One man’s voice blasts through the speakers, saying words about the Good Fight. His words travel far and bury deep within you as you look around. As the voice behind the radio began to speak about the news he had received, you once again stepped outside the small shack, loot in hand and blood under your boots. The sound of a sudden thud spooked you, making you stop in your tracks. Looking down and behind you, you see the Raider’s head roll over towards you. Passing you, the eyes of the raider looked up in to yours. You can still see the man’s soul inside those eyes, slowly fading away in to the darkness. Seeing this, you can only think one thing. That at least he was now in a better place. Because Hell could not be this bad.
“Thanks for listening chilllldren!”
Three Dog wrapped up his news segment. Swearing because you missed it, you close the door behind you and draw your repeater, which used to belong to an American President called Lincoln. Or something like that, at least. Whoever he was, he sure had a good gun to shoot things with.
Around you is the great wasteland. Nothing but sand, rocks and blood surround you, with a faint glimmer of fallen cities in the distance. With a slight smile you start walking ahead, knowing that wherever you end up, it would always be an adventure.
Teh Pwn Shop presents
a Greyarch Entertainment review by Puddle Jumper:
Fallout 3 – Game of the Year edition.
This game is just way to large to make a video about really. Because, even if I make a review of twenty pages, it would still not be enough to fully write down the experience. So I decided to just divide this review up in pieces and in multiple parts. For now, let’s dig in to the main game of Fallout 3. Starting with the Fallout Universe.
There have been several games prior to this one of which two belonged to the numerical series. Obviously, seeing as this is Fallout 3 and not 6. Even though it could be beneficial to acquaint yourself with these games, by reading reviews or watching the Gametrailers.com retrospective, it’s not exactly required. Sure, you would miss out on a few fun references here and there. And you might not fully appreciate the characters, factions and events. But, in the end it’s still a whole experience that requires little to not knowledge of the previous installments.
The Universe itself is quite awesome to dig deeper in to. It’s set in a futuristic version of the 1950’s, with laser weapons and robots, that was destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. Though it is 200ish years later, you can still say it’s the 1950’s as time has basically stopped. Pulled back even to more medieval times. Everything however has that classic 50’s vibe to it, down to the clothes and music. Even the technology itself is quite old, even though it’s set in a “future” time. Imagine that you’re dressed up in Power Armor a la Master Chief, wielding a plasma pistol and a laser rifle and you fidgeting about a computer that’s still working on DOS whilst Galaxy News Radio is broadcasting an oldie.
Then there’s the actual world. From the ingeniously built Megaton to the lowly fences of the Republic of Dave, the world has a whole lot to offer. Every locations seems so different and so unique, whilst at the same time it’s often repeating buildings, models and voices. It’s the vibe that’s different every time alongside the stories of that area. Bethesda has done a good job of making everything fresh in that aspect. You’ll meet men and women of wisdom. But also the craziest motherfuckers you have ever seen. Cool is that the history and backstory of these people can often be found in computers and by talking to people. You get a LOT of story to soak up.
Every hero needs a villain. And so, for the vault’s Lone Wanderer, Bethesda created Raiders, Ghouls and Super Mutants. The Raiders are your standard nutballs with guns in the desert. Nothing fancy there. Ghouls are more interesting though. They are human being that have been deformed by extreme amounts of radiation. One word to describe them is Zombies. Normal ghouls however remain to be human beings in mind and soul. Whilst the Feral Ghouls are just plain old zombies a la Resident Evil. Luckily, it’s the movie Zombies as these guys move fast and furiously. Wouldn’t be much fun otherwise. At any rate, these Ghouls replace the black people really. A lot of racism surrounds them that constantly reminds me of the black community of those times.
The last humanoids on my list are the Super Mutants. A big mystery surrounds them as nobody knows their origin and point of origin. As the story progresses, you start to learn more and more. It becomes quite fascinating in the end. I won’t give away too much here as I really don’t want to spoil these guys. I normally don’t use smilies in my reviews but I just can’t help it this time. Super Mutants are quite o.o worthy.
