Fallout 3 - Game of the Year

by Brendan Rose

Fallout 3 is the next in line of the classic series of games from the nineties that allowed you to wander a post apocalyptic wasteland and lose much of your soul in the process, pillaging and tormenting survivors. With it's over the top violence, prostitution, drugs, pimping your wife for money, and killing little kids that throw stones, the game quickly gained cult status among fans. They were warped and deformed by the game forever, and hid in damp caves until the release of Fallout 3. Many of them were frightened and hateful towards the new game, but most have now come to accept it.

After the developer tanked, the licence was picked up by Bethesda, makers of the classic Morrowind, and the tripe Oblivion. Oblivion was a terrible game, but it's barebones engine provided the perfect framework for the new Fallout.

A lot of people thought it was just Oblivion with guns, which was true, but far more importantly, it was Oblivion with decapitation and dismemberment, and they fixed the damn level scaling, and the guards don't attack you everywhere for crimes in one city.

But that is just nerd history. The game starts you out being yanked out of your mothers vagina and told to decide the sex of your character. Your father (Liam Neeson) then has you sent off and you begin a series of milestones in your characters development in the underground vault where you decide your stats and skills which have an important impact on your character. You can also choose your appearance.

The game tries hard to give you the option of pursuing whatever interests you and still being able to get by. If you want to play it like a shooter, you can put your points into perception and weapons. If you want to use stealth, or melee, or focus on speech, the game will accommodate you.

As you level up you are able to receive perks depending on your stats and level that bulk up and customize your character in often unique ways. You can kill most of the people in the vault eventually, not all though. You can kill almost anyone in the game actually, which is nice. One of the first choices you're presented with is whether you want to destroy a town (Megaton) or save it. Your choices have some effect on the story and the ending is dynamic based on a few variables.

It's a very polished, fun game, with lots of depth. The wasteland goes on for miles and it's rich and full with beautiful graphics and plenty of detail, and it's just nice to be able to wipe out a town.

There's also a lot of depth to most of the characters, with a nice variety of dialogue choices, which makes it a lot more fun to blast their head off. The game uses a system called VATS to freeze time and line up attacks against different body parts and then watch all the violence in flashy slow motion. It's a nice throw back to the original isometric game. Strangely, watching limbs and heads go flying off, does not get old over time. The only problem is the regular FPS style fighting feels a bit clunky, you really need to use VATS.

Also available for the PC version is the GECK, which with a simple PHD in Quantum Physics, you can design and build your own levels, and the rest of us can try vainly to place one NPC that immediately runs away from where we placed it.

You can follow the main quest or just explore the wasteland, doing side quests, of which there is an abundance. There are also other characters you can recruit depending on your alignment.

There's a nice variety of enemies to suit different points in your development, ranging from Raiders to Supermutants to The Enclave, and plenty of random monsters like the Deathclaws. It's a nice nod to the spirit of the original games, and the next logical step for the series. The ending, however, is terrible...just terrible.

The main story lasts about 20 hours, and if you like exploring weird vaults and caves full of monsters, there's a lot more beyond that to be experienced.

It's my favorite game for 2008 and definitely worth a try.


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