The most likely winner of GOTY, rpg genre. It's simply brilliant.
I was also a little bit skeptical because I don't really like games that deal with issues such as nuclear holocaust, the end of the world, and stuff like that. It lands too heavy on my psyche, so to speak. But once I inserted that disc into my 360 I was sucked in for good.
In my opinion Fallout 3 has three major strengths and one flaw.
Strengths:
1. The overall feel of the game. You can see, hear and feel that the world has ended, and the human race is struggling to survive, eating radiated food, drinking the remains of clean water, building town-fortresses to find shelter from the dangers of the Wastelands. It's very realistic, actually feels like the world has ended, but somehow it keeps going. It is also very depressing, in a way to play this game. At least for me, I felt really down after the first couple of hours of gameplay. But that's just my sick mind playing tricks on me, pay no attention.
2. The game is even. It doesn't have that one point when it suddenly becomes very difficult after being quite easy at the beginning. It gets harder as you progress, but it feels natural. And that is a great achievement in my opinion. The game doesn't get frustrating, even when you have to repeat a level. It gives you plenty of options how to do things.
3. Everything that you do has some sort of an impact on the gameplay later on. Even really simple things like firing a gun. Story-wise, you have to be careful what you do, because you can be sure that the consequences of your actions will hunt you down. And that's what modern RPGs are all about for me. The fact that you can actually see that your decisions in the game change and influence the storyline. It makes it feel more real and helps you get in character. Fallout 3 certainly stands out in this respect.
The flaw:
Well, as I said above the game has one flaw that can be kinda frustrating. The quest marker on the radar. Yeah, it shows you the direction in which you have to go, but that's about it. Sometimes it makes reaching your destination a real pain. I just spent two hours following the arrow walking around sewers and raider hideouts just to find out that was not the way to go at all, because the sewers suddenly end and there is no way out. So I had to go all the way back to the surface and search for the correct route. And the game is huge, it really takes a while to get to undiscovered locations. But thankfully this is the only flaw I found so far.
So why didn't I give Fallout 3 a perfect score? Not because of the green arrow on the radar. The game just creeps me out. Creeps me out because it's not like the survival horror games which are almost all the same. It creeps me out because something like this could actually happen. And it can happen soon. That's the scary part of Fallout 3. You get to realize that the Wastelands, the struggle for the survival of mankind can actually happen, if some psycho out there presses that red button.