My Limited Experience* Fallout 3 Review

*Roughly 2 hours of game-play time


For those of you, gamers and non gamers alike, who have been around me
for longer than 30 minutes within the past 6 months, I've probably
rambled and talked your ear off about Fallout 3 like bringing up the
subject was somehow keeping me alive or bringing the universe one step
closer to serenity.

I finally got my grubby little mitts on it for a few hours at a friend's house.

The opening sequence and tutorial really do a good job of getting you
into the controls if you're unfamiliar with first person games and
introduces you to the game mechanics of the previous Fallout titles
for those who are new to the series. You literally grow up as your
character, therefore the tutorial doesn't feel like you're being
talked down to - at least that was my feeling. As a child of 12
months, you learn to walk around and manipulate objects. This is also
where you pick your base stats, or your SPECIAL stats.

Strength
Perception
Endurance
Charisma
Intelligence
Luck

Unlike Bethesda's previous title, Oblivion, you cannot be a godlike
master of all things material or immaterial if you just run around the
countryside long enough. Your stats cap out at 10 and it's exceedingly
rare to be able to run around with max stats without really going out
of your way. (In fact, it may not even be possible period.) The
leveling system is akin to the previous Fallout titles. If you're not
familiar, your skills don't go up from use. You level up, they give
you a handful of skill points, say put 'em where you want, pick a
perk, and then you're on your merry way. Perks are special little
"bonuses" to your character. Think of them akin to feats in Dungeons
and Dragons or just little extra stat buffers. Individually they're
tiny in the grand scheme of things but when you pile on the right
combination, you can go from Bob McNormalson to "Texas" Jeff: The man
who can shoot a fly out of its wings while holding the gun in his
feet.

The other aspect keeping you from being a super-character is a very
simple thing. A hard level cap at 20. It's *nearly impossible to max
your stats out with a strict level cap as with how the skills work.
You get a smattering of over a dozen skills, each one can get up to
100%... You start with all of them roughly around 18-21 range,
depending on your stat distribution.

*This is only from playing for 2 hours and from reading about others'
play throughs. It may be possible for some super number cruncher out
there to find a way to skill up to 100 in everything while riding a
flaming gryphon while masturbating and ejaculating rainbows and
sunshine.


Now, as I said before, the game starts with you as an infant.  You
customize your character's race, gender, and facial appearance - with
the help of an obscene list of beards I might add. When you are done,
your father in the game (Voiced by Liam Neeson) comes into view. Your
appearance determines HIS appearance, which I just find cool.

You live in Vault 101. One of a series of underground bomb shelters
built before a major thermonuclear war. Long story short, the cold war
mentality never ended, we got into a war over natural resources,
everybody hit their respective Big Red Buttons and the conflict was
over in less time than the average lunch break.

Vault 101 has never been re-opened since it was first sealed. Noone
leaves, noone enters. You live in the vault during the tutorial levels
until you wake up one morning at age 19 and find the seemingly
impossible has happened.... Your father has left the Vault. So, that's
the key goal of the main quest, go find pop.  Like Oblivion, though,
you may not get to it for days or weeks on end as there's just so much
to simply wander around and find to do. You emerge from Vault 101 to
the Capitol Wasteland. The ruined blow'd up area of what used to be
Washington D.C.  You can start on the main quest or simply pick a
direction and go, there's no real penalty. The quest will be waiting
for you when you get back.

Unfortunately, this is also where some gripes make their appearance in
the game as well. It's a video game made by a bunch of human beings
so, by definition, it's not perfect. The landscape is pretty realistic
for a blown up wasteland but...you realize something, you've been here
before... Only the game was called Gears of War. Quite honestly, the
wreckage does look very familiar after a while. Of course, you can
only make a disaster zone really look one way.

The NPCs you interact with also have their quirks. In combat, raiders
(scavengers of the wasteland) and other enemies rarely show any
reaction to your attacks unless you score a crit. Now, that's all well
and good but if I shoot you in the forearm with a rifle, you're going
to react no matter how much it initially hurt. I shot you with a
rifle.
During dialogue, they have the same issues in Oblivion. They look
straight at you, with no idle animations whatsoever. Hard to describe
but it is a little weird after a while.

AI pathing can get annoying. I normally wouldn't care but in my
limited jaunt, I had an NPC I had talked to for a quest ask me to
follow him, so I did... Until he got hooked on another NPC who didn't
react to being run into at all. I honestly thought there was a risk of
it messing up the quest. That stuck with me and annoyed me.

Is it a good game? Yeah. Will I play the hell out of it the moment I
have it in my own ownership? Oh hell yeah. Is it perfect? Nope.

These AI and animation bugs were ones that were present in Oblivion.
They used the same engine and still didn't fix these the second pass
around. I'm very much bothered by this. It's not going to keep me from
playing, but it's going to nag at me with a feeling that there is a
tiny grain of validity to the people who claim it to be Oblivion with
Guns. The Fallout feel is there, the dark humor, the morbidness, the
feeling of being alone is there... But so are some of Oblivion's bugs,
and those should have been squashed by now.

I don't feel like I can give this a true numbered score, but if you
like first person open world RPGs, this is a great addition to your
library. You'll easily sink DAYS of playtime into it. The bugs aren't
incredibly severe, but they annoy me in that they should have been
fixed (or improved upon) by now.