting.

Doesn't change the fact that travel from one place to another was crap. Try to look at the bright side: Bethesda improved the travel portion of the game.

I don't think so, that might be more based on opinion than you might think.

Since you have to travel on foot yourself throughout most of the game, they had to make the environment itself interesting right? The problem in that lies with the dilemma of too much versus too little, and Fallout 3 is certainly a victim of too much.
Outdoors are littered with a large and closely assembled ensemble of creatures, encounters, and locations. It's claustrophobic and the entire area feels like a war zone.

It negatively impacts travel in my opinion, you're persistently being annoyed by small creatures, and at times even harassed by Death Claws or Yogi Bears in low level areas (such as near Megaton) because Fallout 3's random encounters are shoddily designed.
I much prefer the originals' Indiana Jones themed travel menu and the random encounters, I could at least run away from most random encounters I was forced into and encountering difficult scenarios such as Enclave patrols or Floaters and Centaurs were restricted to specific areas of the world map.

Sometimes while walking from place to place in Fallout 3 I feel like I'm walking through an amusement park, it's ridiculously off kilter in the enormity of its spastic and oft poorly misplaced environmental activity.
They could have fixed that by simply making the map larger and spacing out locations and placing enemies less liberally. Of course, you could argue that that would make it a bit more boring, but its a separation from the frustrating.

 

[Protean]

You have a point.

Traveling in first person does require the world to be more compressed. It would be quite dull otherwise. Though I think the random encounters in Fallout 3 are easier to avoid than those in the previous two games, precisely because it is a first-person affair.

In Fallout 1 and 2, if the roll of the dice demands you have a random encounter, then you are popped into the zone and there's your encounter. You can, of course, run away, but there was no option to avoid them to begin with. In Fallout 3, a keen eye (or paranoia and the constant press of the VATS button) can make you aware of danger before it's ever upon you, and you can skirt around it.

As for travel itself, I still say it's more entertaining to walk around yourself as opposed to watching a dot move on a map. It does require some other changes, though, which can be considered bad (as most here seem to).

To sum it all up, I didn't care for clicking on a map, but that style of travel did allow for a larger, more barren world.

Bethesda definitely should have had more and larger settlements, though... The world's interesting in its own right, but the people, what few there are, are just dull.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

Immense in its scale, the moral grey-zones of this game will have you coming back to it again and again, and that despite the first play-through holding a solid 50+ hours. It’ll remind of what RPG’s should be about; looting, killing and not actually finishing the storyline.

This one made my day.
The closest you get to moraly grey is mercykilling. Shoot the guy in the head and spare him the suffering or beat him to a bloody pulp with a baseball bat?

As for the "nature" of RPGs...I *think* there's more to 'em than looting.

Seriously, that is a line I'd put into a NEGATIVE review! I mean, I'll take the idea that FO3 is "morally grey" just the same way I took its "buglessness", "perfect graphics", "imershun", "great combat system", "excellent writing" and "superb voice acting" all the reviews have been blabbering about - with a laugh.

But to say that a good RPG should be all about dungeon-crawl and nothing else, the reviewer has less intelligence than an average cranium rat >.< How about all those greatest RPGs that are known for the involving main story and great plot?

 

[Ausir]

Doesn't change the fact that travel from one place to another was crap. Try to look at the bright side: Bethesda improved the travel portion of the game.

Having no random encounters during fast travel is pretty silly.

 

[Eyenixon]

You have a point.

Traveling in first person does require the world to be more compressed. It would be quite dull otherwise. Though I think the random encounters in Fallout 3 are easier to avoid than those in the previous two games, precisely because it is a first-person affair.

In Fallout 1 and 2, if the roll of the dice demands you have a random encounter, then you are popped into the zone and there's your encounter. You can, of course, run away, but there was no option to avoid them to begin with. In Fallout 3, a keen eye (or paranoia and the constant press of the VATS button) can make you aware of danger before it's ever upon you, and you can skirt around it.

As for travel itself, I still say it's more entertaining to walk around yourself as opposed to watching a dot move on a map. It does require some other changes, though, which can be considered bad (as most here seem to).

To sum it all up, I didn't care for clicking on a map, but that style of travel did allow for a larger, more barren world.

Bethesda definitely should have had more and larger settlements, though... The world's interesting in its own right, but the people, what few there are, are just dull.

I understand what you're saying, but the original Fallouts didn't really use travel as some major gameplay feature, it was merely a way of getting from place to place in a manner that made sense in regards to the setting and the scope of the game.

Fallout 3's travel is more entertaining than Fallout 1 or 2's, I agree with that, but as I said in my first post (regarding the emphasis of gameplay) that was never the main draw of the series, and as such, Fallout 3's travel system all too often becomes far more annoying than the older model simply because it gets in the way of actually getting to places where you can get to the meat of the game.
I don't always equate the entertainment value of something with quality though, as we all know, something fun isn't always good in a technical sense, and with that in mind, it can be said that even though Fallout 1 or 2's travel harbored little in the way of action and interesting activity it didn't have the problems presented by Fallout 3's model and because of that I prefer the original system.

EDIT: Quoted Protean, I type too slow.

Seriously, that is a line I'd put into a NEGATIVE review! I mean, I'll take the idea that FO3 is "morally grey" just the same way I took its "buglessness", "perfect graphics", "imershun", "great combat system", "excellent writing" and "superb voice acting" all the reviews have been blabbering about - with a laugh.

But to say that a good RPG should be all about dungeon-crawl and nothing else, the reviewer has less intelligence than an average cranium rat >.< How about all those greatest RPGs that are known for the involving main story and great plot?

How about the ones that are all about killing things with a typical yet entertaining plot. Gold Box games ring a bell?

 

[Protean]

Having no random encounters during fast travel is pretty silly.

This is true. Hadn't even thought about that. I bet Bethesda didn't either...

 

[Ausdoerrt]

How about the ones that are all about killing things with a typical yet entertaining plot. Gold Box games ring a bell?

A bit too old for my age, though I have heard of Pool of Radiance. But, not my point really. Most good RPGs I know have cool battles (unless they are text-based adventure RPGs). Making an RPG all about h&s is relatively retarded - we'd end up with endless poorly done Diablo clones. Remember what happened to Lionheart:LOC?

 

[Karak]

In Fallout 1 and 2, if the roll of the dice demands you have a random encounter, then you are popped into the zone and there's your encounter. You can, of course, run away, but there was no option to avoid them to begin with.

I seem to remember if your outdoorsman skill was high enough a window would pop up on the map screen offering you exactly such an option...