Craig's Review of Fallout 3

Now, to get this off to a flying start, I myself am not one for Role Playing Games, especially since Bethesda's Oblivion creation, where I ran around the most beautiful outside area I had seen, to find... nothing. Nothing anywhere. I couldn't do jack all, until I bored, accidentally ran to some besieged city and went through a demon gate to my death. Then I thought, bugger this and a side of eggs and uninstalled it.So when I heard of another RPG by the same people it didn't fill my heart with glee, nor did the prospect of having to run around for-ever trying to find where I was supposed to be going.So Red Alert 3 was a much better option.Then due to some idiot saying it was greater than God, I decided to buy it and have a good old go.So from no previous experience, apart from the Oblivion phase, I ran head first into God-knows-what.

It started quite well with a very simple set up, none of this crazy: intellect doing blah blah blah blah, or you can chose intelligence which does something different but equally important, it was more like, Strength: This helps you hit stuff and carry more. Ah ha!!! And it was all amazingly disguised as a babies book, they didn't go through much of a "This is how you shot, this is how you walk, rotate camera, dance, sing" routine, it was: W,A,S,D to walk, Left click to shoot, have fun. Fair play, you aren’t treating me like an idiot, and I respected this.

Next followed the first encounter with the "karma" idea, this was in the choice of, A, helping a character against some bullies, B, Saving one of the bullies parental figures, C, a choice with the Overseer of the Vault you are in, each of these choices effect your outcome with characters you start with.

Then you emerge stumbling blindly into the daylight. And saw a dystopia environment that took my breath away, and filled my lungs with irradiated air. I have to say, regardless of my kind of high end computer, the environment would have been amazing on my old computer. Walking around all these destroyed cities crumbling around me was amazing. It all had a very "Bioshocky" feel to it. Don't get me wrong though, it isn't Bioshock. It contained some things that could be seen as bioshocky, retro music, and desolate crumbling environment but apart from that, completely original.

Now going back to the original point, of travelling around Oblivion and being bored out of my mind, the lovely destroyed background as I wondered aimlessly was amazing that I didn't honestly care, and there were far more random encounters than in Oblivion to keep my yelping out of surprise and shock every now again, usually with a "Oh dear God not scorpions again!"

This, on the topic of scorpions, leads me brilliantly onto combat. None of this wishy woshy magic or swords like Oblivion, but guns, lots and lots of guns, how-ever with guns, comes horrid aiming, and when you first start, point-blank range seems the best range for accuracy for people or anything you come across in Dystopian Washington D.C. Until you level up in the game, or find enough books, you can't aim properly with usual old FPS or TPS modes. This is why, with the implementation of the V.A.T.S system, Aiming no longer becomes a problem, it’s a "Click here, and bam, I shoot there" system. Which to counter the "Bugger can't aim" helped a tonne and a half, and to change the run around and shoot, added interest and a bit of a change to the game, so it was pretty damn hard to get bored. And so you don't wholly rely on V.A.T.S they give you a Action Point limit, so you can only use it soo many times, then allow it to recharge, and for each different gun, it has a different AP usage cost.

The achievements you can get, add a bit of interest to the game, the one like "Psychotic Prankster" took my eye immediately, how-ever most of it is just "follow the story" achievements, nothing too challenging.You inventory is a decent size, and keeps expanding with the strength you get. And to add more to the "hunt for random stuff" the game has to offer, you can find bobble heads, which gives stat boosts, and obviously achievements.

The levelling system is easy enough to understand, add points to a particular skill like shooting a small gun, then pick a trait, like "kill the opposite sex easier", then that’s it, moving on, unfortunately, you get 20 levels, which if you follow all the side quests, doesn't allow you to reach your, I kill you now potential, how-ever if they kept going, the game would lose its kind of challenging basis.

A game like this obviously has its problems, like, for instance, the crashing issues. The game is amazing and you go through like most of the map randomly exploring, find most of what you need, then it crashes, taking you back till when-ever you saved it, or when it decided to auto save or, my personal favorite, crashing before it even loads up! As i've mentioned before, my computer isn't run on steam and coal, its run on some futuristic power source, possibly made out of pizza, and therefore awesome, and it's a pretty good computer, so I have no clue why it doesn't that, still I can only hope for more God-aweful patches to be released. And for such a good game as well, the bugging issues are a problem, like people gliding across the floor; it takes you out of this immersive amazingly good world.

Apart from that, you change weapons, get caps (money) enough, and even the repairing system is easy enough, find another weapon of the same kind, and use that, you find health etc. easy enough, scattered anywhere and everywhere, it's all simple enough to play, but still not insulting you or making it boring, so all in all, a fun and entertaining game to play, addictive like hell, you just got to live with it killing itself every now and again.Stay tuned for possibly a RA3 review next.Craig signing off :P