This is a review I made of FO3, posted on Gamespot amidst all the *10/10* (shrugs) ... Wonder what kids are smoking these days.... Aaaaanyways :
Well there you have it, after all this time we finally have a new Fallout title to play... Being a die-hard Fallout fanboy, and also having learned that Bethesda had saved the license from the limbo Interplay was letting it stew into, I was initially expecting greatness from Beth's team I will admit. As details from the game were released from the devs though, the fear started to creep inside me...
How does it turned out? Well it's obvious time spent writing great quests and stories were instead spent on making the game "pretty", which for PS3 isn't even that successful at achieving.
Very few quests (probably more quests in Fallout 2's "The Den" town than in this entire game) that feel very unrewarding, a level 20 cap, access to technology even greater than in earlier Fallouts (ridiculous since this game takes place even later than F1&2), no witty comments (or even description) on any item, and most of all, the smart storytelling and mature feel Fallout had is gone.
I had a feeling I was talking to 12-16 year old characters every time a conversation was struck. Everything is straight-forward, you get a quest, it is marked on your map 95% of the time, which takes away the feeling you are some Vault kid just fresh out of a supposedly "forever sealed off" Vault (of course even that premise is thrown out the window as soon as you exit the Vault when you get told your father **was** an outsider all along, no spoiler here since this tidbit is thrown at you as soon as you start looking for your dad).
In earlier Fallout games you had a feeling of being lost and you felt very vulnerable exploring because of the many random encounters ; in F3 it feels like everything is in sight and there are very, very, veeeeery few enemies on the world map hampering your exploration. There was a ton of things to do and you felt the Wasteland was not going to make it if you didn't help out. Now there is so few quests you kinda feel like it's not that bad living in something that should be a nightmare. You had to be glad you had a trusty 9mm pistol & spear for the most part of the early game, in F3 as soon as I hit the first town there was a couple of laser pistols waiting for me to buy for under 10 bottle caps!!! Lu-di-crous... The great way Bethesda thought of dealing with the ton of weaponry to be found is that you have to repair your gear seemingly every time you actually make some use of it by cannibalising similar gear or paying someone to repair them. Drugs are also hella cheap and always available, like there is a ton of post-apocalyptic labs everywhere, though I never found one.
Yes the realism former Fallout games brought, the anxiety you felt venturing out of a safe haven is all but gone... Put on a lab coat, you get bonus in science, put on a suit, get a bonus in speech etc... You also get perks every level now, which is kinda silly too but since the level is capped at 20 I guess they felt you had to.
There is one way to advance in this game, and 98% of the time it's shoot/maim/kill the opposition. Previous Fallouts made a great use of speech to resolve some conflicts, you didn't have to kill most of the wasteland to beat the game. Most characters weren't "good" or "evil" they were just there and you had a choice to do as you pleased. Now they are clearly portrayed either way.
There is no "Doctor" skill anymore, you EAT! Getting crippled in F1&2 was really bad (isn't it supposed to be???), in F3 you find a bed and sleep it off (one hour and it's gone!) or apply a stimpak on the limb!!! LOL... Ammo is everywhere now too, I presently have over 600 energy cells and over 800 9mm bullets... Some factory must have opened up somewhere, because in earlier games you really had to make every shot count.
I've been reviewing this game as a Fallout hardcore fan, let me now try to review it from a neutral gamer's perspective :
There is really, really bad draw-in when you get to any big landmark building. There is awful pixelation in the graphics. The voice acting is really irritating and childish. You feel like you are not talking to gruff survivors of a post-apocalyptic war but to some kids in San Fran with rainbows in their eyes. There is no "outline" around items you can interact with, and yes maybe it is to force you to look carefully, but after visiting the fiftieth building where everything looks like Courtney Love's house (a ******* mess), you kinda wish they put it in as an option in the least. You really get bored after hours of looking at junk everywhere and the immense quantity of useless items laying around the goodies just add to the frustration.
The combat stats you put points into are pretty much a waste since you can get over 90% chance for headshots in the V.A.T.S. if you just run up close enough. The way you seem to float over ground while running in 3rd person view looks really bad. The enemy AI is really bad too : 2 modes = run straight at you or run away.
There are only 6 NPCs that would join you in the entire Wasteland (not counting Dogmeat) and depending on your alignment you have a choice between 2 really since they are alignment-exclusive (2 choices for neutral, 2 choices for evil and 2 choices for good karma). You ever get caught stealing, you magically loose all you stole from that particular floor.
There is some really bad clipping/collision problems ; some enemies seem to be born into walls and were fed there, kept alive until you find them and put them out of their misery...
