Yeah, that's right. Fallout is back. Gone are the pixels and turn-based combat of the first games. Now you get to explore the wasteland in first person, and blow off uglies heads in exciting bullet time!
In the not-so-distant future, America and China finally dropped the bomb that would change life forever. Cities were purged with nuclear fire, society retarded back to nomadic and tribal roots, and the animal life that wasn't wiped clean by the inferno became either really freakin' big, or really, really angry. Or both!
That's where you come in! Born in a vault, which is like a big bomb shelter, you play out the early years of your character from birth, to infancy, through adolescence and finally to adulthood. This entire transcendence takes about an hour, sets the scene for life in the vault, gives you free reign to design your character to the type of game you want to play, and introduces James, your loving daddy. But enough about James, because in true Bethesda fashion, the main quest involving him isn't really where it's at (in fact, in the case of Fallout this main quest-line is shockingly short and not terribly interesting).
Of course, this blissful existence isn't
to be and you'll soon find yourself leaving the vault, into a huge 3D rendering of Washington DC. Only it's a bit of a mess. And crawling with nasties.
Like Oblivion, which Fallout 3 borrows extensively from (and vastly improves upon in some cases), you're now free to explore a massive, dangerous world filled with plenty of nooks and crannies to investigate, people and mutants to blow apart, and quests to take on. This can be a little overwhelming at first but fear not, because help is at hand in the form of your Pipboy 5000, which takes the place of Oblivion's menu interface.
Towns, of which there are half a dozen or so, provide a safe haven for your ravaged character, as well as places to barter, hunt for quests and, if you're that way inclined, rob everybody blind. These sections are okay, but they suffer the same problem Oblivion did. Bethesda has done a little more with the dialogue in Fallout 3, giving you more opportunities to have your character react to a situation the way you feel they would. Inherent in this is the Karma system, which basically tells you whether you're naughty or nice. But it has absolutely nothing on the orginal Fallout or the sequel.
Exploration is, once again, the name of the game. There's a lot to check out in the Capital Wasteland. Malls, hospitals, museums, subway systems... it will take a lot of your time to investigate everything. But you'll have a lot of fun doing it, and it can be quite frightening at times. Blood and violence is everywhere in Fallout 3, and entering a ruined school to find mutilated bodies strung up on the walls with barbed wire is creepy, atmospheric, and downright engaging.
Combat is a huge element of Fallout 3. And it's almost genius. Freeform firing, like in say Half-Life or Call of Duty is certainly an option, but Fallout's implementation of this system makes it clunky, hard to aim and not very effective. To combat this, what Bethesda has done is brought in the V.A.T.S. system from the earlier games. Pressing your button pauses the action, zooms in on your targets, and allows you to select specific body parts to let rip on, some of which are naturally harder to hit than others. When you're ready, click go, and you'll be shown the action in sweet slo-mo via cinematic camera. The results are often very bloody. You're limited in the amount of shots you can fire in V.A.T.S. by your action points, but once they're gone they recharge once again in real time, making shoot and scoot tactics fairly prevalent. But guess what? This never, ever gets old. Blowing off the heads of two Super Mutants before ploughing some rounds into the legs of a third to slow it down while you take cover is extremely satisfying, especially since it's all played out in bullet time.
The two minigames are a mixed bag. Lockpicking is great fun, and is actually tied to your character's skill (albeit loosely). You still need player skill to accomplish it though, because it requires precise positioning of a bobby pin and then applying torque to the lock with a screwdriver. The computer hacking is not so great. It's fun at first, and is tied to the skill in the same way as Lockpicking is (in that you need a certain amount of skill to hack certain terminals) but it involves a small word game that breaks up the action too much, and isn't actually losable anyway so it's just a matter of time until the terminal is hacked.
Graphically, well. I mean look at it. Some animations are a little off but the world itself is incredibly realised and visceral. So is the sound. Everything sounds like it should and there's some great music in the form of the radio stations you can tune into. The only sound issues are the ones with Bethesda's limited supply of voice actors, so many characters sound identical and have the same personalities. But it doesn't take away from the gameplay at all.
Are there other problems? Yeah, a few. The main quest line is too short, NPCs in your party often have serious issues getting from A to B, especially your pet dog. There aren't as many sidequests as I was expecting from Bethesda. Once you're level capped (at level 20) there's not really much in the way of character development - all you can really find while out exploring is more ammo. But none of these problems will really hamper your gameplay, and once you've cleared it once you can always go through and do it again, with a character at the other end of the karmic scale. Value for money!
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Jan 13th, 2009
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