Rockers Delight

Fallout 3 Love

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 11:42 am in General Gaming · Comments

So I’ve just (accidently) finished Fallout 3, and I’m actually pretty gutted it’s ended. You know you’ve played a great game when you’re disappointed to see the credits roll. Never-the-less, this paves the way for Tomb Raider: Underworld, The Last Remnant, and Grand Theft Auto IV - all of which are patiently sitting beneath the tree, awaiting my overly zealous hands to tear at the festive paper that adorns them, cradling them close to my body… Yeah, I’ve gone too far.

Anyway, back to Fallout. I played the good guy, umm, girl, as per usual. There are Achievements for reaching certain levels with good karma, neutral karma, and bad karma, meaning there’s plenty more game time to be had if I do go back for a second playthrough. Not to mention there are actually a few different endings judging from the options I was given in the final quest. But with all those other games… Will I even bother?

Truth is, I probably will at some point. I had such a blast playing Fallout, and despite putting 60+ hours into it, there are still locations to be discovered, side quests to be uncovered, terminals to be hacked, and those cute bobblehead things to be found. I think I’ve finally got a crush on action RPGs.

What I particularly like about Fallout 3 is the V.A.T.S. system (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System), which, fair enough, takes you out of the action for a few seconds and slows down the pace (meaning it may not be to everyone’s tastes), but gives you the precision and estimated chance of hit to a particular body part. Sometimes you get a critical hit and your enemies’ body blasts into numerous pieces - all in slow motion!

But what I like even better than the gore factor is the environment in which the game takes place; post apocalyptic Washington D.C. It’s a very dark game, and often quite ‘grungey’ in places. I found myself having to nudge up the contrast meter a few times, but it never actually helped very much. I guess Fallout 3 is simply meant to be dark and difficult to see in places. Despite discovering over 100 locations, I didn’t feel any places were similar enough in appearance to get tedious. In fact, Fallout 3 provided plenty of variety in that sense, and I never grew tired of discovering and looting towns and buildings.

Your character - whether you choose to be male or female - is essentially on a quest to find their father, who’s a highly respected Doctor and has escaped from the Vault in which you’ve been brought up in, causing a little bit of controversy, to put it lightly. Initially I thought the dad was voiced by Pierce Brosnan (I’m no good at identifying voices, but I knew I recognised it!), but it’s actually Liam Neeson. Personally, I love the relationship the father and daughter have developed (in my case anyway, seeing as I opted to be female). It didn’t take long for me to recognise these two people actually had a pretty solid bond, which is nice as I’m actually a bit of a daddy’s girl myself, and it’s not often games do a good job of successfully portraying character relationships to the extent you feel you’re part of a family. The dad himself is also a very likeable character, so you never stop and question why you’re on a mission to be reunited with him.

Unfortunately I’ve not noticed too many people on my friends list playing this. Why that is I’m not entirely sure, as I’m certain you’d be hard pressed to find something better that’s out at the moment (not saying there aren’t a ton of great games, but seriously, Fallout 3 is awesome!). I’m super intrigued as to what the two previous games were like (did I read somewhere the combat was turn-based?!). Why oh why did I stop gaming for a stupidly long time?

Anyway, I hope that some of you have this underneath the Christmas tree this year. A word of advice: play with surround sound. Those Super Mutants sound damn scary coming up behind you.

Tags: Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV, RPG, The Last Remnant, Tomb Raider Underworld