Blog time.
Sotanaht's Little Corner of Hell.<blockquote>I was rather adamant about how Bethesda was ruining a franchise I essentially grew up on. I took a LOT of coverage and videos to convince me to try it, and in the end I’m glad I did. They didn’t completely bastardize the game by turning it FPS, but instead did a strange and fitting blend of Mass Effect’s skill based FPS with classic Fallout’s VATS targeting system. It works pretty well. The adventure itself is still gritty and morose as its predecessors, though somewhat different in spirit. I read somewhere that the first two games had their unique atmosphere of devastation assumed, while part 3’s was very apparent and interactive. This was a pretty accurate assessment.</blockquote>Wired Gaming, 9.0 (PC/Xbox360), 8.8 (PS3).<blockquote>Quests can be a lot of fun and your behavior can result in a great amount of different endings, that will eventually give you access to new kind of quests, as well as rule others out. Your choices will change not only the world around you, but the course of your character’s life as well. You can, for example, blow up an entire city or, if you are in a good mood, save it from a super mutant attack. Bad choices will give you bad karma, while good ones will give you good karma. Your karma will open up new dialogues and close others as well. And that’s the essence of the game.</blockquote>Ramblings of a Madman: Tech and Politics Explained, 8.5/10.<blockquote>Eerily similar to Oblivion, the dialogue is nice at first, but you realize after the thrid or fourth runthrough of the game that the NPC's responses are worded in such a way that you can respond in any number of ways, and receive the same answer everytime. But now I'm just nit-picking...
The game is a work of art. I would highly recommend a purchase.</blockquote>Armchair Arcade, 5/5.<blockquote>There are few games in recent memory that have had as great an impact on me as Bethesda's Fallout 3. I just finished the game a few minutes ago and am simply stunned at the quality of the storytelling, gameplay, and aesthetics. While the game has a few minor faults, these pale in comparison to its masterful production.
The game is very solid and probably the best game you could buy yourself for the holidays. I really enjoyed it and looked forward to playing it everyday. Heck, I might try it again with a different character just to see the rest of what the game has to offer.</blockquote>metzomagic.com, 5/5.<blockquote>Miraculously, they have managed to preserve nearly everything that was good about the first two games. Though I'm sure they did this in the knowledge that they would piss off a legion of die-hard fans had they done otherwise, it does little to belie their achievement in this respect.
While the questing side of things seems to be fairly solid, I'm not overly enamoured with the way conversation is handled. There just doesn't seem to be the same amount of conversational depth that was present in the first two games. Yes, you get the occasional dialogue choice that can be influenced by your Intelligence or the Speech/Science/Medicine Skills, but I didn't get the sense of any new avenues of conversation ever opening up. It was all very flat.
The bottom line here is that the story Fallout 3 has to tell does justice to the franchise in spades. And the moral choice that my character was forced to make in the final chapter just blew me away. I've never seen anything quite like it in the realm of gaming.</blockquote>Gaming with Children.<blockquote>First and foremost: anyone who denies that Fallout 3 *IS* ‘Oblivion with guns’ is either lying to you or themselves. At the same time, anyone who claims that ‘Oblivion with guns’ is all that Fallout 3 has to offer is being similarly dishonest.
So let me clear something up - if you are an Oblivion fan and are buying this on the PS3 or XBOX360 after finishing up Dead Space and months of multiplayer Call of Duty 4, you will be very happy for a very long time. If you are a ‘Fallout purist’ who rails about the ‘loss of Van Buren’ (Van Buren was the code name for the original Fallout 3 project a decade ago) and is hoping that Bethesda has built in some way of getting the perspective and turn-based feel just right to recreate the classic Fallout games … look elsewhere. This is not the game you are looking for.
That leaves those who are willing to be flexible about the perspective, the balance of real-time and turn-based, but are absolutely insistent that success includes maintaining the top-notch writing and depth that the originals had, as well as the dark humor that remains perhaps the best ever in any video game.</blockquote>Symbiote Studios.<blockquote>You’ll find that Fallout 3 will challenge you in more ways than you know, with such a comprehensive matrix of interwoven tapestries, the game almost guarantees a unique experience regardless of how many times you go back to it.
I could harp on about how good the graphics are, or how varied the weaponry is, or how intuitive V.A.T.S is, I could even go so far as to say that this game is the single greatest RPG I’ve ever had the privilege to touch, but that honour will probably be reserved for Fallout 4……</blockquote>The Games Review Team, 8.8/10.<blockquote>Imagine if you will that Elder scrolls : Oblivion and Bioshock decided that IVF really was the best option and selected the best egg and best sperm they could and the resulting child was then raised by Bob Dylan and Bob Geldof (the coolest people in the world). Fallout 3 is an excellent game and though my over zealous approach to it seems justified in my eyes I suppose that I could use some empirical evidence to support my slaving adoration of what most people would unwisely call an “Oblivion Clone with guns”.
