I played Fallout 3...
I played Fallout 3. And I found a few things. If you expect absolute rubbish, it's hard to be disappointed. Fallout FPS is exactly like I expected it. It's not as bad as BoS.
What did I think, you ask?
The game was fun. But it wasn't Fallout. It was set in the Fallout world, but it wasn't Fallout 3 any more than "Streets of SimCity" was a SimCity game. The weapons were fun to use, and the death animations were significantly gory and disquieting, although I do miss the plain rats and their overkill animation of exploding with a "Pop-Squeak".
It wasn't so much that the RPG elements had been downplayed, it was that the storyline sucked. The world was fun enough, although stuff was too close together; a hazard, I suppose, of making a game where you have to manually walk someplace to see it. When stuff is maybe as far away as my auto mechanics, I begin to wonder why are people asking me to go look for it? Get it yer frikkin' self. But the story. Oh the story. Purifying water? Could no-one scavenge a Brita pitcher? It really is that simple. I would assume that sand, charcoal, and cloth still around, so I didn't understand the commotion over the nuclear-powered Water Pik. Ho Hum, let's assume it's important, then, and go forward with the plot. But of course, even though at the end of the game I may or may not have in my employ a radiation-immune mutant, a ghoul (whom the title cards tell us are healed by radiation!), a robot, and a nearly brainwashed slave, I either have to sacrifice myself, or send some nice lady I just met to her doom. Great choices there, Beth, I can either be Jesus of Nazareth or Charles Manson. No middle ground, apparently. And my advanced radiation suit and pounds of potassium iodide tablets (Who doesn't think "Rad-X" when they hear this talked about on TV?) are also apparently useless as well. THE PLOT DEMANDS HUMAN SACRIFICE! Such a petty god it is.
And why can I not use powered armor until the game lets me? This is not in fitting with canon, wherein PA was apparently intuitive enough that anyone who could put it on could use it with reasonable efficiency; and even my NPCs will suit up if given a chance; apparently this is just more railroading. Fuck you, horrible digital DM. Speaking of dungeons, why so much going in to the metro? They are all the same, filled with things to kill, and rarely worth it. The first time I went somewhere via the metro I thought it was cool. The second time I didn't care. By the third time I was sick of it, and became very annoyed with all the "Waist-high picket fences" I kept finding. Rubble I couldn't climb, even with handy Re-bar pieces all over it. Wooden fences I couldn't knock down, even though I had a sledgehammer. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single door in Fallout or Fallout 2 that I couldn't open, yet right off the bat we are handed them in droves. I gave up on the quest to get to the national archives when I realized it was forcing me to use the metro. Fuck the metro.
I appreciate that weapons degradation made repair a useful skill outside of scripted skill checks. I do not appreciate that my weapons go from perfect to broken after a few magazines. Armor I understand -many real-life armors are significantly degraded by only a few bullet hits, and will need the attention of an armorer immediately. But my shotgun going from sugar to shit after 100 shells or so is unforgivable.
Skills... the skills are really king in this game. Repair mandatory as merchants suck at repairing and you will end up with 87 duplicates of common weapons and other than simply chucking them, it is the only way to keep their value, and since most of the time your weapons rely on it, it's quite useful. Speech, small guns, lockpick... Per Jorner, you are still right. These three skills are the best. You will talk to a lot of people... people with poorly written, simple dialog trees, and you want them to do what you tell them. Sometimes you will find people who won't listen to you, and you'll have to kill them. Simple logic says small guns are the best balance of proliferance and efficiency at killing others. And finally, lockpick, because playing a stupid minigame that's absolutely nothing like real lockpicking is fun (This is where the combination of player ability and character ability is at its worst; there is no skill involved in guessing the right place to put the bobby pin, and no matter how high my skill I can still fuck up). No, wait, because a lot of nice stuff is locked up.
Some other skills are useful, but there are items that help with that... Some make sense, like a utility jumpsuit upping your repair presumably because it's got tools and places to put little parts so you don't lose them (seriously, try to repair something. See if you don't loose 23 little tiny screws and a spring.), and wearing a negligee will improve my speech a little because people are too busy staring at my female character's rack... or something, but why does wearing a lab coat give me a boost to science? Does it have an HP scientific calculator in the pocket or something? ITEM DESCRIPTIONS would have really helped here... "This well-worn lab coat has no fewer than three calculators in its pockets, a slide rule, and a mechanical pencil. Having these things at hand will no doubt help in any scientific evaluation"... that text that it took me 1 minute to write, would have made the difference between "ZOMG MAGICAL LAB C0At!!!11" and something that makes some semblance of sense.
All in all it was fun. The world was fun to play in. There were some fun things to do, and some genuinely scary places. And the classic Fallout moments, like crashes to the desktop, or the "Apparel" button on my Pip-Boy randomly going blank (too many items bug, oh the times we spent together!), or trying to carry 700 times my maximum carry limit. But a Fallout RPG sequel this was not. It was Fallout FPS, that I made a case for, way back when, and it was about as much fun as I expected it to be, although with a horrible, rushed main story line that's best forgotten. But I await the coming of a true Fallout sequel. We shall see.