I also ran into a bug where my Pip-Boy screen was so blasted and bright I couldn't tell what I was reading on it... I thought : hey this might be interesting, maybe I'll need someone to fix it (since this was after I hacked a computer, I thought maybe it had gotten a virus or something
) I played like that for an hour without ever getting a notice my Pip-Boy was broken, so I saved/reloaded and voila, everything back to normal!!! : it's just a stupid game glitch ROFL!!!
You can teleport back to any place you already went to without ever risking a random encounter; the Wasteland hardly feels like a threatening place to live in.
There are some good point to F3 : the action sequences in the VATS look great, and the Wasteland would look great if it wasn't so darn pixelated. There just isn't a lot of Role-Playing to do in this game, you either do it goody-two-shoes or evil-bastard style, no other viable option like doctor, scientist or sweet-talker since you will always end-up feeling like these anyway depending on the situation. You're feeling like you are good at everything and rarely feel like playing a new game with the same alignment for that reason, which was something the first two games always teased at. I guess being good at everything is a plus for some gamers...
Fallout 3 is more of a FPS with just a hint of RPG. I can't say I was surprised at that. The way it is praised says a lot about the state of RPGs in these times : it is a dying breed that most gamers are not interested by unless you have a reticule to aim with... By trying to please the most gamers they could, Bethesda robbed Fallout of what made it great : it never was a game for every one and that is why it was as unique as it was excellent, it didn't try to do everything great, it compromised on some aspects to concentrate on delivering excellent storytelling and role-playing elements.
The PS3 version doesn't even have trophies and is a shame to look at compared to the PC & XBox version which is inexcusable.
Maybe most gamers love it, and I'm not saying I 100% hated it, but this Fallout really didn't deserve its name and place in the series. After not even 10 hours into the game, I'm already past halfway into the main questline, and that's after I've been doing as much side-quest before going back to the main quests as much as I could.
While this game may sell a lot more than both first Fallouts, unfortunately it is a gaming experience a lot thinner than its parents that will not still be talked about in a decade like its predecessors were.
Maybe it could have gotten an 8 from me if this game didn't pretend to be a Fallout game, but it's barely a 7 for a Fallout game... Really, all these tens people give to F3 must be because it makes FPS fans feel smarter because they think they are playing a RPG LOL...just kidding It's a fun game but isn't near a ten. It feels more like "Phallout" to me 
Well there you have it, after all this time we finally have a new Fallout title to play... Being a die-hard Fallout fanboy, and also having learned that Bethesda had saved the license from the limbo Interplay was letting it stew into, I was initially expecting greatness from Beth's team I will admit. As details from the game were released from the devs though, the fear started to creep inside me...
How does it turned out? Well it's obvious time spent writing great quests and stories were instead spent on making the game "pretty", which for PS3 isn't even that successful at achieving.
Very few quests (probably more quests in Fallout 2's "The Den" town than in this entire game) that feel very unrewarding, a level 20 cap, access to technology even greater than in earlier Fallouts (ridiculous since this game takes place even later than F1&2), no witty comments (or even description) on any item, and most of all, the smart storytelling and mature feel Fallout had is gone.
I had a feeling I was talking to 12-16 year old characters every time a conversation was struck. Everything is straight-forward, you get a quest, it is marked on your map 95% of the time, which takes away the feeling you are some Vault kid just fresh out of a supposedly "forever sealed off" Vault (of course even that premise is thrown out the window as soon as you exit the Vault when you get told your father **was** an outsider all along, no spoiler here since this tidbit is thrown at you as soon as you start looking for your dad).
In earlier Fallout games you had a feeling of being lost and you felt very vulnerable exploring because of the many random encounters ; in F3 it feels like everything is in sight and there are very, very, veeeeery few enemies on the world map hampering your exploration. There was a ton of things to do and you felt the Wasteland was not going to make it if you didn't help out. Now there is so few quests you kinda feel like it's not that bad living in something that should be a nightmare. You had to be glad you had a trusty 9mm pistol & spear for the most part of the early game, in F3 as soon as I hit the first town there was a couple of laser pistols waiting for me to buy for under 10 bottle caps!!! Lu-di-crous... The great way Bethesda thought of dealing with the ton of weaponry to be found is that you have to repair your gear seemingly every time you actually make some use of it by cannibalising similar gear or paying someone to repair them. Drugs are also hella cheap and always available, like there is a ton of post-apocalyptic labs everywhere, though I never found one.
