Fallout 3: don't leave a key underneath that mat for me

Dear diary, Jackpot!

Due to the love for this game along with a handful of others that were released within the same month, I held off on reviewing Fallout 3, from Bethesda, to allow myself to soak in a good dose first without regretting a new spontaneous appendage growth. After 10 levels of play and over 20 hours in I can safely say without any regret or second guessing that this is the best game to come out in a few years.

Now to make such a hefty judgement one has to weigh all the factors that make up a legendary release of a game. So I'll quickly run through a list as to what I look in for a game.

1. Difficulty and Reward - Is the game hard but rewarding when accomplished?
2. Learning and Yearning Curve - can anyone learn after about 2-3 hours of play and will people want to play it
3. Tingling the senses - Controls, graphics, sound: feels good, looks good, sounds good yet doesn't tax a system it's played on
4. The rug tying the room together - Storyline, depth, cut scenes, loading time, monotony, violence, humor, packaging, properly debugged prior to launch, total hours of play, possibility for sequels/expansions, etc

Fallout 3 doesn't lack from much at all. It might be a little more difficult to learn but overall nails all 4 factors well above average. It probably shouldn't be played by all children as to the somewhat excessive and exaggerated violence or the tie into what could be a grim reality but if a kid can somehow afford to pay for it and the system to play it on, they're probably old enough to play it. Even though it's the 3rd in the series, previous games are unnecessary to enjoy this version as pieces of Fallout 1 and 2 are sprinkled throughout the game.

Taking place in the year 2277 (30 years after Fallout 2) you are a dweller of Vault 101 (near Washington DC) and have never stepped foot outside of your vault. A war ravaged the land 200 years prior and your father one day decides to leave the vault. Quickly you follow his path out into the ravaged Wasteland. From there the game becomes very like Bethesda's prior open style games where you are able to travel anywhere you can survive and make whatever choices you see fit to the people and things you encounter.

Fallout 3 is an RPG in the sense that you can change your character over time and can interact with those around you with narrative dialogue. The combat however is much like a 1st person shooter but with the addition of a stop time system called VATS. Similar to Fallout 1 + 2 you have an action point bar which at any time can be used to complete actions in VATS. The VATS system is probably the most unique idea around for combat in its presentation of how combat could go.

Statistically connected to your character's attributes, your actions and their outcomes are based off of RPG elements such as skill using the type of weapon, range from aggressor, etc. You press a single button to initiate VATS and select where you would like to attack your target and a percentage appears as to the possibility you will land a hit. The whole system is actually optional in usage and can be ignored but I recommend that you shouldn't due to its helpfulness, uniqueness, and visual splendor.

Once your action points are spent the rest is played out much like a beautiful slow motion orchestrated movie. Only it's better than a Wachowski and John Woo film combined (Ok minus the leather and doves). The outcomes can be jaw dropping and darkly humorous like using a sharpened frozen banana because you can eat the evidence (not in the game).

What Bethesda designers do well is making tediously repetative activities fun. Hacking into computers, for example, is done by scrolling up a page of many different words and making attempts at what the password is with the computer telling you how many letters are correct out of the selection before you are either locked out, pick the correct word, or start all over again.

Fallout 3, unlike it's similar Morrowind predecessors and other ethical based titles such as Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, etc, caters more to the ethically evil type of character and the most overlooked, Swiss loving, Nicomachean neutral alignment. Dialogue options usually involve many responses, most of which include at least one similar to a Snake Plissken or Mad Max reply. Hacking into a computer can yield you someone else's money or can lead to valuable information but at the expense that it is "stealing" and lowers your karma even if the person that the computer belongs to is "evil" to begin with. Those Mark, Matthew, and Luke fellows might of been right when they were talking about the Sower.


The environment of interactions between people, aspects of the wasteland itself, the technology, and the way information is presented has a very 1950's tone to it that gives the game a personality where other games sometimes have a gap. This personality is a backbone and helps to pat you on the back any time the unsettling attitude of the wasteland starts to affect you. At the same time the 50's disposition is oblivious to the seriousness of things such as nuclear blasts and presents things in a dark fashion just like the old "duck and cover" instructional videos.

The Wasteland itself is done much like a portrait of the DC area as some major highways and landmarks can be seen throughout the game and contained within buildings are well designed mazes of rubble and ruin. Unlike Oblivion, I felt that there was less repetition in what is contained within buildings and Fallout gives a better feel for truly trying to scavenge and scrounging for items of survival instead of handing out tools and trinkets without a challenge.

One nice change from previous games was a few collector's editions that had some nice TREAsures included like an old metal grade school lunchbox that can only fit 3/4 of a PB+J sandwich, banana, and pudding or the contents of the game, a bobblehead of the lovely Vault Boy, making of DVD, art book, and for the big spenders a PIPboy clock.

There are already plans to release expansion packs similar to those for other Morrowind games as early as January 2009. They include one set in Anchorage, one in Pittsburgh and one as the Brotherhood of Steel in DC.

So would you survive in the remnants of a shattered and irradiated world? Or would your curiosity kill all nine of your lives and make your corpse pile a smoldering flesh pit for good measure? Or would you get the best of the Wasteland and exterminate every begging, crying, ugly forgotten survivor out there? Only going out and buying the game will prove to me what you are truly capable of.