Polish Gry Online plays Fallout 3

All of this begs an interesting thought. Fallout and Fallout 2 were acclaimed games for their time, so there are definitely many gamers who played them. The US should have the largest group of people who played the games, since they were released there and sold well (I think). None of those players are around to preview the game?

I remember back in '98 Fallout 2 received tons of praise, as well as Fallout. Reading about those, as well as recommendations of a friend led me to enjoy Fallout 2, which led me to trying Fallout in order to get the back story. Those were good times.

Either those players have:
  • - gone on to loftier pursuits such as game designing,
    - are not in game journalism,
    - are game journalists but not allowed to give relevant previews, or
    - have been kicked out of their respective magazines/sites (because they are good journalists?).
All that is left are game journos who just do their job, and help drive sales of the games they preview/review. Most games these days are rubbish compared to the majority of games from the '90s, and the fact that most of these new games get scores of 9.99999 or even *gasp* 10 is such a misleading situation to be in. But then, gamers do not want to risk spending money on a dud game, so they have to rely on reviewers to allay their fears before they make that time and financial commitment to the game. A vicious cycle that continues.

I've let my thoughts go long enough. /thought
 
Anani Masu said:
Running backwards while shooting is more or less what I did in fallout when facing melee enemies. Take a shot and use the remaining points to make em waste all their AP chasing me.
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The key part being "remaining points". You spent five AP to shoot at a guy, meaning he just lessened the distance between the two of you by five hexes (assuming you have the same amount of action points). Not exactly the same as being able to maintain a constant distance between you and your enemies and pelt them with bullets indefinitely.
 
Actually, TTTimo, game journalism has a pretty high turn-over rate, and quite a lot of game journalists are in their 20s and not expected to know about the mid-90s classics.

That said, there are a lot of (prominent) US journos who've played Fallout and you can tell in their previews. PC Gamer's Dan Stapleton, Desslock, GFW's Jeff Green, PCZone's Will Porter (who did a fantastic retrospective article on Fallout that we put in our gallery and he actually dropped by to thank us for noticing and saying he'd try to ignore us having scans up. Great guy).

Dan Stapleton produced the recent great hands-on. Jeff Green has been open to talking about Fallout 3. Will Porter has done a good preview. Desslock has been providing the earliest coverage and question marks.

Plenty of good, knowledgeable Fallout coverage in the US. It's just kind of spilled over by the console journalists who aren't expected to know Fallout.

It's different in Poland or Russia. Fallout has a different status there. You're not really a (RPG) gamer if you never played the game.
 
As far as I know, Fallout 1 and 2 combined only sold around a million copies. They were critically acclaimed and profitable but they didn't have that much market penetration. Anyway a few of the older gaming journalists are still around. Jeff Green for instance reviewed Fallout for Computer Gaming World when it first came out and he mentioned that he was going to go see it on one of the 1up podcasts. I'm hoping he'll talk about his impression on GFW Radio today.

EDIT ADDON

The key part being "remaining points". You spent five AP to shoot at a guy, meaning he just lessened the distance between the two of you by five hexes (assuming you have the same amount of action points). Not exactly the same as being able to maintain a constant distance between you and your enemies and pelt them with bullets indefinitely.
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One simple thing they could do is make running backwards slower than forwards. You could still run full away and turn around to fire but it would make kiting a bit more of a challenge.
 
Ah, I see. That's good to hear. I guess if better CRPGs were coming out we won't have this kind of problem :P. The console has its place, but it does not/cannot have the same standing as the PC format and it's sad to see the console take precedence over it in the name of the bottom line (kiddies don't know what they're missing...). That said, it would be nice for new isometric IP/s to come out based on Fallout, like how Fallout was adapted from Wasteland.
 
