Great game (Fallout 3 (PC))

Member Name: aaronphil

Product:	Fallout 3 (PC)
Date:	25/08/09 (17 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good game play

Disadvantages: Not overally breathtaking graphics

I've never heard of Bethesda before but have heard of Oblivion and thought it looked quite good. I got Fallout 3 after hearing a friend going on about it and it sounded good.

Now I'm new to the RPG game genre and hence I thought the game is was playing was an FPS due to the guns and relatively linear city/vault/metro maps. Enough of my opinion for the time being... time for a plot... The game is set in the US during the year 2077; you play a character (customizable to your choosing) that is supposedly born in Vault 101 (a safe place for inhabitants to reside from the terrors of the outside world). You spend all of 18-19 years in the Vault but then your dad escapes to the outside world and you follow him. You are thrown into random challenges just to find your dad.

So back to some opinion... as I've said I am new to the RPG scene and having never played a game in this genre before I thought this was an FPS but it does seem to have changed my mind about RPG gaming from the nerdy fairytale world of goblins and dragons etc... Fallout 3 has shown me that RPGs can be set in the future and be quite good fun without making you look like a geek.
When you first start out in the game you can customize lots of parameter for your character including: gender, race, hair colour, hair style, facial hair, shape of the face, complexion of the face and your general abilities. You can talk to other characters in the game with a choice of questions to ask and responses to give that character, in some cases how you answer determines what the outcome will be.
You have access to the radio although the only things you get to hear are the president on one and some hippy one-man do-gooder that plays pre-war jazz. You've got access to a world and local map as well as the list of current quests (tasks) and access to all weapons and aids via your Pip Boy 3000 on-wrist minicomputer thing.

Now onto actual game play, the game is very fun to play, quite scary in parts and can be quite frustrating to find how to get to certain parts of the world map using the various metro tunnels etc... and with most places needing you to cross a river which can take you a while to find a safe way across. There is also a lot of wasting of time when you have to walk everywhere which takes ages when covering large amounts of terrain. Weapon wise, these are few and far between especially when the armoury in the first city you visit is always locked and the only way to unlock it is to have a lock picking skill level of 100. Ammo is even harder to come across and so you do end up using hand weapons rather a lot.
It keeps things going quite well in the game with lots of stuff to keep you busy. The little details like the radio stations do add a comic side to the eerie environment which you are thrown in. From the start it is a bit confusing in regard to what is going on especially when you come out into the wasteland and are unsure of what is friendly and which is foe. Weapons are pretty useless against anything bigger than yourself and it takes a fair few rounds to 'cook' the fool (kill 'em).
There quite a few bugs in this too like some of the residents of cities and soldiers etc... that walk into each other and other objects. Oh and if you've got the newest NVIDIA drivers you will probably have some BSOD problems with the game, my advice downgrade to the ones that are on your driver CD that came with your graphics card because I can't pin-point the exact driver update that causes the problems.

Graphics wise they are good but not anything special, COD4 looks better and runs smoother. The general environment looks ok but human features and flesh don't look realistic enough. Also with the beasties and stuff they don't look all that great and where I was expecting some L4D style good effects they were more 2003 than 2007.

Overall though, graphics aside, it's a very good game. It keeps you going, the graphics are a bit simple and the physics engine could do with some work but in terms of game play, it's just fantastic to play. It has really done justice to the RPG genre to which I am now an avid fan of.

Summary: Keeps you entertained for ages