Mediocre, but nothing less
Added 11/19/2009
Fallout 3 isn't a bad game, but it doesn't deserve any praise as the best RPG in recent years.
Its weak points are the following:
Bethesda attempts to unite RPG and FPS combat in this title, but both are implemented poorly. As an FPS, trying to aim at enemies that skip and shuffle over the uneven terrain of the world is extremely frustrating. The movements of all NPCs and enemies in the game is very unnatural and jerky. Imagine playing an MMO in a first person perspective, and having to shoot at your targets, and you'll understand. The movements are inconsistent and unpredictable, not because of any genuis on the AI's part, but because the motion of the game is so rigid.
As for the RPG gameplay, Bethesda introduces VATS, a system designed to offer a remnant of turn-based combat as a fully optional tool. It essentially calculates your chance to hit an enemy on different body parts, allows you to choose a certain amount of strikes based on your action points, and carries them out in slow motion while you watch. If you're out of AP, you can wait for it to regenerate, and perform more VATS attacks when they return over time. At first, this mechanic is interesting to watch, and provides some rest from the frustrating FPS combat. Later on, however, as your character progresses in skill levels with different weapons, your chance to headshot enemies goes above 90% and you are basically killing everything with one instant headshot without actually aiming. You can shoot enemies in the legs to slow them down, sure, but on most of the enemies in the game, there's no point when they die so quickly.
So the choice between gameplay styles is a dry one - the sub-par, frustrating FPS experience, or the overpowered instant kill experience?
Exploring the world is a great experience, as Bethesda is good at filling the map with interesting things to look at. But when you find a quest hub, the content is actually fairly shallow. What could be several hours' worth of enjoyment from stories and unique dialogue in some of the quest hubs turn into 15 minute decisions that are based only on the Karma path that you want to follow. Talking to the NPCs begins to reveal at least an interesting story most of the time, but then they all begin to repeat the same lines. The outcome of your adventures in a quest hub do little to nothing to affect the world around you, with some characters elsewhere in the game still referencing your just-saved town as though you had never been there, even "weeks" of in-game time after you finished.
These gripes of mine aside, the game is still enjoyable for a while. Looking around at the destroyed world is still pretty neat, and even though quest hubs are fairly small and unimportant, there are so many of them that exploring is worthwhile. The predicaments that your character will find himself in aren't always original, but at least they provide some context for players to argue over ethics (especially over how they agree or disagree with Bethesda's often confusing Karma decisions). The atmosphere, especially when exploring abandoned vaults, is also very well done.
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Great game, seems incomplete - just a teaser for DLC
Added 11/5/2009
Downloadable content should be mini-sequels to the main game, or additional fun but not required to fully enjoy the main title. This game violates these rules. More of a Fallout 3 - starter edition, where you have to either buy the GOTY edition or pay a lot for the DLC to get satisfying conclusions to many of the main plot lines.
Beyond that the game is highly enjoyable, has fantastic graphics and audio - and is a lot of fun to play. Just too bad the creators had to be so greedy with its DLC.
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Good but complicated.
Added 10/27/2009
This is a fun game, but you need to realize it takes time to learn all the issues, weapons, etc. I would recommend a buy to anyone who loves gaming.
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Frickin Awesome!
Added 10/25/2009
In short, the game rocks. With up to 100 hours of game time with the original game, plus 5 add-ons of another 20-30 hours, you get much bang for the buck. The world is vast and the places to explore as you get to know the wasteland of Washington D.C. leave you reluctant to finally turn off the comuter and get some sleep at 3 a.m.! A few of the underground levels seem repetitive (subways and tunnels that look the same), but otherwise the graphics are the bomb and each explored building and location feels like a separate entity, pushing the stroyline further.
All in all a great accomplishment.....
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Not what I hoped for.
Added 10/25/2009
I hadn't played any of the older Fallout games, so I came into the series not expecting much. I bought the game on the recommendation of a friend, but I didn't turn out to be what I hoped. I thought this was an RPG, but it's really not. It's a first person shooter disguised as an RPG, and even though the game packaging promises adventure and action it really fails to deliver. So here's a list of pros and cons for this game:
Pros:
- Visually the game is quite well made. On my desktop computer it looks absolutely beautiful.
- Open game play, you're not forced to immediately pursue the main story, and after the initial few quests you are free to explore the entire map.