The most effective technique is to run backwards while shooting at the rat.
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I wonder if they have even taken into account the most basic genre conventions from recent realistic FPSs (e.g. Call of Duty not Unreal Tournament). In most of these you cannot run backwards as quickly as you can forwards, thus limiting this tactic. Additionally most realistic FPSs make you move really slow if you have something lined up in your sights. Some even give your shots a higher inaccuracy if you are moving and shooting at the same time.

The point is if you are going to go FPS with an IP like Fallout you should make the game mechanics follow reality as much as possible (while still allowing for Sci-Fi technology). Winning tactics should mirror real-life military tactics (Run, Stop, Shoot). This leads to a mention of some previewers saying that the movement felt slow. This is terrible for a FPS. I could understand if they had a stamina bar which was good for 15 seconds of sprinting, but to make it constantly slow is just going to irritate FPS fans that play.

horst said:
what really shocked me is that the interaction seems to be like it was in oblivion. "lifeless" just hits the spot there.
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Considering how they promised 500,000 lines of dialogue, it seems ridiculous that there is an NPC that only has one line. I thought they got rid of the superfluous NPCs from Oblivion. Also the lack of emotional expressivity is a major disappointment to Fallout fans spoiled on the very expressive talking heads from Fallout 1/2. I know the Fallout 3 models look better than Oblivions, but if they can't be more expressive than Half-Life 2 (a 2004 FPS) then what is the point of this game being called an RPG.

I think Fallout fans can only hope that FPS and Mass Effect fans tear Fallout 3 a new one (for different reasons) if only so the hype bubble is popped and Bethesda's shoddy craftsmanship is revealed. Maybe then, after much reflection we can get a worthy sequal.
 
iridium_ionizer said:
Additionally most realistic FPSs make you move really slow if you have something lined up in your sights. Some even give your shots a higher inaccuracy if you are moving and shooting at the same time.
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Yes, we know that if you use the right mouse button/left trigger to aim you are limited to walking speed.

iridium_ionizer said:
Maybe then, after much reflection we can get a worthy sequal.
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Bethesda is pretty widely considered to be an excellent RPG developer (don't get into your opinion I'm just saying popularly) with a strong sales record. If they pour millions of dollars and a couple years into Fallout 3 and it bombs I seriously doubt that anyone else in a position to do so would try and pick it up for another go.
 
maggit said:
I don't think that the word ranger is generic in the U.S., well maybe in a fantasy setting, but I would think that Rangers are quite characteristic for the south-west states.
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Nah, it's a fairly generic term in the U.S. I know personally I think of Army Rangers first and foremost when someone says "ranger", then after that, I think of a ranger in the typical fantasy sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger

In any case, I'll give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt for the time being as no one specifically mentioned the New California Rangers.

Also, the more I read and hear about the combat in Fallout 3, the worse it gets. It sounds downright unenjoyable - just like the combat in Oblivion. VATS at least seems like it will break up the monotony of the FPS run n' gun style, but on the other hand it really looks like glorified bullet time. As everyone else has said, I hope there's a way to turn those damn slo-mo death scene cinematics off. I wouldn't mind seeing one every now and then, like when critical hits are landed, but all the time?
 
That was hilarious. Thanks for the link, Taskeen.

EDIT: Did you watch some of his other reviews?
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
I'm watching LEGO Indiana Jones and it's even funnier than his review of Oblivion.

EDIT2: Spent an hour of worktime watching this. The Witcher, Crysis, and Army of Two were very amusing. Apparently, I'm also the last person online to know about Zero Punctuation... :?
 
TTTimo said:
The console has its place, but it does not/cannot have the same standing as the PC format and it's sad to see the console take precedence over it in the name of the bottom line (kiddies don't know what they're missing...).
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You know this is a crap argument..

I am sick of pigeonholing the console market as a kiddy market.. the fact is most console owners are adults. I myself have a PS3, and I'm 32 and have played PC and console games since I was about 6. I do tend to play more PC games than console games, but it's not an inherent weakness in the platform.

