Zero Punctuation: Fallout 3

[VMerken]

Man, this is a while later a good while later, but anyway, as you said, differences in opinion. I thought the music was great, especially when you turn on the GNR, giving you that delicious sense of irony.

The oblivion comparison, although somewhat valid, gets silly, how would everyone had liked the dialog and character interactions? There not many ways except how games like Oblivion, mass effect, and Kotor allow you to interact with the npcs. Which essentially come down to the same way. Not to mention the game was made in the same engine, there are bound to be similarities.....

This "twitch pollution" is again, a matter of preference, but that's why there is V.A.T.S.

I don't have a lot of spare time and generally only post one comment in Zero Punctuation.

Anyway, one radio station doesn't save you from the general Fairy Land feeling you get from the default soundtrack. To me, music's a major factor and the sound tracks of Fallout 1/2 are far more successfully in conveying a post-apocalyptic feeling than anything else. I would have expected that the devs, as the "Fallout Fans" they claim they are, would have gotten at least that one right. I mean, the musical atmosphere is a bullet point noone could possibly miss. Apparently not, as the Bethesda devs prove.

So you think the dialogue system renders my comparison "silly", because there wasn't any other way to solve it? How about using no dialogue? I'd rather let my imagination think up the voices from a good description than to hear lame, uninspired voice acting across all channels. Fallout uses almost no dialogue, but rather small snippets of well written text and dialogue to create a setting and let your mind enrich it - it is far more stimulating than the graphical exposé this game offers, or the awesome still Uncanny Valley faces you get to observe as the game freezes time and zooms into them. And then the uninspired, bland emitting of lines begins.

Which brings me to another solution: write good dialogue and hire professional, quality voice actors. There were not a lot of voiced animated heads in Fallout 1 or 2, but they sure were done a lot better than anything in Fallout 3. And that includes Liam Neeson - if you want to compare Hollywood muscle, Richard Dean Anderson (Fallout 1) and Michael Dorn (Fallout 2) did a much better job.

Or perhaps voice everything in such a cheesy way that it's funny (think Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill) - however, I'm not sure it'd fit in this type of game. Still, it'd be better than whatever it is we have now.

And V.A.T.S. being there for the non-twitchers? That is NOTHING compared to the turn-based game system behind Fallout 1 and 2. For one, you don't "run out of V.A.T.S." in them. In Fallout 1 and 2, you and your enemies are on an equal footing: you move and act, they move and act. You can shoot or hit them in the groin, they can shoot or hit you in the groin. Etc. In Fallout 3, you're a super hero, above the others, the Chosen One capable of freezing time, entering Matrix Mode(tm) and inflict great damage while the enemies can barely scratch you. And this super power recharges continuously.

In other words, your character is a Mary Sue (or Marty Stu if you will). Personally, I prefer playing a realistic character and have everything on an equal setting - either way, V.A.T.S. is NOT, not even in the slightest, a fix for the Fallout 1/2 fan.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

VMerken, sounds like you wanted a total retread of the first two titles and nothing but. Sorry, but Van Buren is dead and rotted and it ain't getting any fresher.

Me, I put some 140 hours into playing Fallout 3... and I don't do that with every game. It ain't perfect, but in my opinion (in rare congruence with Yahtzee's) it's damned good.

-- Steve

 

[kamos]

After finishing it for the 3rd time (Good, Neutral and Evil, along with all the blowingyupness/stabbyness that they entailed), I kinda agree with the Y-man.

And you've had to play it three times? You just had to reload.

 

[Toner]

After finishing it for the 3rd time (Good, Neutral and Evil, along with all the blowingyupness/stabbyness that they entailed), I kinda agree with the Y-man.

And you've had to play it three times? You just had to reload.

Noooo, not just about the ENDING (which is another major gripe of mine with this game), the whole experience of playing it changes, from start to finish.

Becoming a slaver, nabbing random people, offing someone who has been regarded as a savior of many just for a few extra caps, stealing from anyone and everyone you can find regardless of the repercussions, and slaughtering entire towns just because one of the residents looked funnily at you.

Becoming a goodytwo-shoes, helping the needy, fighting the good fight, not asking for rewards and generally wandering the wasteland as someone who would help absolutely anyone who needed it, with the best intentions possible.

Becoming a 'neutral' mercenary, wandering the wastes and taking care of number one. Only doing things if you know that you'll benefit from it somehow, and that'll be the only real thing that matters, if you get something you want. Who cares if people get claimed by slavers, or someone evil wants you to poison the whole wasteland with a virus? If it doesn't concern you and hasn't got a nice payoff, just walk away and leave some other schmuck to deal with it.

With Fallout 3 I think some people have the slight misconception that the ENDING = ALL. Sure the ending has an impact, but frankly, I don't really give a monkeys about the ending.

With Fallout 3, it isn't the ending that counts, its the journey you take to get there. With some characters I still haven't finished that journey, and probably never will.

 

[Jammerson]

I was actually impressed by this game. I am afraid that I am usually in a state of MMORPG grinding. So getting through in a FPSRPG was at least a small deviation from my routine. As for the review, I think its solid gold. You covered the basis that stealing is an easy way to get through the game. For extra challenge I decided to go through the whole game doing everything the good way. It was quite challenging and sometimes had to resort to selling cans just to make ends meet.
After I finished the game I thought I would try the evil side of it. OMFG, I blew up Megaton. I grew up in that little hell whole. Greatest thing ever!

 

[Dr. Whiggs]

No mention of Ron "Fuckmothering" Perlman doing the narration for only the beginning and end cinemas?

