Fallout 3... some of you love the game for reasons unknown to me, but I never liked the Fallout series. Probably because I was too young to enjoy the first games and their humour properly, but nevertheless, Fallout has never appealed to me.
But I started Fallout 3 with the intention of enjoying myself. I started playing some kind of saintly angel person and that was going rather well as I was a right goodie-goodie, always saying please and thankyou, but then that all went out of the window when I was escaping Vault 101 and blew holes into anything that moved, if only because I was already bored.
By the time I'd cleaned up Megaton and clicked the red switch on her nuclear bomb I'd become the second coming of Satan or something, having killed anything and everything that moved, save a kid which annoyingly enough I could give a new facial expression. That was about the most fun I had with Fallout 3, and mass murdering rampages are still rather boring in Fallout 3 compared to Saints Row 2 or the like.
The story isn't all that impressive, either. To be honest, I could have had a better time with my five or so hours, including not dying to a bandit on the road, by perhaps ignoring the watery-wet story and making my own, but even when I went back on my save and did that, the boring, bleak blasted wastelands aren't all that impressive a sight. I'm also disappointed in the voice acting in general, as well as the talking which seems to resolve itself no matter which way you go about it, no matter how nice or mean you are it always seems to go the same way.
At the same time, it's also a sandbox, and I played Fallout 3 after a boring session of sandbox RPGs (Oblivion and Fable II), so perhaps that might have added to my boredom, and even trying to back to it after playing shooters, puzzle games and platformers I still walked away with the same opinion, although that might have been because the whole game had been disillusioned to me by everyone saying it's amazing.
But my main problem with Fallout 3 is it's change between shooter and RPG. Oh yes, it's an action RPG with plenty of gunbattles or bashing in kneecaps if you want. Now choose, do you want to do it yourself or watch it all in slow-mo-head-blowing-up-o-vision?
There's an obvious problem here; once you're out of VATS you can immediately switch straight to point and click killing mode, which kind of makes the VATS useless after the first volley as I never really found anything that was still alive by the time I had more VATS back... unless there were about fifteen (at any one time) Megaton-settlers after my blood for attempting to blow up their dead sherrif's kid... The VATS system should have been used throughout combat, somehow. Not using it might have worked as well, but on an overall basis I believe that when you can go from Mode 1 Auto-Attack to Mode 2 Point-And-Kill Attack without any penalties, other than human error, the game is a little bit too easy... VATS is an amazing system, but because you can choose not to use it I felt as if perhaps Bethesda had been a bit lazy with it all. Having a VATS pool that you get so many points from every so often, perhaps every five seconds, with each action having a different cost in VATS points (IE, shooting a pistol opposed to a rifle would be different, as well as relative training with both weapons, or to switch a weapon, or to move during combat) would have made for a more interesting and tactical system without making it too complex. That said, great ideas are a dime a dozen.
I suppose watching heads implode on each other is kind of funny, and is certainly a redeeming factor, but the problem is that it takes forever to get to the heads imploding stage at the beginning unless you trained yourself in how to cap people in the kneecaps properly.
And I liked Fallout 3 more than I did Oblivion and Morrowind, and I still debate with myself whether I like it more than Neverwinter Nights which has been the worst of the Bioware RPGs I've played, so it isn't bad... it's just not what was advertised and although I can understand why some people would enjoy it, especially if they're new to the RPG genre or if they dislike the complexities of the tactics involved in the average Bioware RPG, then it does its job well as a quick jump into roleplaying before you tackle a really big one.
I haven't played the add-ons, although I've seen some of the armour and weapons that they provide and they look amazing compared to some of the armours from the game, but I wasn't going to dish out cash for DLC that I won't play for a game that I intend to get money back from, so I couldn't comment on them.
Overall, Fallout 3 is an okay game that's let down by a few combat problems, bad voice acting and a poor storyline, but if, for an hour, you want to run around watching heads explode in slow-motion, then I could recommend Fallout 3. It's bland and bleak, but if you want to run around for a few hours hunting down fire ants, mutants, bandits and slavers then go ahead and jump in, I guess.
