Fallout 3

When I say Bethesda, the first thing that pops into most people's mind is what a horrible name to call a company. But to those enlightened gamers, Bethesda is a premier game developer that doesn't churn out titles like a Ubisoft or EA, but make no mistake, the few titles that Besthesda has released as well as the expansions are nothing short of gaming brilliance. Bethesda specializes in massive games that last and last and last with a huge amount of content. Oblivion, Shivering Isles, and Morrowind have all be developed by Bethesda and all have been massive successes.

Fallout 3 is yet another great addition if not one of the best to the library that Bethesda has created. I actually like Fallout 3 more than Oblivion for various reasons. Fallout 3 takes place in an alternate reality Washington DC after nuclear winter and Chinese invasion. Your character begins obviously at birth then flashes forward from infancy to childhood and into adulthood. Your character lives in Vault 101 in the Capitol Wasteland along with your father and few other survivors, in these small, cramped quarters roughly 200 years after the apocalypse. The game is a massive contrast to what happens in the claustrophobic Vault. One day or night your father escapes the Vault, a big no-no, and soon after the character follows, and Fallout 3 truly begins, with the sun blinding you when you first see and then you see the ruined world that is yours to explore.

Many questions arise from you leaving the vault mostly what is going on with your father and why he left. And from those questions about what to do next comes a massive amount of choice in everything from character development, like what skills to focus in on which there are many, to the many perks that could become yours as well. Then there is the massive amount of questing, there is of course the main storyline of finding your father and some other interesting quests surrounding who and what your father is and was, this is about 20-30 hours of gameplay, then there's the side-quests, which brings the game up to over 100 hours. It is unbelievable at the sheer amount of content within the game, and how it still remains interesting throughout, although the side-quests might be similar the way as far as going from point A to B, finding that bit of information to help the world you live in. Also one of the interesting things to this game is how you discover the quests, either through exploration, which this game does extremely well, or through finding journals or sound clips, dealing with NPCs, or just finding a place.

Fallout 3 does everything right as far as the visuals being photo-realistic, the sounds or music is a great addition as well, with period music being played through radio stations that are accessible with Pip-boy 3000, your big wrist PDA, the music is used to set the whole tone that culture was ended at one point and then everything went into just survival, as well as adding that little bit of creepiness. Essentially this world is ruined and humanity is just about done, but the environments look gorgeous in that ruined world aspect, also in this world you can explore right from the outset, however, as you move further north, south, east, and west enemies become stronger and more in numbers, so tread cautiously.

Now the technical aspect to this game, the only complaint that I do have with this game is the 3rd person perspective, although you can see more of your character this way the movement of your character looks odd and ugly at times if you were to look to from side to side rather than having the neck and head move the character's entire body moves with an odd side-step, so just stay in the FPS mode, but there will be a few times where the 3rd person view does help, really with gauging jumps. The graphics are beautiful, the sounds and atmosphere is genuinely great, the fire fights you get into get loud and you can get disoriented easily when someone tosses a grenade or shoots a missle or a mini-nuke at you and you're temporarily discombobulated.

Did I mention the disarticulation, for all those folks that enjoy blood and unrealistic gore, the VATS targetting system is for you. VATS is a combat system within Fallout 3 that allows for the player to deal out damage to specific body parts to a single enemy or a few depending on the weapon and the AP that you have available. And with the Bloody Mess Perk, when you kill an enemy sometimes everything gets taken out, if you were to shoot of a leg and kill an enemy you'd end up sending the enemy flying with other body parts flying off. It sounds horrible and somewhat unrealistic, which it is, but it is so satisfying, and as your character levels up killing becomes an easy task with some enemies. A tip though when you're starting out weaken your enemy with the shooter aspect then go to VATS to finish them off, and not in that massage parlour sense either.

Fallout 3 is an example of what games could be if given a great storyline and a massive amount of content and just having everything work right. Sure there are some same issues as far as character interaction being somewhat stiff with characters you speak with becoming extremely rigid and with almost no personality sometimes, but this is a small issue when compared to what Fallout 3 does right. Also characters look great too, with some voice recycling and character models being re-used, but I doubt anyone will even care considering that this game is massive, it is wide, far, deep and high, you'll understand when you play it, which is something that PC, 360, and PS3 owners should all do.

And I apologize for the long winded review, this game is by far the best I've played in this current generation and perhaps in the previous one too. Fallout 3 is a keeper, and I will definately be playing it a few times considering there are multiple endings and character customization is just massive.

Purchased this game about a week after Fable 2, and Fable hasn't been touched since. If you were a fan on Oblivion, this will be a very famililar game to you. Have played this for about 15 hours already and don't feel like I've gotten anywhere in the game, where as Fable was almost over after 15 hours.

Awesome game. Game of the year candidate.

I've just started, but so far the depth has really impressed me. What's not so impressive is the menu system... I don't like to do so much digging to pull up a map... Very much a game to play if you don't plan on leaving your house for two or three weeks. Take the phone off the hook, tell your loved ones that you're going away for a while and cash in all your sick days. You're going to need them.