Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Instant classic"

If you've ever wanted to roam a huge open world completing fun and challenging quests for what seems and unlimited amount of NPCs, while fighting raiders, giant radscorpions, super mutants, Feral ghouls, and other radiated monstrosities, with a huge arsenal of weapons you can find, steal, buy and create. While all the while gaining experience to level up for new perks and skill points that contributes to your skills such as Sneaking, Small guns/Big Guns, Science and Hacking. Then you'd probably love Fallout 3. However this game is far, far more than that. Welcome to post-apocalyptic bottle cap currency America (Washington DC) of the year 2277. Where America has kept its 1950's culture, but it's technologically as you could imagine (year 2277) has advanced quite far, with robot servants who will give you nice trendy hair cuts, and Anti-communist war robots that will fire on you for "not wanting to die for your country". In fact This is probably one of the best things about Fallout 3. Its politically driven humor. With posters across the wasteland of Brotherhood members telling you "your country needs you" and homes where women cannot step foot outside of the kitchen. Simply put Fallout 3 has some of the best humor in a game since the GTA radio. You play as either a Male or Female (choice is yours) who has spent all of their life so far in Vault 101. These are Vaults that were built in anticipation of the nuclear fallout. Allowing people to live underground protected from the horrors of the wasteland. Being a vault dweller you are equipped with a pip boy 3000, which acts as your central hud in this game. Allowing you to change weapons, check out your quests, view the Wasteland map, nurse injuries and quick travel to some locations and even has a radio (which is quite good). Fallout 3 can be played from both first person and third person. However its best using both of them; third person for roaming the wasteland and some platforming and first person for shooting, mele and generally all forms of combat... combat...yes this is indeed a huge part of this RPG. You'll most likely spend most of your time using guns in this game. Some favorites will likely include the combat shotgun, flame-thrower, Chinese assault rifle, plasma rifle and the fatman. And if you haven't the slightest clue what the fatman is. Google it. Better yet Youtube it. I assure you. It is quite awesome. You'll also find yourself when your low on ammo and weapons using mele weapons a lot in this game. Meles can be very useful as they can cause quite a bit of damage (sledge hammer!) and are more likely to cripple opponents. Cripple you say? We'll come to that. However another option is collecting schematics, these blueprints allow you (if you have all the needed equipment) to create your own weapons. One of these weapons; the Rock-it Launcher is quite a smart and fun weapon allowing you to launch any equipment and essentially garbage you have at enemies, making it an effective way to get rid of things you don't want. Be careful though as weapons and even your apparel have condition bars, and once that depletes, they break. So you will need to keep them in tip top working order .The other great thing about Fallout 3 is its very gory and gruesome visuals. A mercs head being completely burst apart by a shotgun shell, resulting in brains, eyeballs and teeth flying about everywhere is as common as a Radroach, and believe me there common. There is even a perk "Bloody Mess" which allows you to see even more gore, while also giving you a 5% higher chance of critical. This gore however is best witnessed while using V.A.T.S (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting system) is a system apparently allowed by your Pip Boy to freeze time and see every part of your enemy's body with a health bar and a percentage. The Percentage tells you how likely you are to hit the selected body part, which can be anything from the legs to the head. Using your AP (Action points) which allows you to use V.A.T.S you select which parts you want to hit. The more AP you have the more attacks you can initiate. Once you have selected the parts of your enemy you wish to hit. You press the fire button. The screen then cuts to an angle of you firing/striking your foe in slow motion. And if you kill the enemy(s) using V.A.T.S and it's a critical hit you're rewarded with not only extra XP but the sight of your foes arm or leg or both flying into the air along with streams of blood, muscle and bone. However V.A.T.S really becomes useful when you use it to cripple your foes. This is were you use V.A.T.S to specifically attack one part of your opponents body such as their leg. With a decent weapon it should deplete the bar of that particular limb rather quickly, and when that bar reaches 0, you guessed it. You've crippled that limb. Resulting in the foe not being able to move as fast (leg) or aiming poorly (arm). Though I'm still not quite sure how you cripple ones head...mystery. V.A.T.S can also be used to disarm foes, by aiming at their weapons, though this can also be done by firing normally but requires some accuracy. Believe me you will spend your time using V.A.T.S a lot while on quests. Which brings us to the story. The main quest in Fallout 3 revolves around you, the character you have created looking for your dad, who has left Vault 101, forcing you to leave the vault too to find him. This quest then unravels into something far bigger, but I won't spoil that. The thing is though with Fallout 3 is that even though there is a main quest you will spend hours upon hours doing other quests before you complete it. At one point you'll brave numerous super mutants in a covert mission to find Riley's Rangers, while in another mission you'll be off recovering or helping escaped slaves. Notice the or. That or is one of the biggest and best aspects of Fallout 3. Choice. This game is essentially littered with player choice. With noticeable impacts of your choices across the wasteland. So much so that when you kill a radio host, and then tune in to the radio later on, you'll be amused to find they've been replaced with an equally yet very different type of obnoxious individual. And this manifests itself in your first real quest when you enter Megaton (a town that ironically resembles a shanty town). You are offered to blow up megaton for a few 100 caps. However when you speak to the mayor and sheriff (by hisown proclaim) He then offers you to deactivate the bomb. For a similar amount of caps. However if your speech skill is high enough you can persuade him into paying more caps, but if you haven't invested some skill points into your speech skill, you won't be able to convince him or the many others across the wasteland. Which takes us onto our next point. The player choice of how you play the game. Fallout 3 is a game that encourages you to play in your way and be your own character. You could choose to spend all your points on Small guns, Big Guns and Mele Weapons, so that you can go in all guns blazing leaving a path of blood, guts and bone behind you. However you could go with a more subtle approach, and spend your points on your sneaking ability to sneak past enemies without being seen or inflict instant KO sneak criticals. Then again you could spend all of your points on your Lock picking ability so that you could open any ammo container or most normal doors. OR. You could spend your points on your hacking ability so that you can hack into computers and read personal files, gaining intel that may be useful to your quests, use computer terminals that are controlling torrents and change their targets from you to your foes. Its really up to you the player. Visually this game is quite beautiful. To gaze into the distance of the wasteland is quite something. The realism of shooting enemies and their blood covering the walls and stairs and remaining their for days on end is a nice touch. Another great thing about this game is Vault boy. Yes that blonde guy. He models everything in the game. From every weapon in your weapons menu, to all the costumes and perks you can obtain. Making it quite funny and cool. Having said that though the only real con in this game is the occasional bugs you may run into. Such as being stuck in a wall forcing you to reload the game. Apart from that this is without a doubt a land mark game. Since the launch of this game, most new games with any form of story telling, are now trying to incorporate more player choice. You can even see some fallout influence in games as different as Red Dead: Redemption in its honor and fame rating system. There has also been a surge of post-apocalyptic games. A genre that had seemingly died out. Fallout 3 without a doubt has redefined the open world genre of gaming and also player choice. There has always been games with player choice, and huge open worlds, however not many have hit the nail on the head quite like fallout 3. Almost like a band popularizing a genre of music that wasn't really in the public eye. Thats what fallout is to its genre and indeed the whole of gaming.