I decided to sell my
Playstation 3 copy of
Fallout 3 before Christmas in order to get a little extra cash for it. However, I decided to purchase the Xbox 360 version shortly afterward for two reasons. First, there would be downloadable content available soon including a raise to the level cap. Secondly, Amazon.com had a sale where I could pick up the Xbox 360 version of Fallout 3 for $40 shipped. So why not? I figure my Xbox 360 is due for another Red Ring of Death sometime soon, so why not tempt fate?
Story
The year is 2277; some 200 years after the bombs fell. You are the soon to be famous Dweller of Vault 101 living deep underground under the remains of Washington D.C. or what's left of it. Your life in the Vault is sheltered, comforting, but also highly structured due to the presence of the leader of the vault, the overseer. But one day your Dad leaves the vault and the resulting chaos thrusts you too out of the vault. Do you decide to find your Dad or do you find some other things to do?
The story takes many twists and turns as you explore the D.C. Wasteland. Many turn of events are predictable, others come as a complete surprise. What remains mostly constant is the characters remain mostly static personalities. They are hardened by the harsh reality of life in the wasteland. Raiders are always a threat to rob and kill you, slavers can come and enslave you, super mutants want to either eat or capture you, mutated animals and insects are always a threat to kill you, and finally just about anything you eat or drink gives you a little radiation. No wonder people are set in their ways.
Gameplay
Fallout 3 is an action RPG set in a first person view. It's part first person shooter and part RPG, but there's also an element of turn based combat as well. Your character fights most battles through gunplay or melee combat. But it's not a mere first person shooter where you shoot people and gain experience. Instead you're provided a Pip Boy 3000 which allow you to enter into a mode called VATS. This allows you to stop time and target specific parts of your enemy in a slow motion turn-based combat sequence. It's not bullet-time because you give your character a set of instructions and it follows it outside of your control. How long your character stays in VATS is determines how many action points you have. Certain weapons expend a certain amount of action points to use, while other aspects of your character determine how many action points you have to use.
The way your character develops is hardly revolutionary. You start out with 7 basic attributes to distribute points to. Then you have 13 other skills to distribute points into. The basic attributes determine your health, how much you can carry, how many action points you have, and other basic traits. However your skill points determine how proficient you are at using certain classes of weapons or performing tasks like lock picking, sneaking, or bartering. By killing enemies, or performing some of these skills, you obtain experience where you can level up. Leveling up allows you to distribute skill points, but not attribute points. However you also can choose a perk each time you level up. Perks are very wide ranging from allowing you to perform a skill in a unique way to giving you an additional attribute point or set of skill points.
Like Oblivion, character development is quite possibly one of the biggest flaws in the game. But instead of making the game too hard to quickly like in Oblivion, it can make the game too easy if you know what you're doing. While it's tough to max out your attribute points, it's pretty easy to max out all your skills with a little bit of knowledge and planning. In addition there are perks which can turn you into a very deadly killing machine to the point where having a good speech or science skill does not matter in the slightest.
When you factor in the character development flaws, you realize that one of the biggest problems with Fallout 3 is that it's easy. It's rare when you have to deal with more than 5 enemies at a time and by the time you reach level 20, there are enough perks and abilities such that you can slaughter a 5 man Raider party without taking any damage. VATS can make the game that much easier. And there are weapons in the game that can give you all sorts of incredible abilities and killing strength.
One gripe I have is that there are some annoying aspects of Fallout 3. In VATS you can have your crosshairs lined up on an opponent with an unobstructed view or so you think. Instead when you enter into VATS you end up dumping a ton of valuable rounds into a doorframe for some weird reason. Then you exit out of VATS with nary an action point to save yourself.
Still, one of the more compelling aspects of Fallout 3 is the various quests that you can undertake. Each quest has a branching storyline that compels you to follow through if only to see how the story plays out. Fallout 3 is also a wide open world where you can explore just about any area whenever you want. Unlike Oblivion, the world doesn't change drastically as you level up. Yes there are certain enemies that appear during random encounters more often at higher levels, but there are also areas that are just as difficult at level 1 as they are at level 20. I thought this aspect was handled much better in Fallout 3 than Oblivion because the world doesn't change as drastically around you.
The gameplay in Fallout 3 is certainly much deeper than it appears. And while it is very easy in many respects, it doesn't necessarily make it a boring game to play.
Controls
Fallout 3 has your standard first person shooter controls. The left analog stick moves you around a plane parallel with the ground while the right analog stick allows your character to look all around you. The right trigger button fires your weapon and the right bumper activates VATS mode. The left trigger goes into aiming mode. It zooms in to a varying degree whether or not your weapon is scoped or not. For melee combat, it also blocks an attack. The left bumper switches to first/third person mode. I ended up switching this control with the right analog button which picks up items manually. This is because after the switch the controls map out exactly to what they are in
Oblivion. The A button is the all-purpose button. Mostly it's used to activate buttons or switches as well as pick up items and store them in your inventory. The X button reloads as well as sheaths your weapon. The Y button jumps and the B button opens your Pipboy menu.
