The word is...

[WrathOfDeadguy]

My long-winded $0.02 on Fallout 3:

 

First things first- The facegen system is far, far better at creating faces that look human this time around. It's still not perfect; a larger viewing window would help a lot, but for my money it's a massive improvement over Oblivion's. There are fewer options, but I'd rather have fewer options with a more user-friendly facegen than the other way around. The presets weren't too bad, either- I ended up going with only a very slightly modified version of one, and haven't regretted it. Kudos for the growing up bits; it pulls the player into the character from the beginning and aids immersion later. Also Kudos for not making the player character Mr/Ms Popularity and not saddling the player with any "you're our only hope, now get out there and save the world" stuff at the outset. This is a major improvement even over the classic Fallouts, both of which featured your avatar as the go-to Hero from day 1. I rather prefer it this way.

 

Second- It's all over the reviews already, but the art in this game is absolutely incredible. Some of the animations are a bit stiff- a carry-over, I think, from Oblivion- but the visuals are impressive. I'm not running at full settings (for the sake of my defective video card, which I don't want to overheat and die... which would necessitate a logic board replacement since it's a laptop), but very little of the scenery had "game" written on it. There were a few minor glitches, to be expected in a game of this size (namely a building in downtown DC that wasn't quite lined up with the terrain, allowing me to peek under the base of the wall), but on the other hand I experienced no stuttering (even when firing the Fat Man multiple times with 6-7 NPCs actively fighting on screen), negligible pop-in, and equally negligible character model distortion (I'm halfway convinced that the gibbing that takes place after particularly violent deaths prevents that, as the most frequent violators of the laws of physics are arms and legs). Indeed, despite being a brand-new game with a slew of new visual effects, Fallout 3 seems to run far better than Oblivion does (2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, 512MB GeForce 8600M GT). I haven't crashed from in-game yet (though I did run into the crash-on-program-exit, which I get with Oblivion as well), which makes the smile on my face even wider- Oblivion has lately taken to crashing at every other loading zone. Crashing is always system-dependent to at least some degree, but the difference between two games using the same basic code points to an awful lot of tweaking in the years between one and the other. That speaks worlds about the level of polish Bethesda put on this game, and I'm absolutely elated.

 

The enemies all look exactly the way I wanted them to. There's a feeling of *rightness* about them. Feral animals hunt in packs (which can make for some nasty surprises if you fail to notice a straggler), which lends a sense of realism to the world. The critters don't feel like enemies so much as natural hazards, while the human and mutant enemies behave more or less as expected and the Feral Ghouls lurk around in the dank, dark, depressing places you'd expect to find living corpses in.

 

Third- To all of you 'professional' reviewers out there who think Fallout 3 is lacking in the spirit and humor of its predecessors: you need glasses and hearing aids. It's all there. It rocks. A few bits, and I won't say which because I'd be spoiling a few surprises, had me in fits of giggles over things that no sane human being should ever be caught in public laughing at. No, the gags are not all the same, but what good is a game that just repeats everything with better graphics? That only works as far as the first sequel, IMHO, and moving in a slightly different direction is a good thing after that. Nothing felt outright silly; they've taken great pains to maintain immersion, but the humor is there if you look for it. It would have to be- the inhabitants of Fallout's world live in such a depressing reality that they would die if they couldn't find anything to laugh about- and those are the kinds of jokes to keep an eye out for. There's plenty of ironic humor in the idealistic pre-apocalyptic world (or what little bits of it you find lying around), but the meatier yuks are to be found in darker things (planting grenades in enemies' pockets, for instance). If you've grown up with military or doctor humor, especially of the emergency medicine or special forces varieties, you'll catch on rather quicker than most.

 

The gameplay, however, is completely and utterly different, even setting aside the obvious differences in graphics and scale. Fallout 3 is to Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 as the H-Bomb is to Little Boy and Fat Man; they're in the same family but this is a whole different level of badassery.

 

On to the weapons and combat, because those are some of the most important things.

 

The weapons are great. To flesh that statement out a bit, I should say that in order to really appreciate the weapons, you need a decent repair skill. Half of what makes the weapons as good as they are is the constant fixing and tinkering; it adds to the immersion in a way that never quite breaks down. With some repair skill, you can cannibalize weapons to repair other weapons of the same type. This is not only a nice way around the usual "use a disposable tool to fix your gear" gimmick; it really adds to the immersion- nobody's making parts for any of these guns; the manufacturing plants are all radioactive rubble. In that context, what would you do if something broke on your gun? You'd take apart that duplicate you've got and use it for spares, and that's exactly what this system simulates. Armor works the same way (though some of the clothing/armor items should be interchangeable for repairs, since they're pretty generic in both materials and appearance). There are a few oddities in the way the weapons function (i.e. the hunting rifle draws from the .32 ACP ammo pool, rather than using rifle-caliber cartridges like its counterpart in Fallout 1&2- IMHO it should've shared the 5.56/.223 ammo of the assault rifles), but I suppose that can be chalked up to the cobbled-together nature of most of them (the aforementioned hunting rifle is held together with what appears to be a combination of wire and duct tape).