And there’s a lot more where all that came from. Inner-people relations, random encounters, side quests, references and easter eggs are scattered all over the place, waiting for you to find them. Most of Fallout’s Wasteland is what it is. A wasteland. But still, I’ve had most my fun just walking around the giant map, discovering a lot of fun stuff along the way.
Graphically it’s a solid game. They’ve cut back on a lot of things when it comes to variety. Models in general. You’ll often find the same things and people scattered about the place. Eventually you’ll start to get insane at this matter though, especially when Gary comes to play. Who is that, have I met him, have I seen him before, he looks familiar. These are all questions I ended up asking myself. Because, believe it or not, some characters like to travel from city to city or from city to remote place. Not often, but it happens. At any rate, everything looks more detailed and full than I had expected from a game this size.
Sound wise I don’t have a lot of problems either, other than the fact that they only managed to scrounge up like 4 voice actors for the entire freaking game. They probably spent all their wads of cash on Liam Neeson and Ron Perlman… Actually, why am I complaining about that. Ditch the other voice actors and get Christopher Walken in there. He can even do the kid’s and Women’s voices for all I care.
Also, the mood and vibe of the Wastelands is that you are supposed to be alone in the big bad world, fighting creatures far more dangerous and higher up the food chain. The music in this game does a good job of keeping you in that game as it never breaks that illusion.
How this world treats you all depends on your Karma. Yes, there is karma in this game. And no, it’s not as unbelievably thick as in inFAMOUS. My god was that stupid. What do I do? Save that pedestrian or step on this bag of kittens?
No, no, no, no. These are actually quite good and subtle at times. Is doing the right thing also the good thing to do? Is the good thing to do right? If you do the right thing, will good come of it? You will be surprised many times over.
Now, besides your choices in conversations, your karma also is changed by your actions. For instance, you can give Purified water to a hobo and you can steal from people either by pick pocketing them or stealing from their property. Pickpocketing is a lot of fun though. I mean, reversed pick pocketing. If you’ve already played this game, you must know what I mean. 1,2, KABOOM. Mhuahahahahahahaha …. Yeah, I enjoy that a tad too much.
Here’s where it gets interesting in my opinion. The gameplay that is. You see, one of the main aspects of this is the fact that you create your own story. From birth (literally … TOTALLY gross. First thing you hear is your character being splat out of the vagina.) to the end, you create your own adventure. You choose your own character, you make and evolve and that character and you can decide how the world perceives this character. For my first run I went with a female Dudley Do-right. And for all you future Wastelanders, a female is a good option in this game as they have a perk that really swings it in her favor.
Fallout 3 uses conversation branches that allow you to chose how you reply. You can reply in a good manner, bad manner, neutral manner, ending manner, constructive manner and manners related to your stats. Depending on your choice, you could have a very different playthrough than most other people. For instance, early on, you are given a choice whether or not you perform a little … euh … scenic redecoration. It’s not as simple as a yes or no answer here, as there are a few variations that you can explore. One thing is for sure though, you need to have a good stomach if you want to follow through on a few of these options.
As far as personality goes, you can also use your own imagination to further create your character. But linking together events in the game and giving him or her feelings and emotions. It’s very rich like that.
As Fallout 3 is also an RPG, you can also build your character each level by giving points in S.P.E.C.I.A.L and Skills. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. is given at the beginning of the game and after you selected a specific perk when you ding. These are the big ones, not as specific and do a few things. There’s strength, perception, luck, endurance, intelligence, agility and charisma. Then there’s the smaller skills, more specific this time. There’s a lot more of these that can be raised to one hundred each. Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Melee Weapons, Small Guns, Unarmed, Lockpick, Medicine, Repair, Science, Sneak, Barter and Speech. Each of these can be leveled up reading books found in the Wasteland in all sorts of places. You’ll be amazed where you find them. Of course, the books only raise one point each. There are objects in the world that raise ten points. Although these are far more rare and are for both Special as skills. One for each category. These are the bobbleheads. Nice to collect and awesome to find. A quick tip though, if you have 90 on a skill, go and get the bobblehead if you don’t have it already. Just a friendly advice. And research skills before you play this game. No, seriously. DO IT. It’ll make your life a whole lot easier. Well, your characters life actually …
Besides all of this you can also further customize your character with armor and weaponry. There’s all sorts of weapons plus a few unique ones as well. Though, the armor isn’t really that big a deal anymore once you obtain companions.
