Ok guys, this is my first review so stay with me.
Intro: About a year or so ago I read about Fallout 3 in a friends issue of Game Informer, and from then on this became my most anticipated game of 08. Take this lightly, because not many other games interested me at that moment. So fast foward a year, and I hear about these videos demonstrating the gameplay and I am once again hyped. I counted down until it released, but unfortunatly, I didn't buy it until 2 months after it hit stores. So now after beating the game, I present to you: The following few paragraphs.
Graphics: I suggest that you don't take this part of the review too seriously, because I don't have a good machine running it. I played Fallout 3 on low settings with "Fade" (pop up) on a generally low setting. So needless to say, it was laggy, the textures were big, and pop up was abundant. However, I did go into Ultra quality for a few frames, and the game looked pretty good. Since I don't have a fair perspective on this, I can't give it a score.
Story: Fallout 3 is called an RPG, and while it has the elements of gameplay, it doesn't exactly have the story that is expected from the genre. There are plenty of holes, ridiculous characters and twists, and almost no character development at all. I'm serious, the development is one step shy of nonexistant. You will see many characters who may seem interesting at first glance, but 80 percent of the NPC's have 10 lines of dialogue, maximum. The 20 percent that talk don't have many interesting stuff to say.
For example, there is this woman name Moira Brown in a town not far from where you begin. She has perhaps the most dialogue in the entire game, but she is actually just a shop owner who sends you on a variety of missions. You get a basic story about her (very basic: she trades with caravans. Yeah, thats all), and all the rest are instructions, comments about you/her (just "you don't look too good" or "the dust is perfectly safe to breathe", and other one liners). These characters lack depth entirely, and are as minimally developed as possible.
As for the plot itself, its not too interesting. Heres a quick summary: *minor spoilers*
You are cast from Vault 101, where you have spent all your life, in order to search for your father. You quickly learn that you were born out in the wasteland, and you were only brought to the vault for your safety. When you meet up with ol' pops, he tells you that he was trying to purify all the radiated water with a giant Water Purifyer. To do this however, you need to find the GECK, which is a terraforming tool used to create life and such, but you never actually use it.
The main story is miraculously short, and consists of only this: Finding info, going to where dad is, going to water purifyer, going to geck, doing *spoiler*, going back, end game.
Gameplay: There is an abundance of things to do in the game, all in the form of quests. The wasteland is interesting and all, but there really isn't anything to do there other than finding people to shoot or finding people to tell you to shoot/fetch. The quest system is much more fun than I make it out to be, but it lacks substance. There are some things you can do while other than quests, such as collecting books for caps, collecting ID tags for caps, collecting technology for caps, collecting blood for caps, collecting cereal for caps, collecting american history for caps, collecting metal for caps, etc. So basically, your just going from place to place to get various jobs to do. But that's normal for a video game, so thats Ok. Not quite as OK for an RPG, but its still OK.
Combat is interesting, as there are two ways of carrying it out. You can use normal FPS controls, and shoot normally. Or you can use a system called VATS, in which time is frozen, you are rendered nearly godlike, and your chance of hitting someone is dictated by how much skill you've devoted to whatever weapon you have. In VATS, you target indidual body parts in order to kill your opponent. You can sometimes have fun with them by shooting their legs and watching them walk like they have some type of polio, but that is usually proceeded by blowing their heads off in an explosion of eyes, brains, and jawbones. So the most effective thing is to just aim for the head, which is has the same percentage as every other body part unless it is obstructed by some part of the environment. If you want to go at the game in a regular FPS style mode, you can, but the weapons don't feel powerful and unless your aim is perfect, you really are better off going into the invincible VATS mode. Enemies themselves vary in strength, and some get somewhat stronger as you get more powerful. There is also a stealth aspect, but it sucks. Sorry for being blunt, but thats the truth. The AI will either notice you from a mile away, or stand right if your face spouting the same lines. Even if you do have the patience to do the painfully awkward stealth, you don't get any experience for doing so, and all you DO get is a critical hit that is likely to piss whoever your shooting off and call one and a half dozens green giants to pummel you with their mechanical sledge hammers.
The RPG aspects of this game consists of leveling up and choosing perks every time you go up a level. There are 20 levels in total, and in each one you are awarded a varying amount of skill points depending on your level of intelligence (and some other things). These skill points can be used on any...skills, such as small weapons, large weapons, energy weapons, explosives, healing, speech, and so on. Skills relating to combat determine your accuracy in VATS the weapons overall damage. Speech skills can give you lower prices, increased dialogue options, and ways to complete quests. There are other skills that focus on specifics like repair, which determines how well you can take care of your gun.
I give gameplay a 7/10
Conclusion: To me, this game was a big dissapointment. It was too short, too linear (hard to believe, right?), and too boring. Overall, I give this game a 6.5/10.
P.S. As I said, first review. Kind of sloppy, and also a spur of the moment thing, but let me know what you think.