 

Combat is fairly well handled; VATS shines for quickly taking down enemies, especially up close. I've already come to rely on it for nailing fast-moving enemies, since I'm not exactly Annie Oakley of Gaming. Bullet's-eye-view kills are very, very satisfying. None of the effects of targeted shots are lost without using VATS... but good luck shooting a pistol out of somebody's hand without it (it can be done, but not easily even at point-blank). Crippling damage is brilliantly done; I intentionally crippled my character a few times just to watch her limp around on a bum leg. Take enough damage to your head and your vision blurs; take enough damage to an arm and you can no longer use two-handed weapons, blood spatters in your eyes when yout ake a particularly nasty hit, and so on. Gibbings, for the most part, make sense- the few times I got blown up, I came down several dozen yards away as a triple or quadruple amputee. However, Fallout being Fallout, there are gorier deaths to be had. Exploding heads never get old, and most automatic weapons are happily capable of sawing limbs off all on their own (so are single-shot weapons with a good enough critical).

 

To all of you who think this is Oblivion with guns- I have to disagree. There are similarities (and comparisons are as inevitable as those with Fallouts 1&2); they're based on the same engine after all... but there aren't as many of them as some folks have been claiming. Were it for nothing else, the environment would make all the difference on its own- Oblivion is full of wide open spaces peppered with claustrophobic dungeons... many of Fallout 3's exterior environments are as confined as the subway tunnels. Not once yet have I been able to proceed directly towards an objective in Downtown- what would have in the open been at most a three minute jog became a forty-minute crawl over and around rubble, through tunnels, and past enemy patrols. Navigating the city requires a certain degree of patience and willingness to explore; this is not a game you will find easy to like if you tend to get tunnel vision while running a quest. The impassible barriers are, for the most part, concealed in rubble that looks as insurmountable as the barriers are, so it doesn't feel forced or linear. Those places are sharply contrasted against the Capitol Wasteland surrounding DC, which is as open a place as any post-nuclear explorer could hope for. I haven't run into the edge of the game world yet, so I don't know how that was handled, but navigating the Wasteland feels just about how it should. Add in hazards like mines and bear traps (which are just plain awesome in light of the damage model allowing crippling wounds and gibbing), and the whole environment really feels like the war zone (and post-war zone) it is.

 

For anyone who was disappointed with the lockpicking minigame in Oblivion, Fallout 3's is better. Much better. I'm not quite sure where my char keeps pulling that screwdriver from, but a lot more thought was put into the lockpicking this time around; it ditches the gimmicky minigame feel of every lockpick minigame to date in favor of a head-on view of the lock and- surprise, surprise- a technique that looks like it would actually work against a real lock. Not to rag on lockpicking too much, but any game which has a minigame that doesn't work this way ought to have just dropped it altogether and made lockpicking stat-based like in almost every older RPG.

 

Inventory is fairly well handled- if you have a lot of stuff, it can be a pain to scroll through it all, but navigating around the interface is intuitive enough. I'm particularly fond of the little lights and knobs on the Pip-Boy that turn and flash when you switch menus, and the radio interface is pretty nifty (it'd be cooler if there were a user track mp3 player built into the game, but nothing's perfect and maybe it'll be modded in later).

 

Overall, I could think of a few things I'd change, but it'll probably be a cold day in Hell before anybody manages to top this. A's across the board, with a generous helping of A+'s. Well-imagined, well-made, and well-executed. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back and pop a few more Super Mutants before bed.

[mjjking]

Man now i'm really depressed; i've got to wait till my wall-mart gets it's next shipment because there was some kinda screw up and they only got the ps3 version in; ive gotta pc. . . . . . . :(

[worm82075]

Thanks Wrath, good read and I agree on every point. GOTY, here we come baby!

[hybridfan]

(it'd be cooler if there were a user track mp3 player built into the game, but nothing's perfect and maybe it'll be modded in later).

 

Oh that would be an awesome mod, great read but I don't know why PC Gamer gave it only 90%, should be more like 95% IMO

[mikekearn]

What an excellent review. Makes me feel like a clod for the pithy review I made on another site. I have to agree with pretty much all your points. In fact, the only thing I have to comment on, was your remark:

 

None of the effects of targeted shots are lost without using VATS... but good luck shooting a pistol out of somebody's hand without it (it can be done, but not easily even at point-blank).

I actually find it far easier to take out weapons from afar when not using the VATS, because then I can be sneaky, and they aren't actually trying to dodge my shots. :biggrin:

[Tehpastaboy]

Good review. Thorough, and accurate. +kudos.

[migius]

Great rewiew, thanks.

One of the coolest game feture to me is that it generate people, trader caravans, hunters and so on.

But the one thing that keeps me smiling is the distant noise when a mine goes of, lol.