Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Immersive"

Before I begin my review, let me first state that Fallout 3 provided many hours of enjoyment for me and, in lieu of the Game of the Year Edition, I bought four of the five expansions (Operation Anchorage being the only one not downloaded). With that being said, Fallout 3 is a game that, while boasting a sizable lifespan in terms of game play hours, suffers from an immense amount of bugs and glitches that can make the entire game nigh-unplayable at certain points. However, this will be elaborated on further later; for now, the story.

Fallout 3 has a deep, engrossing story that spans the entire Capital Wasteland and then some. Voice talent from notable actors such as Liam Neeson and Ron Pearlman set the mood for the nuclear war-ravaged post-apocalyptic wasteland that was once the United States capital. Plot lines branch and evolve starting from birth and reaching a stunning resolution that is entirely dependent on the player's actions, whether they be good, evil, or somewhere in between. Expansion content takes the story even further to new areas in the Northeastern United States and even more, providing a plethora of goodies well after the main story is completed, such as new characters, weapons, clothing, and so on. A fantastic story is not only complimented by a great variety of extras but also easy-to-learn game play.

The game play in Fallout 3 is fairly easy to comprehend for anyone who has played a shooter in the past 4 or so years. A standard aiming mode with a crosshair is present and the over-the-shoulder precision aiming mode is also accounted for, making combat for every type of range easy enough for those fairly new to the genre. Exploring is also a breeze with clear descriptions of items along with a nice, time-saving feature that informs the player if a container is empty before opening. Also, character statistics, vital health information, mapping, quick select customizing, and item categorizing are done through an intuitive, wrist-worn device called the Pip-Boy 3000 which can be easily accessed with a touch of a button.


By far the most interesting and innovative aspect of the game play is the V.A.T.S. targeting system which allows the player to target individual parts of an enemy's body with a percentage indicating accuracy and a small bar underneath indicating limb health. Crippling a body part has different results, such as staggering with a crippled leg and dropping a weapon with a crippled arm. In all, Fallout 3 offers an accessible control scheme that can be worked with ease.

The sound design for Fallout 3 is truly something else, offering a highly atmospheric experience that sets the perfect tone for any situation the game presents. Whether lurking through destroyed sewers, sprinting across the Wasteland, and everything in between, the background music fits the mood perfectly. Most notably, the tense sneaking segments (when electing to play in such a way) are accompanied by some truly haunting music, making each encounter more dreaded than the last. It would not be beyond me to say that there were plenty of frightening instances resulting from a surprise encounter with an enemy. Even with all its positives, Fallout 3 is not without issues.

The most notable negative aspect of Fallout 3 is, by far, the persistent and often crippling technical issues that continuously break up the action or, in surprisingly frequent cases, freeze altogether. Even after downloading patches, the amount of slowdowns, freezes, and glitches were unbearably frequent, especially in downloadable content areas. Point Lookout seems to suffer the most from freezing, seeing as the game froze an average of twice per hour, causing me to pause the game when slowdown happened to allow the system to catch up. Even in other areas of the game there were constant frame rate issues and strangely misplaced enemies (such as multiple Raiders being stuck halfway into the ground) which drove me to the point of controller-throwing madness.

There were oddly specific areas of the game that caused the entire game to freeze up when traversing them (and yes, I checked for scratches on the disc and there were none), which is definitely one of the stranger complications seen in years. Even in conversations there are glitches, the most common being one that rapidly skips through dialogue automatically, resulting in multiple choices of the same speech option (when available) in order to fully understand what has been said. But what is the most frustrating, without a doubt, is the constant lag that covers the game. The system rarely keeps up to appropriate speed during most action, leaving combat a little less satisfying and leaving a perpetual fear of freezing looming over the experience.

In conclusion, Fallout 3 has a truly engaging story, easy-to-learn controls, and enjoyable extra content but is a technical nightmare. Even so, most are able to overlook the bugs and freezing issues and find a truly enjoyable experience that will last for well over 50 hours. If you haven't bought it yet and the Playstation 3 version is your only option, Fallout 3 is still a blast.