So anyone who's been following this blog knows I've been thinking about checking out Fallout 3, well I finally did on Saturday. My first impressions follow:

-The game starts in a weird manner. People describe Vault 101 as a tutorial area, but the game does not really teach you much. Perhaps I'm just use to modern games hand holding you in the first area, but Fallout 3's opening dungeon is straight up old school in some respects. For instance during my first "real" mission a character tells me to grab a gun, normally this is where a game message would pop up and tell you how to equip that gun-not in Fallout. To be fair it's not really hard to figure out, but I still did die a couple times before I realized what was going on

-The music is catchy but doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The game features a 50's motif, which is cool but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The game's opening cinematic makes it clear that the nuclear bomb was detonated around 2070, so why is the music all 50's pre rock and roll? Don't get me wrong I enjoy it, but the story and the motif are kind of at a disconnect.

-Dying and reloading is handled really well. It's been a while since I played Oblivion but I'm pretty sure that was one of those games that made you hard load your saves every time you died. I was impressed to see that Fallout 3 just streamlines this, after you die you respawn where you last saved almost as if nothing happened. The load times are quite well done too, and I was impressed that the music/radio plays during them too. I didn't install the game so I was rather impressed by this.

-Finally I really like some of the status effects. Specificly when your head gets crippled it's really noticable and the game swings in and out of focus wildly. I actually got through one of the dungeons with this status effect and that's just one of those "Wow, I can't believe I made it" moments.

Overall I like this game so far.