Fallout 3

 

 

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Played Fallout 1 and 2 a lot. My favourite RPGs are turn based (fallout 2, Arcanum, etc).
I was upset when the news that Fallout 3 was going to be in first person shooter variety.
I decided to give it a try and ordered this collectors edition from Amazon.
After almost 10 hours in the game, having covered something like 5% of the world.

If you are willing to accept that there can be a fallout game that isn't turn based bird eye's view, then this is Fallout 3. When I was wondering how a Fallout game would be, 10 years ago, I was thinking something like Mad Max. Fallout 3 manages to reach that level. Fallout 3 is and feels like the true sequel to Fallout 2. It's a superb game, it's a superb Fallout game.

If you manage to put aside that this is not a remake of Fallout 1 and 2, then you will not be dissapointed.

Had some crashes. If you have ffdshow installed, disable the decoding for the two executables of the game. Don't have anything else running while playing this game, including browser and messenger etc. Do not alt-tab. When you want to quit the game, first quit to the main menu, then quit to the desktop.

This should help with your crashes if you have any.

Excellent game.

I was just graduating from University in 1997, old enough to have played the original game when it first came out. I became a great fan of the series that followed and, thus, was very eager to get my hands on this latest installment. In a short sentence: FALLOUT-3 is A DREAM COME TRUE!

It is a cRPG game in which the player can alternate between the First and Third person perspective roaming a world comparable in size with OBLIVION. The action has moved from Vault 13 and Southern California to Vault 101 and Washington, D.C. and the story brakes away from the previous bloodlines. However, the atmosphere of the original has been maintained and its scents sharpened: veterans will find it fitting like and old glove - whereas the new gamers are in store for a bag of pleasant surprises.

The graphics are wonderful, the guns detailed and the environments highly interactive. Short of a screenshot, imagine what would HalfLife-2 would look if released today. And similar to HL2, FALLOUT-3 does not require an...ubercomputer to run smoothly. Once you see a NPC move though, you understand where the corners were cut.

Character customization is carried out in great style using the new and improved PIP-BOY at the beginning. You exit the vault and the harsh reality of a world that barely survived annihilation slaps you on the face. Adapt or perish.

The main storyline is there to be followed but FALLOUT-3 offers the greatest number of alternative choices I have ever encountered in a game! There is always a great number of paths to follow in order to achieve any goal - but every choice comes with a consequences tag. This is common feature of most classic cRPGs but in FALLOUT-3 I saw it implemented like never before. If nothing else, this sends replayability through the roof.

Side-quests offer little besides distraction and experience points (XP) to be spend on character improvement. XP are gained solely by completing quests, emerging victorious from fights, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals - and they are not limited by the action they were earned. Leveling up is based on 7 basic attributes [Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility & Luck - acronym?;)] that, in turn, affect your (13) specific skills. Since leveling up is capped at Level-20, the game designers wanted to encourage replaying the game. On the other hand, it also means that your character will never realize its full potential (in case you are wondering why I withheld a star from FUN, that's the second half of it).

The game is violent and gory but well within tasteful limits. Not so with the language - but it is tradeoff with realism. In a radioactive world, Sunday-school niceties are bound to go out the window.
What deserves a special mention is V.A.T.S. (:Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) which opens new vistas in cRPG design. It is an ingenious system which lets you pause the game and target specific body parts of your opponents. The success of your attack still depends on your skills but the end effect is cinematic and amazing (remember SWORDFISH?).

After the nuclear summer of 2008 (with all the SecuROM-defective EA releases), this seems like a postapocalyptic dawn indeed! BETHESDA decided to listen to the gaming community and did NOT cripple this beautiful game with any idiotic DRM scheme. Inputting a serial number and a DVD-check is more than reasonable.
The publishers of FALLOUT-3 understand that there is a fine balance between "protecting the product" and..."insulting your own customers". And they obviously view respect as the two way street that it is - and for this they deserve our support: buy this game, today.

Voting with our wallets is the only argument the gaming industry cannot afford to ignore. And it is about time to cast some well deserved positive votes.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

I got this game a little after its release, due to a slow delivery. Being a huge fan of Fallout 1 and 2, I was a little miffed. Since receiving it, I have been playing it nightly, and I have completed the main storyline and explored nearly the whole Capital Wasteland. That fact, and the fact that I have been a PC gamer for 12 years, may add some weight when I say that this is one of the greatest games ever made. Top 5 territory, no doubt.

That is not to say that's its perfect. Truly, I don't think the perfect game can exist. But this game does have its negatives. The character movement animation is poor. Sometimes quests can be a little buggy. Navigation is very difficult at times given the low resolution of the pipBoy map. I personally think there should be more NPC's to join you.

It is also true, however, that unfair criticism has been levelled against it. People lament the AI capabilities; but this is a game of turn-based skill, to a certain degree. If you run out of action points, it reverts to a first person shooter, and in that context the AI could be considered pretty poor.

It must be noted that despite the negatives and criticisms, this is a game beyond compare, with uncompromising vastness in scope and scale. It is the game that you dreamt of 10 years ago. An utterly believable post-apocalypse landscape, featuring many strange societies and forms of life, so many opportunities and potential pitfalls...genuinely, another world inside your PC. It is the definition of immersion in gaming, with every sight and sound drawing you in. You couldn't describe a nuclear wasteland as beautiful, but it's certainly stunning. The gutted buildings, collapsed highways, burned out wrecks of vehicles and husks of towns and cities, not to mention their eerie empty playgrounds, are a visual feast. The 50's motif is high camp, and plays off well against the harsh reality of this world. There is a sense of humour present, right alongside the tension and pathos.

All of this, and we haven't even gotten to the actual game play. This is a deep, deep game. It's a game of exploration, with vast internal and external environments to creep around and learn about, which takes quite some time. It's a game of action, featuring lethal rad-altered creatures and super mutants, as well as raiders and wandering insane robots. It's a desolate wasteland, but inhabited, as you encounter traders, raiders, slavers, communities and facilities. And, most importantly, you can do pretty well anything you want to amongst all this. Free the slaves and kill the slavers - be a hero. Join the slavers and bring them fresh meat - be a git. It is such a free-form, open ended, free will type of gaming, that it can seem daunting. Games like Fable offer a lot of options along a fairly linear course. This gives you many more options and styles of play in a totally open world. And the world IS open - there is none of the Grand Theft Auto style open appearances and hemmed in realities.

If you are already familiar with Fallout games, you will be very happy with this. If you aren't, you will probably get them in short order after finishing this. It offers so much more to the gamer than anything else around at the minute, and it is truly an icon for what games can be.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Not quite,but still fallout
I did expect bit more,but its fallout and its still fun.Hope they do Fallout 4.

Published on 28 Feb 2009 by Mr. T. Cudzis

3.0 out of 5 stars Letdown of the year
Despite months if not years of hype, this game doesnt live up to its predecessors standards, and not even to its own standards... Read more

Published on 27 Feb 2009 by Papalamprou

1.0 out of 5 stars Unplayable
I just got and installed the game. When I click "new game" I get a "your game has stopped working" error and windows gives me the option to close the program... Read more

Published on 4 Nov 2008 by A. Chesser

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