And I hate to break it to you.. their all just hardware. Now we can complain that their are not enough deep games on consoles, but it has nothing to do with the superiority of PC's to consoles. I will admit that there are barriers to smaller publishers, but even this is changing with online storefronts.

Their are some demographic differences, but I don't think I presonally know anyone that doesn't have an Xbo360 or PS3 that considers themselves a game enthusiast.

Now I understand when people don't have enough money to afford both. But other than a keyboard and mouse, there are little appreciable advantages to the PC as a platform. I personally want to see the PC continue as a solid game platform, but I am sick of this console bashing.. it inaccurate.
 
Anani Masu said:
Running backwards while shooting is more or less what I did in fallout when facing melee enemies. Take a shot and use the remaining points to make em waste all their AP chasing me.
Click to expand...

Well, I don't think, that this is really foxy. You can not run that far away - sooner or later they are to near and can hit you either way. If you save your last APs, your AC increases and you have a higher chance, that your enemy will not hit you.
 
Now I understand when people don't have enough money to afford both. But other than a keyboard and mouse, there are little appreciable advantages to the PC as a platform.
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Not having to pay fees to Microsoft/Sony? Better online functionality?
 
But other than a keyboard and mouse, there are little appreciable advantages to the PC as a platform.
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Not having to pay fees to Microsoft/Sony? Better online functionality?
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No hardware limitations. Vast (game) modding possibilities. I've downloaded more texture packs and mods than I can remember and nothing resuscitates an old game like a high-def texture pack and a couple of professionally made modifications that go far beyond the scope of the original game.

Also, that lack of keyboard and mouse makes much more difference than you think. Those 6-button gamepads tend to dumb games down in many ways.
 
Other than Mariokart, I can't think of a classic console title that I still play more than 10 years later..

I play plenty of old computer games tho..

You should see how gorgeous Quake 2 looks with all the custom .pak files I use and the newer gen fan-developed client programs..

When/If they include the kind of modular approach to games that allows for the same type of constant improvement that we see on the PC (they're on the way considering the newer gen consoles have hard drives of their own) I would be much more inclined to believe that consoles are nearing the mark of being equally useful gaming platforms as the PC.
 
Per said:
You don't think it means you can ultimately be a Ranger? Because transplanting yet another faction to the east coast sounds like a good idea.
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The only way it would make sense is if it is a different group entirely, But that is unlikely.
 
Amongst the information the reference to communists and or communist Chinese forces, keeps reappearing. Is this just a little easter egg or an actual faction they have planned? My interpretation from Fallout 1 and 2 was the while the Chinese had blasted the US into the stone age, while we had eradicated the Reds. With the Shi just being a survivors of the invasion force that fell apart when the bombing occurred. Other than the Shi nothing else is mention about the China on the West coast, unless I missed something, so why the heck are they on the East coast?
:revolution:
Looking at the setting in general, Bethesda says its 200 years after the war, but a lot of the stuff they have put forward would seem to indicate the war just happened. Meh
 
if i understand it correctly, while the chinese nukes were in the air, the U.S. started their retaliatory attack. at least, thats how it was planned in all the nuclear war scenarios. and one of the main reasons, that there was no nuclear war at all, thank god. so there would be a similar barren mainland in china too. interesting strain of thought... i guess, if your homeland was just bombed to oblivion (ululu), your invasion plans for another country may not be your primary objective anymore.

and, again, i want, i DEMAND proper face expressions!

00000008221024x768eo0.jpg
 
What we know about the Chinese in Fallout 3:

The skeletonized remains of a chinese commando was found (a US invasion of chinese commandos was to be part of Van Buren's back story)

Many of the hostile robots seem to have large stars on them and may be chinese in origin

A wartime propaganda station still seems to be operating, urging citizens of the US to give up, likely to be automated

Enough chinese made it to the US and integrated into the survivors to name a dangerous mutant type, the Yao-Guai, after a part of chinese mythology
 
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