Two Fallout 3 reviews from Wargamer

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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How Huxley. Point.<blockquote>I have now invested about 25 hours of gameplay into Fallout 3, and I am glad to report that it is a remarkable game experience both in story telling and action. The game is an RPG through and through, presenting a great amount of choice to the player as well as a generous portion of action, and tells an engaging story. Fallout 3 should not be played as a first-person shooter however…although the game can be explored from either first- or third-person perspectives, to me it just didn’t feel right using third person for more than just checking out the new armor I acquired, and marveling at how bad-ass I looked. Fallout 3 is a game to be savored, radioactive morsel by radioactive morsel.</blockquote>Counter-point.<blockquote>In all I could forgive many of the limitations and restrictions of Fallout 3 if it didn’t have the name Fallout in the title. After all most are simply annoyances and limits on what is a beautiful game. But a RPG is at its heart a story and Fallout 3 by its heritage is a continuation of a great line of stories. On this point Fallout 3 fails. Badly, completely, and utterly. This game is disgraceful of the Fallout legacy.

During the production I read a quote from a Bethesda Softworks development blog that every member of the development team read “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy to be used as a guide when creating the game. For those that have read this Pulitzer winning book I’m sure you know where I’m coming from. For those that haven’t, go get it from the library or buy it. You’ll thank me. In either case I wish they had hired Mr. McCarthy to write the story instead of using his work as an inspiration.

Given that they didn’t do that maybe if Bethesda had 1 million monkeys for a million years they would have risen to the writing quality that the original team achieved for Wasteland 21 years ago…and not even with a Pulitzer to their credit. Hell, a gamer can dream right?</blockquote>
 
One guy this, the other that...who cares about this crap?

The second one sounds more convincing, though. While the first guy wrote his review like houndreds of other, overhyped reviews sounded before.
 
How long are these reviews going to dribble out? I would think that there wouldn't anything worth mentioning that hasn't already been gone over ad nauseum.
 
Pope Viper said:
How long are these reviews going to dribble out? I would think that there wouldn't anything worth mentioning that hasn't already been gone over ad nauseum.
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True. I know there's not much 'real' Fallout news going on since the series ended oh-so-many years ago. But this stuff just reminds me of how mindless the journalism industry really is. Nothing but yes-men... slaves of the mind, as it were. I mean, aren't there more articles that give a critical eye to a poorly made game that was "Fallout" 3?
 
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101 Fallout3 reviews on the web, 101 Fallout3 reviews

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100 Fallout3 reviews on the web ... :drunk: :drunk: :drunk:




4too
 
The reviews will keep coming until all those checks bethesda sent out that got lost in the mail finally reach the reviewers they were intended for. Just close your eyes click your heels together 3 times and say i wanna go home . . . trust me, it works a charm.
 
I don't trust a "wargaming" site if it has a sissy Warhammer wargame-for-girly-men background.
Even if it is an RTS game, and look, they even had the audacity to place hexes behind their logo.

What a bunch of phoneys.

PHONEYS.
 
The game is an RPG through and through, presenting a great amount of choice to the player as well as a generous portion of action, and tells an engaging story.
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I guess his definition of what makes an RPG is very different from mine.

Mine involves the "RP" part of RPG... the "role playing" bit.
 
Counter-point from wargamer.com said:
In either case I wish they had hired Mr. McCarthy to write the story instead of using his work as an inspiration.
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When was the last time a Pulitzer winning author worked on a video game story? Last I heard, most game developers can't even get professional TV or film writers to work on their games. But it's not just the poor reputation that keeps them away, it's the lousy pay for writers in comparison to TV and film, where they even get derivatives based on how financially successful their work is.

Anyway it's pretty obvious that the state of video game writing is pretty awful right now. Half the reason is the technology, It's just hard to do faces and even harder to show subtle emotion in them. But that's really no excuse for some of the terrible lines written, and for games that do lots of voice overs they usually get terrible voice actors. And that is partly why any game that has an insanely convoluted story is praised as the best story since sliced bread, by making it so complicated it seems to be intelligent - even when it is ridiculous. But if you like playing a game then there is a tendency to look past many of the story's faults. So story doesn't make or break games, and so developers usually don't put as much into it as they should.

Lastly, it is stupid that The Road was such a big influence on Fallout 3. The Road has a gritty, realistic post-apocalyptic setting. Fallout has a gritty, stylized post-apocalyptic setting.
 
It doesn't matter if you pay a famous (or less famous) writer to work on the story for the game. Anyone can write a nice story, you just need to work on it like Sam Lake did with Max Payne's story.

Bethesda's stories are cheap.
 
