Fallout 3 Collector's Edition

If your a fan of oblivion you'll love this game though this game doesn't have all the lush landscape as oblivion it does have great side quests an ok main quest on as you come out Vault 101 you see a massive part of the destroyed lands with a small town in plain view. At first you don't know what to do where to go or maybe even how to use your pip boy to its full capacity. The first place I actually ran into was the school where there were enemies with major guns other than BB guns or a 10-mm pistol which I found my hands very useful at the time until I took their guns. After killing about four enemies I left and ran into Megaton a city with an active nuke sitting in the center. Then there is a sheriff that comes up to you as soon as you enter the city that looks like he came from a western movie which I thought was pretty funny.
Now to get to combat VATS is actually a great accessory for a RPG and anyone that like seeing people get killed in slo-mo which has entertained me. It gives you a percentage of your accuracy and a choice of which limb you want to shoot at unless you're using a grenade of course. What I found interesting is that you shoot their leg they limp,or shoot their arm or weapon and the weapon will fall, and then the head you shoot it and their accuracy will lower. The action in the game gets fun when you get better guns myself i use the combat shotgun it gets the job done and for long distance the hunting rfle or sniper are great.
Quests are like oblivion you'll find them but you have to explore the wastes if you keep to the main quest you'll finish the game in no time. I suggest exploreing the game before finishing the main quest because you'll be upset at the things you miss mostly since there is a fast travel which isnt bad but you'll miss a lot. Go into all building its fun some are trap rigged to the teeth, some plain strange, and some are war zones that you are stuck in the middle of.
All and all this game isnt perfect but what games really are its a must have for anyone that like 1st person shooters, 3rd person shooters or rpgs

Game won't run on my computer unless I delete files. I refuse to alter my system to accomodate their paranoia

I am old enough to have played the original game when it first came out in 1997. I was a great fan of the series that followed and, thus, was very eager to get my hands on this latest installment. In a short sentence: FALLOUT-3 is A DREAM COME TRUE!

It is a cRPG game in which the player can alternate between the First and Third person perspective roaming a world comparable in size with OBLIVION. The action has moved from Vault 13 and Southern California to Vault 101 and Washington, D.C. and the story brakes away from the previous bloodlines. However, the atmosphere of the original has been maintained and its scents sharpened: veterans will find it fitting like and old glove - whereas the new gamers are in store for a bag of pleasant surprises.

The graphics are wonderful, the guns detailed and the environments highly interactive. Short of a screenshot, imagine what would HalfLife-2 would look if released today. And similar to HL2, FALLOUT-3 does not require an...ubercomputer to run smoothly. Once you see a NPC move though, you understand where the corners were cut.

Character customization is carried out in great style using the new and improved PIP-BOY at the beginning. You exit the vault and the harsh reality of a world that barely survived annihilation slaps you on the face. Adapt or perish.

The main storyline is there to be followed but FALLOUT-3 offers the greatest number of alternative choices I have ever encountered in a game! There is always a great number of paths to follow in order to achieve any goal - but every choice comes with a consequences tag. This is common feature of most classic cRPGs but in FALLOUT-3 I saw it implemented like never before. If nothing else, this sends replayability through the roof.

Side-quests offer little besides distraction and experience points (XP) to be spend on character improvement. XP are gained solely by completing quests, emerging victorious from fights, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals - and they are not limited by the action they were earned. Leveling up is based on 7 basic attributes [Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility & Luck - acronym?;)] that, in turn, affect your (13) specific skills. Since leveling up is capped at Level-20, the game designers wanted to encourage replaying the game. On the other hand, it also means that your character will never realize its full potential (in case you are wondering why I withheld a star from FUN, that's the second half of it).

The game is violent and gory but well within tasteful limits. Not so with the language - but it is tradeoff with realism. In a radioactive world, Sunday-school niceties are bound to go out the window.
What deserves a special mention is V.A.T.S. (:Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) which opens new vistas in cRPG design. It is an ingenious system which lets you pause the game and target specific body parts of your opponents. The success of your attack still depends on your skills but the end effect is cinematic and amazing (remember SWORDFISH?).

After the nuclear summer of 2008 (with all the LimitedInstallations-defective EA releases), this seems like a postapocalyptic dawn indeed! BETHESDA decided to listen to the gaming community and did NOT cripple this beautiful game with any idiotic DRM scheme. Inputting a serial number and a DVD-check is more than reasonable.
The publishers of FALLOUT-3 understand that there is a fine balance between "protecting the product" and..."insulting your own customers". And they obviously view respect as the two way street that it is - and for this they deserve our support: buy this game, today.

Voting with our wallets is the only argument the gaming industry cannot afford to ignore. And it is about time to cast some well deserved positive votes.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!