You can get a hand held thermonuclear warhead launcher….guess that means good game play.</blockquote>
Sotanaht's Little Corner of Hell.<blockquote>I was rather adamant about how Bethesda was ruining a franchise I essentially grew up on. I took a LOT of coverage and videos to convince me to try it, and in the end I’m glad I did. They didn’t completely bastardize the game by turning it FPS, but instead did a strange and fitting blend of Mass Effect’s skill based FPS with classic Fallout’s VATS targeting system. It works pretty well. The adventure itself is still gritty and morose as its predecessors, though somewhat different in spirit. I read somewhere that the first two games had their unique atmosphere of devastation assumed, while part 3’s was very apparent and interactive. This was a pretty accurate assessment.</blockquote>Wired Gaming, 9.0 (PC/Xbox360), 8.8 (PS3).<blockquote>Quests can be a lot of fun and your behavior can result in a great amount of different endings, that will eventually give you access to new kind of quests, as well as rule others out. Your choices will change not only the world around you, but the course of your character’s life as well. You can, for example, blow up an entire city or, if you are in a good mood, save it from a super mutant attack. Bad choices will give you bad karma, while good ones will give you good karma. Your karma will open up new dialogues and close others as well. And that’s the essence of the game.</blockquote>Ramblings of a Madman: Tech and Politics Explained, 8.5/10.<blockquote>Eerily similar to Oblivion, the dialogue is nice at first, but you realize after the thrid or fourth runthrough of the game that the NPC's responses are worded in such a way that you can respond in any number of ways, and receive the same answer everytime. But now I'm just nit-picking...
The game is a work of art. I would highly recommend a purchase.</blockquote>Armchair Arcade, 5/5.<blockquote>There are few games in recent memory that have had as great an impact on me as Bethesda's Fallout 3. I just finished the game a few minutes ago and am simply stunned at the quality of the storytelling, gameplay, and aesthetics. While the game has a few minor faults, these pale in comparison to its masterful production.
The game is very solid and probably the best game you could buy yourself for the holidays. I really enjoyed it and looked forward to playing it everyday. Heck, I might try it again with a different character just to see the rest of what the game has to offer.</blockquote>metzomagic.com, 5/5.<blockquote>Miraculously, they have managed to preserve nearly everything that was good about the first two games. Though I'm sure they did this in the knowledge that they would piss off a legion of die-hard fans had they done otherwise, it does little to belie their achievement in this respect.
While the questing side of things seems to be fairly solid, I'm not overly enamoured with the way conversation is handled. There just doesn't seem to be the same amount of conversational depth that was present in the first two games. Yes, you get the occasional dialogue choice that can be influenced by your Intelligence or the Speech/Science/Medicine Skills, but I didn't get the sense of any new avenues of conversation ever opening up. It was all very flat.
The bottom line here is that the story Fallout 3 has to tell does justice to the franchise in spades. And the moral choice that my character was forced to make in the final chapter just blew me away. I've never seen anything quite like it in the realm of gaming.</blockquote>Gaming with Children.<blockquote>First and foremost: anyone who denies that Fallout 3 *IS* ‘Oblivion with guns’ is either lying to you or themselves. At the same time, anyone who claims that ‘Oblivion with guns’ is all that Fallout 3 has to offer is being similarly dishonest.
So let me clear something up - if you are an Oblivion fan and are buying this on the PS3 or XBOX360 after finishing up Dead Space and months of multiplayer Call of Duty 4, you will be very happy for a very long time. If you are a ‘Fallout purist’ who rails about the ‘loss of Van Buren’ (Van Buren was the code name for the original Fallout 3 project a decade ago) and is hoping that Bethesda has built in some way of getting the perspective and turn-based feel just right to recreate the classic Fallout games … look elsewhere. This is not the game you are looking for.
That leaves those who are willing to be flexible about the perspective, the balance of real-time and turn-based, but are absolutely insistent that success includes maintaining the top-notch writing and depth that the originals had, as well as the dark humor that remains perhaps the best ever in any video game.</blockquote>Symbiote Studios.<blockquote>You’ll find that Fallout 3 will challenge you in more ways than you know, with such a comprehensive matrix of interwoven tapestries, the game almost guarantees a unique experience regardless of how many times you go back to it.
I could harp on about how good the graphics are, or how varied the weaponry is, or how intuitive V.A.T.S is, I could even go so far as to say that this game is the single greatest RPG I’ve ever had the privilege to touch, but that honour will probably be reserved for Fallout 4……</blockquote>The Games Review Team, 8.8/10.<blockquote>Imagine if you will that Elder scrolls : Oblivion and Bioshock decided that IVF really was the best option and selected the best egg and best sperm they could and the resulting child was then raised by Bob Dylan and Bob Geldof (the coolest people in the world). Fallout 3 is an excellent game and though my over zealous approach to it seems justified in my eyes I suppose that I could use some empirical evidence to support my slaving adoration of what most people would unwisely call an “Oblivion Clone with guns”.
You can get a hand held thermonuclear warhead launcher….guess that means good game play.</blockquote>