100LBSofDogmeat said:
True. I know there's not much 'real' Fallout news going on since the series ended oh-so-many years ago. But this stuff just reminds me of how mindless the journalism industry really is. Nothing but yes-men... slaves of the mind, as it were. I mean, aren't there more articles that give a critical eye to a poorly made game that was "Fallout" 3?
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Wargamer Different Perspective Article Wrote:

They also created a game with a story apparently written by 10 monkeys with typewriters and then thrown into a shredder and put back together by illiterate aspirants to the political machine. Make no mistake that while this thing wears the trappings of the Fallout universe It. Is. Not. A. Fallout. Game. Repeat. I.I.N.A.F.G.
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You may wish to read the counterpoint article before calling it a Yes-Man article. :wink:



Cheers, Thorgrimm
 
The story of Max Payne is told really neatly. I liked it a lot. Even funnier is that in the first game all characters are nerdish finnish coders.

(on a sidenote, Max Payne 2 with it's emo style was lost upon me).

on topic:

It seems today that gaming journalists can't tell good writing from bad even with John Milius to help them.
 
I think many gaming journalists look at the writing of a computer game in terms of 'relative quality' as opposed to 'absoute quality'. They also fall into the trap of not realising they're doing this I think.

That is, instead of thinking "Game A is written really badly, and thus I'll pan it's writing" they (subconcisously) think "well this is slightly better written than the utter crap I'm used to playing" which when it gets to their consicous mind as translates "OMG IT'S FUCKING HAMLET!!!! i r feeling teh imershun". This may be utter bullshit, as it does leave unanswered questions- like "how the hell did Fallout 3's writing be judged as 'slightly better' by the reviewers subconcsious mind to begin with?"

As for the ridiculous and convoluted games- thats tends to be a genre thing. A lot of the worse offenders for this tend to be Japanese games that are drawing a lot of influences from anime and manga. These mediums do tend to have a lot of ridiculous and convoluted plots- like an action movie tends to have a lot of explosions. It's simply part of the genre. Some have well written ridiculous convoluted plots (like good anime), some don't (like bad anime). These games then tend to have god awful English voice acting because very few Japanese games companies care enough about other markets to give a large budget to translation and voice acting in other languages.
 
sarfa said:
That is, instead of thinking "Game A is written really badly, and thus I'll pan it's writing" they (subconcisously) think "well this is slightly better written than the utter crap I'm used to playing" which when it gets to their consicous mind as translates "OMG IT'S FUCKING HAMLET!!!! i r feeling teh imershun". This may be utter bullshit, as it does leave unanswered questions- like "how the hell did Fallout 3's writing be judged as 'slightly better' by the reviewers subconcsious mind to begin with?"
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Just like some people here were saying that writing in FO3 is on the level of Shakespeare comparing it to Oblivion.
 
Compared to Oblivion everything looks like shakespeare even Fallout 3.

But comparing Fallout 3s story to Oblivion is like comparing a small light bulp to a diode.
 
sarfa said:
I think many gaming journalists look at the writing of a computer game in terms of 'relative quality' as opposed to 'absoute quality'. They also fall into the trap of not realising they're doing this I think.
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I completely agree. Unfortunately I don't see too many ways for video games to get out of this poor story quagmire. Maybe as video games mature as a medium more film and movie critics will examine the stories within them. Maybe as video gamers mature they will demand more quality in the story-telling. Maybe with the next generation of gaming engines and hardware realism (in games trying for it) will become a given, and story will become one of the few ways in which games can distinguish themselves.

This reminds me of what Roger Ebert foolishly wrote a few years ago.
Roger Ebert said:
What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it. How do I know this? How many games have I played? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in "Myst," and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports.
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It is true that games have a long way to go, more so in some cases. But most games right now are like the nickelodeons were at the start of the 20th century, just novelties. But he is definitely mistaken in that games don't have the potential to rival the great works of art in cinema, stage, music, paint, sculpture, ballet, etc. Of course games contain elements from all of those, but since it is an active and not passive media, player control is mistaken for a lack authorship from the creators. A good game is akin to a stage play where the player improvises and can even change how the play develops and ends. Whether the player shoots, builds, or explores relates only to genre and there have been great films in all genres.
 
iridium_ionizer said:
This reminds me of what Roger Ebert foolishly wrote a few years ago.
Roger Ebert said:
What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it. How do I know this? How many games have I played? I know it by the definition of the vast majority of games. They tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in "Myst," and (3) player control of the outcome. I don't think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports.
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<snip>
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Ebert is a fat fool with little idea of what constitutes high cinema nevermind high art. This is largely irrelevant to what you have said, I just thought I should point out that the guy, at least in the last ten or twenty years has lost his sheen.
 
It was unfortunately warez’d extensively and had poor sales. If that was because of the lack of improvements or d’loads has not been established at this point.
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What?! From what I know, Fallout 2 sold pretty well. And how you warez something in 1998? This guy seems to be one of those people who hate Fallout 2 for no reason. Go fucking figure.

Outside of that, the counterpint review is very good. I like how he notes the disapearance of diferent ammo types.

The first is that there is no way to change rates of fire. If you have a SMG or Assault Rifle it fires at full auto in VATS. This is a waste when doing head shots or shooting a Radroach.
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This is kinda nitpicky, but interesting. Its kinda strange to see my character bursting someone TWO TIMES in the head. You could't do that in the first Fallouts, and for obvious reasons.
 
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