 

[godcomplex23]

You went kind of easy on this one Yahtzee. I was expecting this review to rival Halo 3 in hilarity and absurdity, then again I guess Bethesda doesn't make a hideous monstrosity of an operating system and force the entire world to use it through benevolent donations of corporate oppression now do they? But really this game was a money maker for them plain and simple. Its the story of finding a nobody with lots of talent, pumping him with tons of steroids, announcing to the world how great he is, then having him throw the fight. Have you even played fallout one and two? The only part of the game the least bit interesting is the exploding the nuke in megaton and even that is optional not to mention takes away about half of the game, including any reason to go to the supermarket where you have to use your iphone to light up the shelves when you're looking for anti-biotics. or Branston pickles... pft.

 

[smartalec]

i felt very differently about the setting. it felt more like the world was nuked at most 20 years ago...
and with 200 years to build up a decent society and some civilization... im pretty sure they would be alot better off than shown in fallout 3.
anyways. i know ive put in more thought than could be considered fair... but the originals caused me to have very high standards in the setting.

Not sure how you can level too many complaints against the setting, when it is almost exactly the same setting as the previous games.

In any case, the answer is obvious: the West Coast in Fallout (80 years after the war) was in a very similar state to the Capitol Wasteland in Fallout 3, and then in Fallout 2 (170 years after the war) the West Coast had gotten organised. What was the big change? In the course of Fallout, the Mutant threat was defeated. But on the East Coast and around the Capitol Wasteland, the Mutant thread is still present, and it's made fairly clear that they were coming close to overrunning the Capitol Wasteland until the Brotherhood began trying to contain them 30 years before Fallout 3 begins. So the folks in Fallout 3 haven't yet had a chance to rebuild - they've been suffering from repeated Mutant attacks for the past 100-or-so years.

 

[honeymonster]

Great review as ever had to agree with the whole oblivion thing this game is great in itself but it's hardly origninal though the game that is not the review

 

[Or3dinator]

thoroughly enjoyed like pretty much every zp

way to go yahtzee

 

[D64nz]

Farcary 2 in a nut shell..

Nice graphics, but they took out some of the best parts of Crysis for some reason. You can still shoot up most things though. But every intersection and there are a lot of them, you have to fight 3 or 4 guards who are albe to damage your car enough that you ahve to either kill them first or run through then kill them, then steal their car to save yourself to inconvienence of repairing your original car. That gets repetitive quick, though I get the impression you kill them once and for all later in the game.

Otherwise, ator good, like the buddy system. They don't help you till you're dead, but it's just there to give you a second life. There's a bit to learn when you start but it's all pretty straight forward. Pills for malaria, syrettes for the damage, and if you're that bad, you have to pull the bullets out with your knife, remove the rebar from your chest, or in one animation, you suck the lead out with your teeth. The moral is getting shot up = bad

 

[D64nz]

If you'd ever seen the guys that made it, you'd know that's not the case. They worked hard on keeping to the original as best they could while bringing into the modern day. I say they pulled it off too. I finished 3, then over xmas played through 1 again, and I think they nailed it. When it came to the atmosphere, which was key to the earlier games, you still got that sense of isolation for the most part, mixed with that dark cyber punk attitude.

 

[D64nz]

Oh and I almost forgot to add... I have to say the best part, is the music. Fit's the scene 100%. If ya search for fallout songs, they are all over youtube at the moment.

 

[Jack and Calumon]

I played Oblivion. I guess by this review I just have to imagine Oblivion with Call Of duty 4 right?

 

[TAGM]

Has Yahtzee ever played the originals?
I guess he didn't, because then he wouldn't compare fallout 3 to Branston Pickle.

I expected much more of a bashing for FO3 by Yahtzee.
It's probably the most disappointing game in the last decade or so and definetly the worst sequel ever made but no reviewer seems to notice....

See, there's a difference between Yatzee and You.
You: Played the original and let it afect your opinion, and therefor found the game to be shit because it wasn't like the old one, there is too many graphics ect.

Yatzee: Either didn't play, like, or let the original affect his opinion, and look at this game by itself, thereby seeing it as good.

Proving Yatzee right: (at the very least, Sometimes) Nostalgia makes you say stupid things.

 

[ruariboywonder]

What a game thanks for the recommendation

 

[Um...TE]

What an awful ending to this game. Certainly their are flaws throughout, but nothing as bad as the way it just ends.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I, as much as I hate to say it, think this is probably one of the worst ZP:s ever. many said that the "noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo"-thing in Spore's review was just a waste of time, but I thought it was fun. The beginning of this review, however, is just skipping as many moments as possible to get the usual length of ~4 minutes complete. And Yahtzee spends a lot more time admiring this instead of bashing.

 

[SpriggsF73]

"I bought FarCry2 yonks ago but every time i sit down to play it something more interesting comes out"... Sooooooo Sonic unleashed was more interesting than FarCry2? Please correct me if severely wrong but Sonic Unleashed/unfinished was apparently so utterly putrid that you couldn't even effectively review it... I trust that you don't care what I have to say nor that I love watching this show however i do think that this particular problem needs to be rectified. Anyway off the negative, love the show, every word of it through out every single episode is true to the word maybe in one or 2 cases a little harsh and in others maybe not pressed enough but hey, you're job, you're life, you're idea. Hope to see lots more great reviews Yahtzee - Live on!

 

[cartooner2008]

"I bought FarCry2 yonks ago but every time i sit down to play it something more interesting comes out"... Sooooooo Sonic unleashed was more interesting than FarCry2?

Apperantly yes.