Intro: About a year or so ago I read about Fallout 3 in a friends issue of Game Informer, and from then on this became my most anticipated game of 08. Take this lightly, because not many other games interested me at that moment. So fast foward a year, and I hear about these videos demonstrating the gameplay and I am once again hyped. I counted down until it released, but unfortunatly, I didn't buy it until 2 months after it hit stores. So now after beating the game, I present to you: The following few paragraphs.
Graphics: I suggest that you don't take this part of the review too seriously, because I don't have a good machine running it. I played Fallout 3 on low settings with "Fade" (pop up) on a generally low setting. So needless to say, it was laggy, the textures were big, and pop up was abundant. However, I did go into Ultra quality for a few frames, and the game looked pretty good. Since I don't have a fair perspective on this, I can't give it a score.
Story: Fallout 3 is called an RPG, and while it has the elements of gameplay, it doesn't exactly have the story that is expected from the genre. There are plenty of holes, ridiculous characters and twists, and almost no character development at all. I'm serious, the development is one step shy of nonexistant. You will see many characters who may seem interesting at first glance, but 80 percent of the NPC's have 10 lines of dialogue, maximum. The 20 percent that talk don't have many interesting stuff to say.
For example, there is this woman name Moira Brown in a town not far from where you begin. She has perhaps the most dialogue in the entire game, but she is actually just a shop owner who sends you on a variety of missions. You get a basic story about her (very basic: she trades with caravans. Yeah, thats all), and all the rest are instructions, comments about you/her (just "you don't look too good" or "the dust is perfectly safe to breathe", and other one liners). These characters lack depth entirely, and are as minimally developed as possible.
As for the plot itself, its not too interesting. Heres a quick summary: *minor spoilers*
You are cast from Vault 101, where you have spent all your life, in order to search for your father. You quickly learn that you were born out in the wasteland, and you were only brought to the vault for your safety. When you meet up with ol' pops, he tells you that he was trying to purify all the radiated water with a giant Water Purifyer. To do this however, you need to find the GECK, which is a terraforming tool used to create life and such, but you never actually use it.
The main story is miraculously short, and consists of only this: Finding info, going to where dad is, going to water purifyer, going to geck, doing *spoiler*, going back, end game.
Gameplay: There is an abundance of things to do in the game, all in the form of quests. The wasteland is interesting and all, but there really isn't anything to do there other than finding people to shoot or finding people to tell you to shoot/fetch. The quest system is much more fun than I make it out to be, but it lacks substance. There are some things you can do while other than quests, such as collecting books for caps, collecting ID tags for caps, collecting technology for caps, collecting blood for caps, collecting cereal for caps, collecting american history for caps, collecting metal for caps, etc. So basically, your just going from place to place to get various jobs to do. But that's normal for a video game, so thats Ok. Not quite as OK for an RPG, but its still OK.
Combat is interesting, as there are two ways of carrying it out. You can use normal FPS controls, and shoot normally. Or you can use a system called VATS, in which time is frozen, you are rendered nearly godlike, and your chance of hitting someone is dictated by how much skill you've devoted to whatever weapon you have. In VATS, you target indidual body parts in order to kill your opponent. You can sometimes have fun with them by shooting their legs and watching them walk like they have some type of polio, but that is usually proceeded by blowing their heads off in an explosion of eyes, brains, and jawbones. So the most effective thing is to just aim for the head, which is has the same percentage as every other body part unless it is obstructed by some part of the environment. If you want to go at the game in a regular FPS style mode, you can, but the weapons don't feel powerful and unless your aim is perfect, you really are better off going into the invincible VATS mode. Enemies themselves vary in strength, and some get somewhat stronger as you get more powerful. There is also a stealth aspect, but it sucks. Sorry for being blunt, but thats the truth. The AI will either notice you from a mile away, or stand right if your face spouting the same lines. Even if you do have the patience to do the painfully awkward stealth, you don't get any experience for doing so, and all you DO get is a critical hit that is likely to piss whoever your shooting off and call one and a half dozens green giants to pummel you with their mechanical sledge hammers.
The RPG aspects of this game consists of leveling up and choosing perks every time you go up a level. There are 20 levels in total, and in each one you are awarded a varying amount of skill points depending on your level of intelligence (and some other things). These skill points can be used on any...skills, such as small weapons, large weapons, energy weapons, explosives, healing, speech, and so on. Skills relating to combat determine your accuracy in VATS the weapons overall damage. Speech skills can give you lower prices, increased dialogue options, and ways to complete quests. There are other skills that focus on specifics like repair, which determines how well you can take care of your gun.
I give gameplay a 7/10
Conclusion: To me, this game was a big dissapointment. It was too short, too linear (hard to believe, right?), and too boring. Overall, I give this game a 6.5/10.
P.S. As I said, first review. Kind of sloppy, and also a spur of the moment thing, but let me know what you think.
