Vault 101 — Jewel of the Wastes. For 200 years, Vault 101 has faithfully served the surviving residents of Washington DC and its environs, now known as the Capital Wasteland. Though the global atomic war of 2077 left the US all but destroyed, the residents of Vault 101 enjoy a life free from the constant stress of the outside world. Giant Insects, Raiders, Slavers, and yes, even Super Mutants are all no match for superior Vault-Tec engineering. Yet one fateful morning, you awak…
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I am old enough to have played the original game when it first came out in 1997. I was a great fan of the series that followed and, thus, was very eager to get my hands on this latest installment. In a short sentence: FALLOUT-3 is A DREAM COME TRUE! And now the dream is complete.
It is a cRPG game in which the player can alternate between the First and Third person perspective roaming a world comparable in size with OBLIVION. The action has moved from Vault 13 and Southern California to Vault 101 and Washington, D.C. and the story brakes away from the previous bloodlines. However, the atmosphere of the original has been maintained and its scents sharpened: veterans will find it fitting like and old glove – whereas the new gamers are in store for a bag of pleasant surprises.
The graphics are wonderful, the guns detailed and the environments highly interactive. Short of a screenshot, imagine what would HalfLife-2 would look if released today. And similar to HL2, FALLOUT-3 does not require an…ubercomputer to run smoothly. Once you see a NPC move though, you understand where the corners were cut.
Character customization is carried out in great style using the new and improved PIP-BOY at the beginning. You exit the vault and the harsh reality of a world that barely survived annihilation slaps you on the face. Adapt or perish.
The main storyline is there to be followed but FALLOUT-3 offers the greatest number of alternative choices I have ever encountered in a game! There is always a great number of paths to follow in order to achieve any goal – but every choice comes with a consequences tag. This is common feature of most classic cRPGs but in FALLOUT-3 I saw it implemented like never before. If nothing else, this sends replayability through the roof.
Side-quests offer little besides distraction and experience points (XP) to be spend on character improvement. XP are gained solely by completing quests, emerging victorious from fights, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals – and they are not limited by the action they were earned. Leveling up is based on 7 basic attributes [Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility & Luck - acronym?;)] that, in turn, affect your (13) specific skills. Leveling up used to be capped at Level-20 (increased to 30 by installing the DLCs), as the game designers wanted to encourage replaying the game. However, with this increase, now your character can realize its full potential. Replaying the game is still a joy though.
The game is violent and gory but well within tasteful limits. Not so with the language – but it is trade off with realism. In a radioactive world, Sunday-school niceties are bound to go out the window.
What deserves a special mention is V.A.T.S. (:Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) which opens new vistas in cRPG design. It is an ingenious system which lets you pause the game and target specific body parts of your opponents. The success of your attack still depends on your skills but the end effect is cinematic and amazing (remember SWORDFISH?).
This GOTY edition includes all 5 DLCs released so far: OPERATION-ANCHORAGE, THE PITT, BROKEN STEEL, POINT LOOKOUT and MOTHERSHIP ZETA. Compared to the basic FALLOUT 3, applying the above improves the experience immensely! As mentioned above, since one used to reach the Level 20 cap long before the endgame, increasing this by 10 levels will give you a brand new ballgame.
Augmented weapons, new territories, novel foes and unexpected story branching – all for the price of the original game. I own the original game and coveted after these DLCs in the past months, waiting for a complete edition such as this GOTY one. When it became available I jumped at the opportunity to get them all. And did not regret it for a moment.
After the nuclear summer of 2008 (with all the Limited-Installation/defective EA releases), this seems like a post-apocalyptic dawn indeed! BETHESDA decided to listen to the gaming community and did NOT cripple this beautiful game with any idiotic DRM scheme. Inputting a serial number and a DVD-check is more than reasonable.
The publishers of FALLOUT-3 understand that there is a fine balance between “protecting the product” and…”insulting your own customers”. And they obviously view respect as the two way street that it is – and for this they deserve our support: buy this game, today.
Voting with our wallets is the only argument the gaming industry cannot afford to ignore. And it is about time to cast some well deserved positive votes.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Rated 4 stars alone but with the all the expansions (and including broken steel that like magic
wil make the games fantastic by adding 10 more levels and increasing the degree of difficulty a lot
from the beginning of the game not the expansions only) So you install all of them and start the
game from the very beginning and it becomes more difficult a lot faster. Stronger enemies, Great new weapons, and fantastic variety of locations, etc. to me there is nothing out there that can match this game as a total package. So I rated 5 stars. This will only apply to the PC version… NP
After being introduced to Fallout 3 through a friend, I quickly learned that Bethesda has a way with their games. The makers of the award-winning Elder Scrolls series struck video game gold again with this particular gem. And better yet, they have compiled the original game with all 5 of its expansions into one affordable package that can be summed up in one word: Awesome.
Right from the beginning (even without the expansions), you know this is a game worth playing: A “lone wanderer”, as the protaganist is called, searching for his (or her, you can be female as well) father in a post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. overrun with Super Mutants, heartless Raiders, and other creatures as well as many different types of people.
And that’s just the main quest. Taking a page from their Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda allows it so you can complete numerous side quests as well as the main quest, making it so you do not have to play it straight through. Take as much time and do as much as you want. The character creation system has been improved from its predecessors, Fallout and Fallout 2 (developed by Interplay), and Bethesda has kept many features, such as the S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) as well as many of the perks and attributes such as Lockpick, Small Guns, Sneak, and Science.
But, to make things even more interesting, Bethesda also released five expansions over the past 9 months. They can be installed at the player’s will, meaning you do not need all of them to play this game. That, plus the many wonders of modding on the PC version, allow for countless hours of enjoyment while playing this game. I highly recommend it for anyone who has the time to get away and indulge in post-apocalyptic bliss.