An excellent battle system coupled with the freedom to explore a remarkable environment make Fallout 3 a fantastic game.
Fallout 3 requires no previous knowledge of the first two installments to understand this game. I have yet to play the first two, but I understand that there are things that carry over into Fallout 3 as allusions to its predecessors, but nothing that will confuse you. The story that takes place is realistic considering the setting of the game. The Washington D.C. area is ruined by nuclear warfare. A few man-made cities and the ruins of famous landmarks are the only things left in this barren Wasteland. Your father is a scientist who is tired of the rules and life inside your Vault. He leaves, and you do too shortly after. What you do right before you leave the Vault and beyond can alter the way the story goes. There are two main forces you encounter in the game, The Brotherhood of Steel and The Enclave. Both play a major role in the story, so you'll get to know them as the game progresses. There's also the Super Mutants to combat against if those two weren't enough. The main quest is spent looking for your father and making sure (or not) his plans of providing clean water for the people of the Wasteland is met. The main story itself is not very long, at most 20 hours, but it's the side quests and exploration that provide the meat of Fallout 3.
Before the game begins you can create your character and assign points to different skills. As you level, you'll gain these points to further advance your skills. For example, the more points you add to your Lock Picking skill the more locks you can open. Easy enough. The difficulty is deciding what skills you want to advance because you can't max out all the skills simply from leveling. It provides for some difficult choices, but Fallout 3 is full of difficult choices. You'll also have the opportunity to pick a different Perk after each level. These Perks give you special abilities you can use outside or inside battle. Some are just for plain fun such as the Perk that causes your enemy to explode into many small pieces of flesh and blood. Use these Perks to your advantage to have an easier time in battle or level up quickly. The different Perks are fun to acquire and extremely useful, so choose carefully. You gain experience from killing people, good or bad, lock picking, computer hacking, completing quests, etc. The level cap is set at 20 if you don't have the DLC, so doing certain things can lose its meaning once you've reached the cap. Still, lock picking and such can still be extremely useful so not all the fun is lost.
What kind of person your character becomes is entirely up to you, the player. The type of character your person becomes is based on karma. If you want your character to be a hero and protect the world, kill the bad guys and protect the weak. You'll gain lots of good karma. If you want your character to have no ties to anyone and simply perform the job that's been asked, become a mercenary. You'll be considered "neutral" since you've done in some good guys and bad guys. If you want to wreak havoc upon the already chaotic Wasteland then blow up anything in your paths. Kill as many innocents as you can and show no mercy. You're a devil, and you love the bad karma you get. It just makes you hate life even more. And that is why you have so much freedom in this game. Obviously you have the freedom to travel anywhere since the game is so open, but the choices you have to make are what gives the game it's true freedom. If someone mouths off to you, shoot them in the head. It's that simple. And that awesome. If someone's story touches your heart, make sure to protect them and slaughter that Super Mutant that killed that person's lovely wife. It's your choice. Just be warned: once you kill someone and save your progress (you can save anywhere I must add), that's it. If you find out later that person has a cool quest for you or a useful item it's too late. That's why it is imperative to save often and keep multiple save files. My game froze a lot, but luckily I saved quite often so it wasn't too much trouble, but it can ruin the experience if you haven't saved in awhile.
How you decide to kill a person is where the real fun comes in to play. You can walk around in 1st person or 3rd person view and simply aim and shoot at an enemy with a variety of weapons and explosives. It's fun enough and gives it a classic FPS style. Or you could do it the VATS way and have some real fun destroying creatures. VATS is basically a system that stops the action and presents the enemy on a computer-like screen. From that screen you can choose to shoot or hit specific points of the body. You can risk the percentages and aim for the head for a quick kill, or you can cripple an enemy's legs, arms, or even weapon to gain an advantage in battle if your weapons are too weak to kill it. The VATS system provides for some strategy and some cool effects as well. You'll have AP points, so you can only fire a certain amount of rounds or throw so many grenades per VATS round if you will. Everything will happen in slow motion which is where those awesome effects come into play. Nothing is cooler than watching one bullet lop off a Raider's head or a Mutant's head exploding. Once your VATS is done, you'll go back to regular 1st person action. If your enemy is still alive you'll need to improvise in 1st person mode or wait until your AP points recover to return to VATS mode. The battle system is what makes Fallout 3 so fun for me, and VATS is the main reason why. Everything you do in the game is handled with your trusty Pip Boy. You equip weapons, armor, ingest medicine, and check current quests, status, and locations, etc. by simply pressing the B button to bring up your mini-computer. It's perhaps the most important thing in the game, but no need to worry about obtaining one. You'll get it almost immediately and it will never leave your sight after that.
Fallout 3, despite its freedom to explore, is not an especially long game (by my standards at least). I did most of everything in the game and clocked in about 60 hours worth of play time. Every hour I played was worth it though. The main problem I hear about the story of Fallout 3 is its brevity and lack of continuation after the main quest. Make sure to save right before the last quest otherwise you'll have to start over if you want to continue playing or start from a previous save point made long ago. I would have loved to continue the game after the main quest without having to purchase DLC, so that is a complaint I have about the game. The story is engaging enough, but it is short. It's the side quests and exploration where the majority of the game comes from, but for me it feels like the main story should far exceed any side stuff you may encounter. It's a shame because the story is well-done and interesting, but it ends too quickly. Add in the many glitches the game had before the patch, the fairly frequent freezing, and the expensive DLC and that about sums up my complaints with this game.
The visuals, beyond the gorgeous setting, are acceptable. The character models are well done, but you kind of wish there were more of them. There are a lot of similar looking people in the Wasteland, and considering the size of the game and the amount of people within it, that's understandable. A lot of the same voices are used for different characters as well. It can be a little weird talking with a middle-aged white man, visit another area, and then have a young African-American talk to you in the same voice. It makes for a decent laugh though.
Fallout 3 was a truly wonderful experience. Everything from the battle system, to the environment, and the skills and perks system were done well. My favorite part of Fallout 3 was first walking out of Vault 101 and just being awe-stricken with the look of the Wasteland. You get a sense of confusion as well because you don't really know where to go. Shouldn't you feel lost though? It's your first time out of the vault, so naturally you'd feel overwhelmed. And that's what makes Fallout 3 so great: that ability to convey a real sense of emotion in you. It's always fun to make people go boom. That makes for a good game. Fallout 3 is a great game because of that eeriness The Wasteland is able to portray. As much as I loved the gameplay, the setting and environments were my favorite part of Fallout 3. That and planting a live grenade in someone's pocket.
RATING: 9/10