But I started Fallout 3 with the intention of enjoying myself. I started playing some kind of saintly angel person and that was going rather well as I was a right goodie-goodie, always saying please and thankyou, but then that all went out of the window when I was escaping Vault 101 and blew holes into anything that moved, if only because I was already bored.
By the time I'd cleaned up Megaton and clicked the red switch on her nuclear bomb I'd become the second coming of Satan or something, having killed anything and everything that moved, save a kid which annoyingly enough I could give a new facial expression. That was about the most fun I had with Fallout 3, and mass murdering rampages are still rather boring in Fallout 3 compared to Saints Row 2 or the like.
The story isn't all that impressive, either. To be honest, I could have had a better time with my five or so hours, including not dying to a bandit on the road, by perhaps ignoring the watery-wet story and making my own, but even when I went back on my save and did that, the boring, bleak blasted wastelands aren't all that impressive a sight. I'm also disappointed in the voice acting in general, as well as the talking which seems to resolve itself no matter which way you go about it, no matter how nice or mean you are it always seems to go the same way.
At the same time, it's also a sandbox, and I played Fallout 3 after a boring session of sandbox RPGs (Oblivion and Fable II), so perhaps that might have added to my boredom, and even trying to back to it after playing shooters, puzzle games and platformers I still walked away with the same opinion, although that might have been because the whole game had been disillusioned to me by everyone saying it's amazing.
But my main problem with Fallout 3 is it's change between shooter and RPG. Oh yes, it's an action RPG with plenty of gunbattles or bashing in kneecaps if you want. Now choose, do you want to do it yourself or watch it all in slow-mo-head-blowing-up-o-vision?
There's an obvious problem here; once you're out of VATS you can immediately switch straight to point and click killing mode, which kind of makes the VATS useless after the first volley as I never really found anything that was still alive by the time I had more VATS back... unless there were about fifteen (at any one time) Megaton-settlers after my blood for attempting to blow up their dead sherrif's kid... The VATS system should have been used throughout combat, somehow. Not using it might have worked as well, but on an overall basis I believe that when you can go from Mode 1 Auto-Attack to Mode 2 Point-And-Kill Attack without any penalties, other than human error, the game is a little bit too easy... VATS is an amazing system, but because you can choose not to use it I felt as if perhaps Bethesda had been a bit lazy with it all. Having a VATS pool that you get so many points from every so often, perhaps every five seconds, with each action having a different cost in VATS points (IE, shooting a pistol opposed to a rifle would be different, as well as relative training with both weapons, or to switch a weapon, or to move during combat) would have made for a more interesting and tactical system without making it too complex. That said, great ideas are a dime a dozen.
I suppose watching heads implode on each other is kind of funny, and is certainly a redeeming factor, but the problem is that it takes forever to get to the heads imploding stage at the beginning unless you trained yourself in how to cap people in the kneecaps properly.
And I liked Fallout 3 more than I did Oblivion and Morrowind, and I still debate with myself whether I like it more than Neverwinter Nights which has been the worst of the Bioware RPGs I've played, so it isn't bad... it's just not what was advertised and although I can understand why some people would enjoy it, especially if they're new to the RPG genre or if they dislike the complexities of the tactics involved in the average Bioware RPG, then it does its job well as a quick jump into roleplaying before you tackle a really big one.
I haven't played the add-ons, although I've seen some of the armour and weapons that they provide and they look amazing compared to some of the armours from the game, but I wasn't going to dish out cash for DLC that I won't play for a game that I intend to get money back from, so I couldn't comment on them.
Overall, Fallout 3 is an okay game that's let down by a few combat problems, bad voice acting and a poor storyline, but if, for an hour, you want to run around watching heads explode in slow-motion, then I could recommend Fallout 3. It's bland and bleak, but if you want to run around for a few hours hunting down fire ants, mutants, bandits and slavers then go ahead and jump in, I guess.
