Looking for Oblivion with Guns? Maybe try a mod, because this is no worthy successor to the Fallout series.
I've been through Fallout 3 twice now, and certainly the time I spent on these runs was, for the most part, well worth it. Yet, when playing through again, recently (after about a year), I realize some elements that just made me want to put down the controller and turn off the Xbox, and I did just that a few times. First of all, if someone has just completed a 100+ hour playthrough of Oblivion, and is looking for more of that great game, they'd naturally come here. However, some features of Oblivion, such as balanced AI and an interesting setting don't transfer over. In addition, going from the luscious and vibrant world of Tamriel, full of blooming trees and tall grass, to a bleak and mostly brown post-apocalyptic wasteland of the future is, in my opinion, not a strong suit of the game. But in this review, I'm going to cover a few main things, and I'll try not to wander off too much.
Graphics- Compared to the original games in the series, great. That's not really saying much, as the games were developed pre-Windows XP, but that's beside the point. Yet, I recently noticed the bland textures and repeated pieces of scenery that made the trek through the wasteland not at all a visual experience. When walking or wandering to one's destination, or lack thereof (and yes, you have to walk everywhere, unless you've already discovered the place), you'll frequently see collapsed overpasses, destroyed houses, and just a general scene of destruction. Sometimes you'll happen upon a place that actually lets you visit inside and talk with characters, but the chances of that are pretty slim unless you actually know where you're going( more on this later- I know I'm going off topic here). Graphics wise, the game looks very good either on an HD set or PC with a good graphics card. However, be prepared to see your 300 dollar graphics card go hard at work rendering brown, repeated textures.
Sound- I know that this topic is usually reserved for the last in many reviews, but in Fallout 3 it plays a moderately important part. Thankfully, the lack of available fast travel to a new destination (a la the horse from Oblivion), prompted the developers to include radio stations with music and talk. I came into the Capitol Wasteland, the first time, and saw "Enclave Radio" signal found. Sure, the repetitive drone of President Eden about politics and general American topics can get a little dull, but to a Fallout aficionado like me, back in 2008, the feature was great. You can also listen to the other main radio system, GNR( galaxy news radio), which has a crazy DJ named Three Dog who fights "the good fight" and plays old timey 40s and 50s sounding music. Going back through the game now, I'm a little disappointed that the developers included only 2 main radio stations ( the rest are either add-on related or just of no real value). Despite the large track list both employ ( enclave has patriotic music and GNR has old timey music), I got so sick of hearing "I don't want to set the world on fire" or "I'm a mighty old man I'm young and I'm in my prime" every few minutes on my journey I turned off the radio. But then, ironically, you find yourself bored to death,( unless you're listening to your Ipod throughout the game) that you'll turn the radio back on in hopes that they'll play some good songs, like "Civilization." But even that gets old quickly. I realize that the universe is a 50s style post apocalyptia, but I would have taken country music just to break the monotony. The talking part of both shows can be interesting, the first time around, but eventually just falls flat on its face. Enclave radio has around 9 little speeches that resemble Roosevelt's Fireside Chats, and that made me smile. However, to keep my good karma, I made a choice in the later stages of the main quest that cut off Enclave Radio. I then went to GNR, but Three Dog is really a guy I wanna kill (and I did, laughably, showing how open-ended, to a questionable degree, Fallout 3 is). The guy acts like your friend when you're face to face, and should be kissing your feet for repairing his radio dish in the Washington Monument. Yet when you hear him on the radio, he usually chides you for doing bad deeds, or talks down to you for things that don't even make sense. For instance, when your character goes to the Enclave Base at Raven Rock, you'll later hear Three Dog saying "The lone wanderer was seen heading into some caves recently. Maybe he's trying to find another vault to crawl into...etc." Who actually cares dude? Sorry, I'm going off topic. This game could use more radio stations with more variety, and if you get the chance, kill Three Dog as early as possible.