- It delivers the theme nicely. Fallout is based on mid twentieth century ideas of a post apocalyptic world. The radio station playing 1940s hits, as well as the themes of the houses and the perception of computers and robots is spot on for the era and I simply loved it.
Cons:
- Awful gameplay all around. The combat system is that of a poorly made FPS combined with an AP based targeting mechanism named V.A.T.S. The "shoulder view" had me completely perplexed. Who is the world thought that this would be even remotely interesting or functional? The only way to play this is would be by zooming in completely. Your characters' movements are awkward, the positioning and bulkiness of your companions is highly irritating and the mouse pointer is very inaccurate. I actually abandoned my companions for several quests simply because trying to fight in a crowded Vault corridor with a dog and super mutant right in front of you just did not work at all. Instead of the V.A.T.S. targeting system they should have made AP based commands for your companions. The very few options you get don't really help at all, so most of the time having your companions with you was detrimental to your gameplay and just not fun at all.
- Voice acting was amazing for the first few hours of play. But when you hear the same voice coming from 40 different NPCs it gets really tiresome. I was so happy to hear Liam Neeson would play your character's father, but even his performance bored me to tears eventually. They should have either hired more voice actors OR they should have done what most RPGs have done, which is get audio for main characters, and have text for everyone else. It must have been an ambitious project to give voices to all these NPCs, but in the end it just makes the game seem unimaginative.
- The open ended gameplay really destroys the main story. There are no bosses in the main story with the exception of one huge mutant who you can one-shot anyways. All the enemies are generic NPCs who either spawn randomly or come at you with limited numbers. Combat rarely lasts more than 40 seconds or so, it really hurts the game in the end. The main story is very short, the ending is predictable, full of plot-holes and will leave any RPG fan feeling empty. The ending is so abrupt and unsatisfying that it discourages people from starting a new game and exploring further. 60% of the world map is filled with places that add nothing to your story. You're usually given a situation in the form of a side quest, then you can choose to approach it from a good or evil side. Whatever you do, it doesn't really matter. You will level to 20 (which is the cap) without doing most of the side quests. You don't need any amazing weapons from them, because you can just loot them off dead NPCs, there's no point in developing your character after the first initial hours of the game, because it doesn't matter in the end. I really hoped that the side quests and all the explorable content would be fun, but the game keeps really tight to it's main theme, so exploration is unsatisfying and character development doesn't matter that much. After first completing the game I wanted to start over and do things differently, but it didn't change the game much in the end and I felt really let down.
- Even at the highest difficulty setting, this game offers no real challenge. The mini games for hacking computers and picking locks are gimmicks that won't keep you entertained for long.
- It's the same boring thing over and over. Every house is half destroyed, every vault has the same basic design, every DC building works the same way. All you do for 80% of the game is loot crap, meds and ammo. At the end of the game on the hardest difficulty I had my bags full of stimpacks and chems, as well as enough ammo to equip a small army. What's the point of going around creating weapons when I get over encumbered every 5 minutes because trash NPCs are dropping weapons by the truckload? There are no surprises in the game, not in the characters (they're all one dimensional), not in the environment (broken stuff, wasteland, yeah we get it) and certainly not in the story. Every conversation with NPCs goes the same way, you can either be nice, mean, or indifferent. The game does so little to keep the player interested it's appalling.
- The game is vulgar in a completely off-putting way. The player will for example stumble upon a settlement inhabited by just children, much like a "Peter Pan" setting. I initially thought it was charming, until the first kid I bumped into starting swearing and cussing for no reason. This isn't edgy, this isn't clever, this is vulgar. I can deal with the burned corpses, the gore, hell I even understand foul language from packs of raiders or slave traders. But really, little kids? Ugh, what a mess. I'm not saying children are angels, far from it, but this really doesn't do anything for the game. It would work if some of it was funny, but it isn't, there is no humor in the game, just depressing story.
- Bugs. Installing this on my laptop (an expensive one, mind) was a nightmare. Why was this game released with so many bugs? I consulted a great Fallout wiki and honestly there were more bugs listed than anything else. This game is a hot mess of design flaws, shame on you developers.
- $49.99 for a game that I finished in three afternoons. Ouch.
How this game got a Game of the Year award is absolutely beyond me. I guess there just isn't much competition for this genre and people will give their support to anything that's new.
I really hope that the people who made this game look at the mountains of negative feedback concerning this release and learn from it.
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