Oblivion with guns...and VATS! But not entirerly perfect
Dont get me wrong this is a great game. Very addictive, fun, and has many parts throughout that can only be described as amazing. but there are some downfalls to it...at least to me. i came in thinking oblivion clone with guns instead of swords. Very wrong this is in turn its own game. it has some basics of oblivion, the back bone so to say, but the rest is different.
ok first we'll go through the good this game has. Highly immersive quests, Great graphics, Sheer fun, Good story, and pretty good combat. now the quests in this game are highly immersive and when i say that i mean it. some have many parts and can take as long as an hour to just complete one. but the downside to this is that it feels as though there are'nt as many. i'll get more into that later. The combat is fun and good as any shooter but VATS is what really makes this game fun. Basically VATS freezes time and breaks down where you can hit on the enemy and the chance of hitting. add a few perks and do this, then you'll be blowing heads off in gory satification. VATS does well in making this game feel more like a RPG with all the chances and such.
The Quests in this game are awsome too, i sometimes find myself loading and reloading to experiance all the different out comes to them.
Now the mistakes. first there is the sheer lonliness about the game. i felt this alot, there are very few cities spersed throughout the wasteland and when you do find one the people are usually unfriendly and untrusting. this make you feel alone in the big world and it is quite unsettling. The quests i felt were another problem...in multiple catorgories. well first off it seems they cut tons of quests out and just added length to the others. So remember in Oblivion where you couldnt walk from the inn to the mages guild without some crazy running up to you about his paranoia or a lost husband? that barley happens here. Honestly there are tons of oppertunities for quests and some that should be quests but instead the info will go into your notes. you can do the "quest" if you want but you will gain no reward and no acknowlagment for it. Another problem is that there are tons of ways to complete quests dont get me wrong but there arent enough ways to cover all ways of playing, For example there is a quest called "Reillys Rangers" (or somthing along those lines) the Leader of the rangers is in a Coma in a hospital and when you talk to the doctor you can either convince him to wake her up using your persuasion skill (the dialogue choice is shown with a percentage of success) or you can go up to her yourself and use your own medical skill to awaken her. My character is built in the form of a strong guy with all my points put into gun usage or strength or explosives and i had like 30 medical and about 35 speech so the first time i tried i actually persuaded the doctor to awaken her, but unfortunently my PS3 froze up and i had to reload. I had a 26% chance of persuasion and failed on my reload, then i went over to the leader and examined her. i needed a skill of 60 in medicine to awaken her. so as it seems i am stuck until i level about 2-3 times and spend all of my points into medicine. this gets very frustrating. My one last complaint with quests is that the choices you make are pretty permanent, now people may say "hey i want a game that has permanent choices, thats real!" i get that but some choices are just kind of too much. In example there is a bartender who has anamzing and strong merc body guard. he'll give you the contract to the merc if you'll kill his competition. but when you do and return to him his merc throws a fit of rage at his former employer and kills him. now you cannot buy liqour or food in that city. so either get a great sidekick and never eat again in that city or missout on a great companion. some may like this tyoe of game but its not my cup of tea, honestly i liked leanway that oblivion had more, like doing a quest for good getting his reward, then killing him and taking the object to the bad quest and getting a double reward. in Fallout 3 there is no gray area just black and white.
One last point i'll make is this game is difficult, at least i find it that way, the food you do find is always irradiated but you need food to sustain health, Stim packs are varied too much and when you do find them you'll need them to repair a limb rather than to use for normal health regaining. also there usually is a shortage on ammo for yourself unless that is what you primarily spend your money on. But enough ranting
Alothough i picked this game apart for the bad in it, this game is still one of the best games of this year and you'll find it hard to pull yourself away from it.