Gameplay- Ah, the category that's, in my mind, the most important. The game will take you all across the Capitol Wasteland, either in the main quest or it's add-ons. However, unlike in Oblivion, these discoveries didn't really warrant a trip inside unless I had to. In Oblivion, it was fun to clear out dungeons and caves in search of some gold or just some great gear. In Fallout 3 , the stores and other buildings you discover along the way are just bland in general. I came across a store in the game, (not the super-duper market for you wondering) and I went inside. I expected something, anything at all interesting, such as a Raider hideout, but it was just a store with its shelves cleared, and all that was left was tin cans and burned books. Which brings me to another point. THERE'S, QUITE LITERALLY, LESS THAN 30 BOOKS IN THE WHOLE GAME. So what, you say; I wouldn't read them anyway. Fine, but Oblivion's gargantuan library of books just made me want to spend an afternoon reading all of them. Sometimes they gave you new spells or a skill point. Most importantly, however, they added atmosphere to the game, following in the tradition of its predecessors. In Fallout 3, every book I discovered was "Large Burned Book" or "Small Burned Book." You're telling me that many people survived the apocalypse unharmed, but nearly every book got incinerated? Even in the subway systems? That's just lazy workmanship right there. Sure, there are some books in the game, but they feel mighty rushed and of no thought. You can't even read them, activating them just gives you your skill point in an effort to say "Hey, sorry we didn't really feel like delivering to our loyal fans, here's a skill point, now go away." Sure, Fallout shouldn't be about reading. But don't put hundreds of "Burned Books" throughout the world to compensate. Moving on, another issue I had but it certainly wasn't the games fault was ammo and caps. Ammo can sometimes be found quite readily in merchants and on dead bodies. But when it came time to shoot in the early parts of the game, I felt constricted for ammo for my Hunting Rifle, and I felt vulnerable at times. Sure, there's not gonna be a huge stockpile in the Wasteland, but without the Scavenger perk to allow me to find more ammo in boxes in the early game, ammo use was hard to control. Bottle caps, the currency of the game, are similarly hard to come by sometimes, unless a diligent one searches every corpse and does a lot of sidequests. But for a guy like me ,who finishes the main quest first ( plus the Broken Steel main quest add-on), sidequests are saved for later. I found myself, in the last and hardest part of the Broken Steel main quests, dying, even on the Very Easy difficulty, perhaps due to skill, but also due to the fact that I couldn't afford very many stimpaks to keep my limbs and health healthy. In addition, even though everyone hated the weapon degradation system of System Shock 2, Bethesda put it in anyway, so weapon maintenance, without a high repair skill, took valuable caps. I question why that is, because, really, would a gun that should last a few thousand rounds before collapsing, suddenly, after a nuclear war, only be able to fire around 60? I think not. Again moving on. Last point I want to make are the add-ons. At around 10 dollars each, you'd think you're getting a good deal for a few hours of Fallout play, but in essence, I felt, you're not. To start, the Operation Anchorage is quite possibly the worst use of money you could make on this game. I knew I got robbed when the only talking elements were those to tell your squad where to go, and ask for medical assistance. This isn't Fallout. This is standard FPS + a few talking elements. You're basically fighting through Alaska, but the thing is, you're in a simulation. Meaning, you don't even have to scavenge ammo, and although it sounds as though I'd like this, its a little too good. You get an ammo and health dispenser VERY frequently. Even on the Hard difficulty, I could just blast my way through, without VATS, and succeed, go back for health, and move on. Everything you've been taught about survival in the Capitol Wasteland is ignored, and instead, you attack three little areas where the only real thing you're doing is planting charges, running away, and moving on. As a concession, it seems, Bethesda gives you some cool equipment, like an invisible suit and a shock sword. At first, it was cool. Later, I found myself resorting to my power armor and tesla cannon, so what was the point? Wrapping this up, the other addons are fine but at 10 dollars, makes you question their value.
Story- Ah, definately the weakest link. *SPOILER ALERT^ SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
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end here if you don't want the story to be spoiled
Still here? Either you've beaten the game already or just like to ignore authority. In either case, here's my tiny review of the story.
