The rare single-player game with massive replay value
After beating this game for the first time, I debated whether or not to write a review at the time. The entire northeast corner of my map had gone unchecked, and my gamerscore sat at around 350, most of which was from story missions. After taking a 2 week break (wrought with a desire to continue my wasteland adventures), I decided I'd go back in and leave as few stones unturned as possible. Now about 4-5 hours into my second play through, I am confident in saying that Fallout 3 is pretty awesome.
The universe is what always attracted me to the Fallout series. I was not aware of the games' existence until about 2003, but as soon as I dug a little deeper (read: wikipedia'd) I was intrigued by the idea of a retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic world. When I finally got around to playing Fallout and Fallout 2, I was disappointed by, quite honestly, their age. I don't doubt that if I had played the games in 1997/1998, I would've been far more impressed and, at this point, have many fond memories that would've allowed me to enjoy playing them now. But as a newcomer, the games felt old and slow. When Bethesda's Fallout 3 surfaced, I was pretty ecstatic that this world would be revisited with some newer technology behind it. I respected the achievements made in Oblivion (mainly the massive, lively game world), but didn't care much for the setting, so when game journalists began calling Fallout 3 "Oblivion with guns," I was absolutely fine with that. After playing through the game, I found that the universe had been realized essentially as I had always imagined it could be. It offers many surprises, too (among them vampires, Lovecraftian horror, throwbacks to the American Civil War, and aliens). The world seems to lend itself to anything you want to throw at it, from humor to horror to drama to action. The environments are expansive and give a feeling of desolation, with enough scattered landmarks to feel like there's still lots to do. Characters and enemies are varied, and each time you think you've seen it all, a mutated grizzly bear rears its overly-aggressive head for the first time and mauls you.
One of the most interesting things about the game is the gameplay. At first glance, it looks and feels like a shooter, and can, in fact, be played in that way. Granted, if you DO play it consistently as a shooter, you'll find it far less tight and enjoyable than many definite shooters, but the fact that you CAN lends itself well to the very Fallout idea of doing whatever you want, however you want to do it. Beyond the FPS facade, though, is a deep RPG system, full of survivalist inventory management that never feels obtrusive or bothersome, semi-turn-based combat with epic kill-cams, and a nice bit of party management (if you ever find a party member, which is certainly not a guaruntee). The RPG elements sort of turned me off at first, although I recognize that you can't really make a non-RPG Fallout game, but I later realized that everything fell into place in such a way that it made the world seem more immersive and real.
Under normal circumstances, I'd write a third section about, say, the story or the music, but I don't want to spoil the story, and it's far more important that I tell you to buy the game than it is to talk about Inon Zur's great theme music and overall decent score. So buy the game. Play it. Twice. At least.