Overall the controls are pretty standard. The one complaint I have, and it's a minor one, is the responsiveness isn't what you'd expect from a typical first person shooter. For instance when you fire a weapon, you can't immediately open your Pipboy menu to switch weapons as soon as the shot leaves the muzzle of your rifle. Instead you have to handle the recoil of the weapon and possibly even reload. This costs precious seconds and could mean life or death. Despite this, I believe this was done on purpose to give the game more realism rather than to cater to the hardcore first person shooter fans.
Graphics
Bethesda Softworks has a way of making a game look great and Fallout 3 is no exception. Yes you're staring at the bombed out remains of Washington D.C. but each monument and each structure looks grandiose even in its ruined state. The garbage and grunge of the bomb blasts followed by 200 years of exposure to the elements has given the look of Fallout 3 a grayish hue. Still the environments are worth the price of admission. Staring at the Washington Monument from miles off in the distance gives you goose bumps thinking of how wide open this world is.
Still the graphics aren't all splendid in their grimy portrayal of post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. The character models all seem to be represented by about a dozen base race/sex/age combinations. Like Oblivion its almost as if the wasteland is inhabited by the same dozen survivors who cloned themselves instead of breeding. I also wish there was some variation within the same enemies too. While humans can look different based on a multitude of changes, most enemies like feral ghouls, super mutants, and wasteland wildlife all look the same.
Still the animations are top notch, if not a little over the top. Enemies recoil when you hit them with a cripping or critical shot. Limbs can just get blasted into smitherines and if hit at the right angle can spin them around based on the force of the ammunition. But what really impressed me was not the rag-doll physics engine, but rather how they dealt with aimed shots in VATS. Cripple someone's leg and they're limping after you. Shoot their arm or weapon and they drop their weapon. Combat feels very life-like and frantic graphically as a result. It also makes me understand why having superior perception skills and a Pipboy capable of VATS is such an advantage in a combat situation.
Sound
The audio in Fallout 3 had a tough task. How do you recreate the sounds of a land ravaged by nuclear war? Since no one really knows for sure, Bethesda Softworks could enact some liberties, but the end result is something that's really marvelous in the end. The windswept areas whistle in their barren existence where all you can hear is the crunching of your feet against the sandy dirt. Underground areas take on a much creepier setting as the audio portrays the dripping dank pipes of an old subway tunnel. As an extra element of spookiness the feral ghouls that inhabit these areas make a loud but muffled screech even as your presence goes unnoticed. To see what I mean just try and walk through the Red Racer Factory or Dunwich building at night with the lights off and tell me you didn't get goose bumps thick enough to sand the varnish off your deck.
Like the character models, the voiceover talent is also just as sparse. I guess if you're only going to have a dozen or so base character models, why not hire a dozen or so voice actors to read the lines from their counterparts? When trying to create a fictional world that's realistic in its portrayal, repeated voice actors and character models really detract from that. Hopefully with all the money they've made from The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3 they can hire some more diverse talent, or at least some talent that has a more diverse character portrayals.
Differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 version
Graphically the games are practically indistinguishable. The only aspect of the graphics where I noticed an advantage was it seemed the draw distance on the Xbox 360 was a little better. This was most noticeable in VATS where an enemy can pop up in VATS without it being seen yet a little more on the PS3 version. As for load times, unlike Oblivion where the Xbox 360 had a noticeable deficiency in that department, in Fallout 3 the difference in negligible to the point where I can't tell which version has the advantage. The reason why I ditched my PS3 copy in exchange for and Xbox 360 copy was the downloadable content. In addition to several new campaigns that can be downloaded, the level cap, which currently stands at 20, will be raised to 30. Another advantage the Xbox 360 has is that you can run a music player in the background while playing a game. This is incredibly handy if you get sick and tired of the musical offerings in the game. Regarding the controller difference, I felt that the Xbox 360 again had a noticeable advantage. I don't have a dual shock 3 controller, instead I have the original Sixaxis, so the rumble support is a good addition to the game. To add to that the Sixaxis triggers seem a little less responsive in Fallout 3. I guess I just felt more comfortable using the Xbox 360 controller despite the fact I had more recent familiarity with the Sixaxis at the time. So overall the Xbox 360 version is better, but the differences do not always apply to everyone. If you do not care about the controller, or downloadable content then you're safe with either copy.
Replay
The gameplay of Fallout 3 is solid enough that you won't mind playing it a second time. The fact that I played through the PS3 version and then was more than happy to give the Xbox 360 version a run-through is a testimony to how good the game is. Still, you can only play through the game a certain amount of times before it gets stale. The fact that there are downloadable campaigns helps to keep the game fresh, but this isn't one of those games you will likely play for more than a month or two at a time. Part of the cause of this is that the game makes it easy to create a jack of all trades character which can be the master of everything. So you do not need to start a new game to create a character capable of approaching a situation in a different way.
Despite the limited replay value and other various flaws, it shouldn't stand in your way of at least giving Fallout 3 a try. It is far and away the best game I have played all year. Fallout 3 was a game I waited months for and it didn't disappoint me when it came out. If you're looking for a game that challenges you, yes this game might disappoint, but you also might have a lot of fun playing it like I did.
