Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"All it's cracked up to be"

I'll try to keep this at a reasonable length.

I haven't played any of the other Fallout games. I think the last one was made just a few years after I was born, so it's understandable, I guess.

First game I played on my PS3, it was great. While the graphics aren't anything too flashy, they pass, I could see where I was going. In fact, the sort of grainy look almost enhanced the game, it worked with the 'Ink spots' classical/jazzy music. The whole theme just reminds you of grainy old war movies, nuclear war TV warnings, gas masks, memorials, you know.

Apart from that, the actual game play is great. As a person who is pretty lame with the whole cross-hair-shooting-blazing-guns thing, V.A.T.S was a god send. (V.A.T.S is where you click a button and the game pauses, lets you select a bad-guy body part for you to blow off.) There wasn't a huge range of weapons, and if you run out of ammo/heal ups and get stuck in some obscure place of the huge (and I mean fricking ginormous) map, you stay there and you continue to die and die.

The relationships you could build with various people was entertaining, and the Karma system managed to keep me in line. I almost felt achieved when I gave that radiated guy some clean water to drink. And blowing off a slaver's head with my shot gun and seeing the old Bethesda guy pup up with his green-good karma symbol was strangely satisfying.

There wasn't a huge variation in bad-guys, but this didn't really hinder anything. I think I killed about a thousand mole-rats throughout the game.

Later in the game things became really very easy. Most enemies go down quickly, the tougher ones stick around long enough to take a few shots at you. But, I ended up putting the setting on 'very hard', just too make killing things a bit more satisfying.

However, at the very start of the game, things can very difficult for a player, especially one with no ammo.

The radiation awareness turned out to dictate a lot of what I did in the earlier levels, since walking through radiated lakes can almost kill you when you have no radiation resistance or anti-rad medicine. But later on, when you turn invincible and have about four billion dollars, radiation slips under the radar.

The experience > level up > upgrades system was pretty standard. You put all your yummy little points into various different skills e.g repair (fixing your weapons/armor), small guns, big guns, laser guns, explosives, bartering. Then you have your perks, which are little abilities that help you, e.g 50% fire resistance, + %5 head shot chance in V.A.T.S ect ect. And, at the start of the game, you have your most basic point tree thing. Like strength and dexterity. These pretty much effect how long you last when you're getting stomped on and shot at by big yellow monster people.

The story, which was basically about your wasteland wanderer looking for and helping his dad, wasn't brilliant. But it wasn't a true let down, I mean, I don't have any problems with it. The quests had you jumping all over the map looking for him, searching for him, and when you do find him, there's not really any sense of satisfaction. Partly because he turns out to be a bit of a phony a-hole.

Of course, everything you say and do affects how everything turns out in the end, and what happens along the way. Many games brag about this. But I don't think it's that special. Anyway, F3 is very big on this. Literally everything you say either mildly pissed a CPU off, or makes them shoot you. And if you shoot back, every human within a hundred miles gangs up on you. Those F3 wastelanders aren't the most forgiving bunch.

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graphics 7/10

gameplay 8/10

themes/atmosphere 10/10

online -/10 never played =/

general variation 6/10

map/playing field 10/10

So much for keeping it short...