An Epic Adventure
The lead up to Fallout 3 was an exciting one for me. I had always fancied playing Oblivion but I have never been a huge fan of the whole swords and goblins genre, I am more of a gun guy. Then I heard Fallout 3 is just oblivion with guns, I was sold.
Fallout 3 is essentially an RPG set in a post apocolyptic Washington DC. You start of as a young child in Vault 101 a place designed to keep good citizens of the 50's safe from radiation. One day your father decides to wander of out of the vault with no explanation and being the inquisitive type you go out into the wasteland to find him.
Before you leave the vault you are given your pip-boy 3000 this wrist device is used as pretty much any normal game mechanic, its your inventory, stats and map. This is a useful object and a great way to put all your information in one place and also let friendly strangers call you vault dweller.
Straight after exiting the vault your eyes blur into focus and present you which starts as a beautiful vista of desolate wastes and sets a good tone for the rest of the game. Fallout 3 is visually brilliant sure it doesnt match up to your FPS games but for a world with this scale everything is nicely textured. The only issue is the settings limits your in a wasteland so the colour palette is pretty blande but there isnt a lot more you can do with a world that is suppose to be desolate but famous buildings like the washington memorial look brilliant in their ruined state.
Exploring the wasteland can become tiresome wandering through endless plains but all of this is livened up by thriving cities, struggling settlements, charming caves and dangerous camps. In all of these places you meet interesting characters all with their own stories and attitudes to you and will surprise you sometimes and i dont mean wow he swore i mean Oh Crap I didnt want that to happen kinda stuff. Each place has similar layouts with places where you can buy ammo, food, weapons and just general stuff but each has its own style from Megaton a place built around an unexploded bomb to Little Lamplight a society run by children.
While exploring this rich world you may bump into a few people where the radiation may have gone to their head a bit or legs or arm. In this case I advise combat which takes a bit of getting the hang of but is generally solid in a non-combat focused game. You can go for the standard FPS style but VATS is the way to go. VATS is a great new take on RPG combat rather than selecting an attack and watching it take place you get a target of your enemy dividing up parts of the body with percentages of hitting them. You can then take out a leg a weapon or a good old head. The weapons are unique in many cases and fun to try out although i did find myself tight on ammo a few times.
I could go on forever talking about all the little things I love about this game but essentially the thing that gets me about this game is the size and brillance of the adventure it takes you on. Everything is a mystery in this game and discovering new things is what keeps you playing you want to walk across miles of nothing to get to a small settlement where there will be a unique character or event that will just make you do the same again. Many people may say this is Oblivion with guns but to me it has a unique character which seems focused round the premise. If you are a Sci-Fi fan or an RPG fan you need to play this game there may be frustrating moments but at the end when you look back at is like I am now it makes you realise how great not just the game but the experience is and will make you want to go back and explore it all.