Yes the realism former Fallout games brought, the anxiety you felt venturing out of a safe haven is all but gone... Put on a lab coat, you get bonus in science, put on a suit, get a bonus in speech etc... You also get perks every level now, which is kinda silly too but since the level is capped at 20 I guess they felt you had to.
There is one way to advance in this game, and 98% of the time it's shoot/maim/kill the opposition. Previous Fallouts made a great use of speech to resolve some conflicts, you didn't have to kill most of the wasteland to beat the game. Most characters weren't "good" or "evil" they were just there and you had a choice to do as you pleased. Now they are clearly portrayed either way.
There is no "Doctor" skill anymore, you EAT! Getting crippled in F1&2 was really bad (isn't it supposed to be???), in F3 you find a bed and sleep it off (one hour and it's gone!) or apply a stimpak on the limb!!! LOL... Ammo is everywhere now too, I presently have over 600 energy cells and over 800 9mm bullets... Some factory must have opened up somewhere, because in earlier games you really had to make every shot count.
I've been reviewing this game as a Fallout hardcore fan, let me now try to review it from a neutral gamer's perspective :
There is really, really bad draw-in when you get to any big landmark building. There is awful pixelation in the graphics. The voice acting is really irritating and childish. You feel like you are not talking to gruff survivors of a post-apocalyptic war but to some kids in San Fran with rainbows in their eyes. There is no "outline" around items you can interact with, and yes maybe it is to force you to look carefully, but after visiting the fiftieth building where everything looks like Courtney Love's house (a ******* mess), you kinda wish they put it in as an option in the least. You really get bored after hours of looking at junk everywhere and the immense quantity of useless items laying around the goodies just add to the frustration.
The combat stats you put points into are pretty much a waste since you can get over 90% chance for headshots in the V.A.T.S. if you just run up close enough. The way you seem to float over ground while running in 3rd person view looks really bad. The enemy AI is really bad too : 2 modes = run straight at you or run away.
There are only 6 NPCs that would join you in the entire Wasteland (not counting Dogmeat) and depending on your alignment you have a choice between 2 really since they are alignment-exclusive (2 choices for neutral, 2 choices for evil and 2 choices for good karma). You ever get caught stealing, you magically loose all you stole from that particular floor.
There is some really bad clipping/collision problems ; some enemies seem to be born into walls and were fed there, kept alive until you find them and put them out of their misery...
I also ran into a bug where my Pip-Boy screen was so blasted and bright I couldn't tell what I was reading on it... I thought : hey this might be interesting, maybe I'll need someone to fix it (since this was after I hacked a computer, I thought maybe it had gotten a virus or something
) I played like that for an hour without ever getting a notice my Pip-Boy was broken, so I saved/reloaded and voila, everything back to normal!!! : it's just a stupid game glitch ROFL!!!You can teleport back to any place you already went to without ever risking a random encounter; the Wasteland hardly feels like a threatening place to live in.
There are some good point to F3 : the action sequences in the VATS look great, and the Wasteland would look great if it wasn't so darn pixelated. There just isn't a lot of Role-Playing to do in this game, you either do it goody-two-shoes or evil-bastard style, no other viable option like doctor, scientist or sweet-talker since you will always end-up feeling like these anyway depending on the situation. You're feeling like you are good at everything and rarely feel like playing a new game with the same alignment for that reason, which was something the first two games always teased at. I guess being good at everything is a plus for some gamers...
Fallout 3 is more of a FPS with just a hint of RPG. I can't say I was surprised at that. The way it is praised says a lot about the state of RPGs in these times : it is a dying breed that most gamers are not interested by unless you have a reticule to aim with... By trying to please the most gamers they could, Bethesda robbed Fallout of what made it great : it never was a game for every one and that is why it was as unique as it was excellent, it didn't try to do everything great, it compromised on some aspects to concentrate on delivering excellent storytelling and role-playing elements.
The PS3 version doesn't even have trophies and is a shame to look at compared to the PC & XBox version which is inexcusable.
Maybe most gamers love it, and I'm not saying I 100% hated it, but this Fallout really didn't deserve its name and place in the series. After not even 10 hours into the game, I'm already past halfway into the main questline, and that's after I've been doing as much side-quest before going back to the main quests as much as I could.
While this game may sell a lot more than both first Fallouts, unfortunately it is a gaming experience a lot thinner than its parents that will not still be talked about in a decade like its predecessors were.
Maybe it could have gotten an 8 from me if this game didn't pretend to be a Fallout game, but it's barely a 7 for a Fallout game... Really, all these tens people give to F3 must be because it makes FPS fans feel smarter because they think they are playing a RPG LOL...just kidding
It's a fun game but isn't near a ten. It feels more like "Phallout" to me