Girl Gamer

Visually, the game seemed to keep a dust-covered and post-nuclear feel to the game without being too dark and muted but where they pinned that down they seemed to lose the crisp edges that Oblivion had. The originating character selection screens were just terrible and it seemed that not a lot of care was taken into cleaning up the skins and hair this go around. Your character will never look far off in facial structure or skin tone to any OTHER character in the game. I also noticed that there’s just no point in using the third-person perspective because the animations are off-key, they’re clunky and you’re too far out to really appreciate it. Best to just stay in First Person, where it’s safe and you don’t have to look at your bastardized and poorly done-up face, you know? Another thing I noticed, is while they took great care and consideration into the item detail, the menu detail and such like that, why did they drop the ball with the environments? There were times I watched the sky break out into seam-crunching pixels and flashing ground where the textures weren’t lined up. Come on, guys! Quit reminding me that this is a videogame!

When you start off in Fallout 3, you’re in a lovely place called “The Vault” and this is your home and has been your home (As far as you know.) since birth. They kindly walk you through the years, guiding your experience and giving you a good grasp of life in a fallout shelter until kindly kicking your ass outside into the vast Wasteland you’ll encounter. While you have a million options open to what kind of character and which kind of combat skills you’ll choose, you’re armed to the teeth with the V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System) which will kindly lineup your shots to specific body parts on the enemy at hand. Sound confusing? Imagine if you could freeze-frame a fight with a bully, strategically pick out which body parts you wanted to pummell and then let loose with the pain in a matter of seconds. Yeah, V.A.T.S. does that for you and while you do need AP points in order to do so, plenty of items in the world of Fallout 3 will help you keep nice and ready for anything coming your way. When you pull up the V.A.T.S. you’ll see all the available body parts that you can attack with a percentage of success atop each limb making it nearly impossible to not get a good shot in with your varied weapons. Trust me, this adds a completely authentic level to the game and keeps your fights interesting since you’re going to grind through a million on your quest to find dear Daddykins.

As far as the ease-of-use, the quests and the difficulty curve; I appreciated what this game brought to the table. I experimented with different types of characters and training branches and once I settled on a “Tank” character, I breezed through faster than I was wanting to. That was the nice thing about Fallout 3 though, you can stop and smell the dead flowers whenever you want. People keep complaining about how short the game is, but the great thing about these titles is that you only go as fast as you make yourself go. Stop and help some people find their parents, let them know they’re dead and then derail completely away from everything else for awhile. Bethesda does a great job of making the game open for everyone to find something they like and with so much to do, there’s a ton of room for replay. I did notice though that sometimes, in games like this, they don’t reel you in fast enough if you feel yourself spiraling out of the loop and I would’ve liked something like that. “Oh, did you remember you were supposed to be gathering cereal? Right, you are.”; would’ve been nice to see once in awhile when I found the atmosphere truly eerie and alone.

Will I keep playing? Surely. Even though there are flaws in this title’s visuals and that it seems Bethesda just reskinned themselves a nice Post-Nuclear version of Oblivion, you can’t help but find the charm everywhere else. If you enjoy novelty Collector’s Editions, make sure to get this one as the Bobblehead, the Tin Lunchbox and the “Making Of” DVD are definitely worth the additional price. However, if you’re not down with the enemy grinding and the constant loss of real drive and determination to finish these quests, then you should probably skip this and snatch up something simple like Zuma, because this isn’t your game. If you’re like me though and you can look past visual flaws and stylistic inconsistencies just to get to the real meat of the game’s dynamics and originality, then you’ll dig the hell out of Fallout 3.