You come into the world, and choose your sex, name, and facial type. Then, you choose, as a baby, your SPECIAL (strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility, and luck), then you get your pipboy 3000, take the goat placement exam in which you choose your three main skills, and finally escape from the vault. These "early years" were the best part of the story, and its a shame they're rushed so much. Of course everyone wants to get out of the vault, but still, I wanted to explore, talk to everyone, etc. Anyway, you find out Dad has left you, the Overseer wants to kill you, so you make your escape to the wasteland in the search for dad. Travelling to Megaton, you meet a few people, Moriarity tells you your dad went to GNR, and you head off. Here's where the game really starts to go downhill. First of all, you have to travel through the DC area. Sounds fun, but guess what. Just so happens that EVERY SINGLE ENTRANCE into DC is blocked by debris, and you have to go through the subway. In that sense, DC is basically a way for the developers to add loading times, because DC is never really part of the capitol wasteland. And the subway, well, let me tell you, the subways REALLY suck. It's the same goddawful scenery, your usual destroyed train car blocking your path out ,so you have to make a detour, killing ghouls on the way, blah blah blah. I don't remember EVER having to travel through Oblivions dungeons to get somewhere, and even if I did, I don't remember because I was fine with it. The subways piss me off so much in this game, I just want to forget about them. It's really just corridor after corridor after tunnel. Whatever. After getting to GNR, the goddamn Three Dog makes you put a new satellite dish on the Washington Monument, so you get it and put it on there, after a few hours of Super Mutant killing, valuable Stimpak using hours. He tells you Dad went to Rivet City, you go, meet Doctor Li, who tells you he's at the Jefferson Memorial working on Project Purity, a device to sanitize all the irradiated water in the rivers, you go, see he's not there, go to vault 112 to rescue him, go back to rivet, back to project purity, to citadel, to vault 87, to enclave base, to citadel, to project. I won't bore you with the specifics, but the main quest is definately trash. I'm done .
Fallout 3 is a game that can be wonderful or terrible, and to me, despite its numerous features and innovations, is mostly terrible. Rent first. Criticize me all you want, fanboys. I don't give a $h17
P.S (Edit) One last thing ( and yes this is a bad thing so fanboys cover your ears) THERES NO LIKEABLE CHARACTERS IN THE WHOLE GAME. Not one. I can kill every single NPC in the game and go to sleep with my teddy bear feeling like a good little boy. I wouldn't give a crap. The hobos that want purified water, well fine, I'll give it to them. But everyone else that wants me to do crap for them just made me freakin angry. There's a gay uptown clothes seller that wants a city council spot but some other guy that looks like an idiot is taking it away. Yea, sure, I'll detract from my busy day of defeating the Enclave to let you make important C-span decisions. Even the dad is unlikeable, and I'm a father myself. First of all, the dad leaves his kid in a Vault where he wasn't even born? To save the wasteland? Okay, first of all, he couldn't leave a note on the refrigerator? You're told by your friend Amata, who you never even get it on with, and you "have" to leave? I like the Vault dude! Just bargain with the overseer to do whatever, why the hell do I have to go looking for the drunk that abandoned me? Even more so, when you finally catch up with him, he says "i hope your not mad" Uh, sure, I'm not mad that you left me to go save the world, but you failed, so I had to risk my life to come save you, yet you still need me to help you do tidying up around the project. You have to clear the drain pipes. Are you kidding me? The son has to do all this crap for the dad that left him. Fine. Even worse, as a way of putting some emotion into the game, they kill the Dad off. I really couldn't feel any less apathetic than I did at that point. He kills himself to save the project, but only makes the Colonel unconscious and makes it poisonous for anyone to come in to make the project work anyway. So he basically thought it was a good idea to kill himself and basically make the project a suicide mission just so he didn't have to turn over the project to the enclave? Couldn't the brotherhood come in anyway to save the project and he just says ok fine i give up I need to reconnect with the son I abandoned and not concentrate so hard on my work to save the people of the wasteland who are either raiders, super mutants, ugly ass centaurs, or people that have the only redeeming value of seeing their heads fly off in VATS? But even after he kills himself, the Enclave take over anyway. So he dies for nothing, other than for Bethesda to put an emotional tissue needing moment. The only good character was dogmeat, but that was a dog.
So to renumerate, your a guy that looks for the good for nothing dad that abandons you, but you end up doing missions for people that are so unlikeable that you could kill them and have no qualms? For instance, Martin, in Oblivion ,was extremely likeable. Not only did he have great dialogue,he seemed genuine, and earning his praise felt good. I felt bad for Baurus, down and out because the Emperor died. Jauffre seemed like a guy that had the empires interests in heart. The characters had a soul. In Fallout3, they're basically interactive dialouge pieces of crap. Nearly everything about this game is either terrible or contrived. I'm done with this CRAP