Which brings us to the next to last part before the actual gameplay itself. Your character has one companion slot besides one reserved for your good pal Dogmeat, one of the most useful allies you have ever met. This guy is a WoW pet. A dog that can soak up more bullets than the Army of Two guys and that can aggro anything and fast. Then there’s humanoid companions. These guys can be quite annoying at times because they tend to kill things faster than you can. Meaning you don’t get XP for their kill if you haven’t hit that mark yet.
Lastly, with every level you gain, you get to chose a perk. This can range from a stat raising perk to an ability perk. There’s a perk where you can eat a corpse, there’s one to raise your strength, one that summons a mysterious stranger to help you in V.A.T.S. and countless more.
True to the RPG, the combat has V.A.T.S. It’s a system that allows you to select where you attack. You go in to first person mode and a part of your enemy lights up. You can select the part and shoot. A very useful addition to the game. For one, if you sneak up to a character and go in to it, you can first cripple his leg with the crippling first shot in Sneak mode and then kill him with headshots.
Shooting also isn’t a lot of trouble as you auto-reload fast and become a better shot if you level the right things. In the end you’ll be a mean killing machine.
Moving around is simple enough. You can switch from first to third person mode. I prefer third person most of the time because first person is just not doing it for me when it comes to the mood. Crouching automatically puts you in sneak mode, jumping can be rather tricky when you actually need to jump and switching weapons is made very easy by assigning weapons to D-pad buttons.
There’s nothing special to be found here really. Most of what makes Fallout 3 so awesome can be found in the world itself and its lore. Not to say that the gameplay isn’t sweet as hell, because that is what it is.
Once again, Fallout 3 is an RPG. Meaning every enemy you kill has loot and there’s a lot of booty to be found in treasure chest and in plain open field. (Seriously though, there’s a “uckton of shit lying around.) This you can either use yourself, repair your equipment with or sell in stores. Using it yourself is self explanatory but allow me to go deeper in the other two. Repairing your equipment is vital in this game, as everything degrades quickly and there’s not always spare guns equipment around. This can be a real drag as you obtain some of the more sweeter guns early on, when other things like it are rare at best. Next are the stores. They act as you expect but what’s not so funny is that they have a limited amount of caps, depending on the time. If they just sold a shipment, you’re golden. If not … well, you’re fucked.
Now you have the gist of the game. So now I want to talk about some of the gripes. Starting with general complains.
You really need to save a lot out in the wasteland as you can never really know when you’ll encounter a trap or just enemies. Because death sends you back to your last save, or autosave from when you exited a building or fast traveled to a location.
Speaking of traps, some of these things are insanely hard to spot and will kick you in the balls more times than not. Well, that’s why they’re traps … but still! Come on!
Speaking of traps, why do I have insanely stupid companions? These guys will run over every trap in the room without me moving an inch. And they will sometimes run off on their own as well which is quite annoying.
Why does hacking a computer make no sense at all? It’s like the board game: Mastermind. Only when it says there’s one letter right, it means squat. As either there is no other word that has all different letters besides one or it’s the fourth word with all different letters and there’s still just one right.
Then there’s the numerous unforgivable bugs. Companions get stuck behind doors, buildings are locked off and there’s no other way in whilst everyone says it open, the game will freeze on many locations, equipment will disappear, dialogue will not appear even if it should, quests will not be completed even if you did and so much more.
This game truly is a coin. On one side you have the game of the year. My favorite game ever and an all around champion. On the other side … My LORD the mistakes in this game!
Here’s the quick recommendation if you haven’t bought it yet: Rent it or borrow it first. A weekend will get you far enough to see its flaws and beauties. Far enough to decide whether or not its your cup of tea.
This isn’t the end of the review folks, as there’s five more expansions and more blogs! There I’ll also be going deeper on a few subjects I left out here. Don’t want to overwhelm you, now would I? Just know that this part alone is a good representation of how I experienced the game.
See you next time.
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