I played Fallout 3. And I found a few things. If you expect absolute rubbish, it's hard to be disappointed. Fallout FPS is exactly like I expected it. It's not as bad as BoS.
What did I think, you ask?
The game was fun. But it wasn't Fallout. It was set in the Fallout world, but it wasn't Fallout 3 any more than "Streets of SimCity" was a SimCity game. The weapons were fun to use, and the death animations were significantly gory and disquieting, although I do miss the plain rats and their overkill animation of exploding with a "Pop-Squeak".
It wasn't so much that the RPG elements had been downplayed, it was that the storyline sucked. The world was fun enough, although stuff was too close together; a hazard, I suppose, of making a game where you have to manually walk someplace to see it. When stuff is maybe as far away as my auto mechanics, I begin to wonder why are people asking me to go look for it? Get it yer frikkin' self. But the story. Oh the story. Purifying water? Could no-one scavenge a Brita pitcher? It really is that simple. I would assume that sand, charcoal, and cloth still around, so I didn't understand the commotion over the nuclear-powered Water Pik. Ho Hum, let's assume it's important, then, and go forward with the plot. But of course, even though at the end of the game I may or may not have in my employ a radiation-immune mutant, a ghoul (whom the title cards tell us are healed by radiation!), a robot, and a nearly brainwashed slave, I either have to sacrifice myself, or send some nice lady I just met to her doom. Great choices there, Beth, I can either be Jesus of Nazareth or Charles Manson. No middle ground, apparently. And my advanced radiation suit and pounds of potassium iodide tablets (Who doesn't think "Rad-X" when they hear this talked about on TV?) are also apparently useless as well. THE PLOT DEMANDS HUMAN SACRIFICE! Such a petty god it is.
And why can I not use powered armor until the game lets me? This is not in fitting with canon, wherein PA was apparently intuitive enough that anyone who could put it on could use it with reasonable efficiency; and even my NPCs will suit up if given a chance; apparently this is just more railroading. Fuck you, horrible digital DM. Speaking of dungeons, why so much going in to the metro? They are all the same, filled with things to kill, and rarely worth it. The first time I went somewhere via the metro I thought it was cool. The second time I didn't care. By the third time I was sick of it, and became very annoyed with all the "Waist-high picket fences" I kept finding. Rubble I couldn't climb, even with handy Re-bar pieces all over it. Wooden fences I couldn't knock down, even though I had a sledgehammer. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single door in Fallout or Fallout 2 that I couldn't open, yet right off the bat we are handed them in droves. I gave up on the quest to get to the national archives when I realized it was forcing me to use the metro. Fuck the metro.
I appreciate that weapons degradation made repair a useful skill outside of scripted skill checks. I do not appreciate that my weapons go from perfect to broken after a few magazines. Armor I understand -many real-life armors are significantly degraded by only a few bullet hits, and will need the attention of an armorer immediately. But my shotgun going from sugar to shit after 100 shells or so is unforgivable.
Skills... the skills are really king in this game. Repair mandatory as merchants suck at repairing and you will end up with 87 duplicates of common weapons and other than simply chucking them, it is the only way to keep their value, and since most of the time your weapons rely on it, it's quite useful. Speech, small guns, lockpick... Per Jorner, you are still right. These three skills are the best. You will talk to a lot of people... people with poorly written, simple dialog trees, and you want them to do what you tell them. Sometimes you will find people who won't listen to you, and you'll have to kill them. Simple logic says small guns are the best balance of proliferance and efficiency at killing others. And finally, lockpick, because playing a stupid minigame that's absolutely nothing like real lockpicking is fun (This is where the combination of player ability and character ability is at its worst; there is no skill involved in guessing the right place to put the bobby pin, and no matter how high my skill I can still fuck up). No, wait, because a lot of nice stuff is locked up.
Some other skills are useful, but there are items that help with that... Some make sense, like a utility jumpsuit upping your repair presumably because it's got tools and places to put little parts so you don't lose them (seriously, try to repair something. See if you don't loose 23 little tiny screws and a spring.), and wearing a negligee will improve my speech a little because people are too busy staring at my female character's rack... or something, but why does wearing a lab coat give me a boost to science? Does it have an HP scientific calculator in the pocket or something? ITEM DESCRIPTIONS would have really helped here... "This well-worn lab coat has no fewer than three calculators in its pockets, a slide rule, and a mechanical pencil. Having these things at hand will no doubt help in any scientific evaluation"... that text that it took me 1 minute to write, would have made the difference between "ZOMG MAGICAL LAB C0At!!!11" and something that makes some semblance of sense.
All in all it was fun. The world was fun to play in. There were some fun things to do, and some genuinely scary places. And the classic Fallout moments, like crashes to the desktop, or the "Apparel" button on my Pip-Boy randomly going blank (too many items bug, oh the times we spent together!), or trying to carry 700 times my maximum carry limit. But a Fallout RPG sequel this was not. It was Fallout FPS, that I made a case for, way back when, and it was about as much fun as I expected it to be, although with a horrible, rushed main story line that's best forgotten. But I await the coming of a true Fallout sequel. We shall see.
