Fallout 3 - Prepare for the Future

So I've finally reached my target, I've been wondering round the raider and ghoul infested ruins of the DC metro system for what seems like hours and now I've appeared from below at my destination, the GNR radio station. I encounter a group of Super mutants armed with sledgehammers and frag grenades but before my gun is even raised several gunshots take their heads out. The Brother Hood of Steel, the anonymous group I have heard so much about but never seen, I accompany them to the radio station helping fight off the last remaining super mutants, my gun is running dangerously low on ammo and is nearly completely broken, I celebrate my victory with the rest, but then the ground begins to rumble, a bus is sent flying past my face along with the corpse of a fellow soldier, a Behemoth comes crashing through the side of a building about 12ft high and armed to the teeth.
What appeared to be a simple quest when I took, it up - head to this building, talk to this guy, turned in to a bitter fight for survival against all odds.

Nothing is ever as easy as it seems in the Wastelands.

-----The Game-----
So the game begins with you blurry eyed and coming out of your mums vagina, slightly weird but Ok we'll go with that. You are then asked to come up with a gender, name and appearance, which is a lot to ask from a newborn baby, but my male character named Jarvis ended up coming out like some sort of mutated freak.

The game then starts with you playing short parts of key points of your life. You were born in a vault, vault 101 to be precise, the world of fallout 3 is a sort of what if world where the what if today is: What if nuclear war had broken out in the 50s and 60s, so it did, but lucky for some they were allowed access in to vaults that would protect them from the harsh reality of the outside world until it was safe to venture out, but no in Vault 101, this vault was designed to never be opened.

The first stage you play through is as a toddler, you learn your mom died in childbirth so it's just you and your dad left with about 20 other people in the vault, your dad is a scientist/doctor and this stage just allows you to get used to the controls and assign some points in to S.P.E.C.I.A.L, which is short for strength, perception, education, charisma, intelligence, agility and luck, this is done by interacting with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L toddler book which contains rather humorous child-like explanations of what each does to you as a character.

The next stage is when you turn 11, you are in the cafeteria and everyone jumps out and shouts surprise, what a fun birthday, in a gritty dark lunchroom where apparently most the kids invited don't even like me, shame they missed out the stage of my life where I treated them so badly that they insult me even on my birthday. This stage is extremely important as you are given the Pip-boy 3000, a wrist mounted computer that allows you to access your stats, items and data which are all then split up into even more tedious sub-categories, (after all this is an RPG). You are then led downstairs with your dad to find his colleague Jonas, at which point you acquire a BB gun in which a short combat tutorial follows and introduction to VATs. Vault Assisted Targeting System allows you to pause the game mid-fight, target an enemy and let numbers work out the outcome of a battle, each specific body part can be targeted and each will have a different percentage chance of hitting, however by using VATs your weapons condition decreases more rapidly and you only have so many action points to use in VATs, so most times its better to waste more ammo and ammo yourself.

The next slightly longer stage involves you taking the G.O.A.T. test also known as the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test which every V101 resident has to take at 16 so they are able to determine what job they will have in the future, the G.O.A.T. consists of some hilarious questions and pictures that include the retro image of the blonde haired Pip-Boy in many poses. This is where you decide what sort of person you are going to be in the future, are you going to sort your problems out democratically or guns blazing, are you going to be stealthy or a skilled explosives technician. But don't worry about the results at the end as a screen pops up allowing you to distribute the skill points in the way you feel best. These are the options you can invest in:

Small Guns
Big guns
Energy Weapons
Unarmed
Melee Weapons
Explosives
Medicine
Sneak
Lockpick
Science
Repair
Barter
Speech

This is where RPGs start to annoy me, I've had no interaction with the game world, I don't know what it's going to be like out there and you can't attempt to invest in every skill otherwise you'll be very weak, this is why I've recently restarted my character from scratch now that I know which skills are best to survive in the wasteland, very annoying I know but that's RPGs for you.

Right so that bits over. Now it all gets a bit intense, you are woken up by your good vault friend to be told your dad has escaped the vault and that the overseer has gone mad and killed Jonas and is trying to get you, you are give a gun, a few minutes to grab anything that might be valuable and then have to get out, you go from shooting radroaches to shooting armed guards with no help and just have to work your own way out by breaking into rooms and hacking computers (both of which contain very hard mini-games). The immersion in this game is incredible even in such an early stage but it all receives a bit of a hairline fracture when you finally escape and a window pops up saying is there anything you would like to alter from your childhood.
So you're out of the vault in a huge (and I mean HUGE) land of endless possibilities and told to find your dad, sure it all looks like oblivion that's had a nuke dropped on it and rubble ditched everywhere but it looks breathtaking, it just would of been nicer to of had a bit more of a helping hand getting around.

I wont spoil anymore of the story incase you do ever want to play it but all I can say is the wasteland and DC ruins are a harsh place to survive and you need to make sure your ready and saving regularly during missions.


-----The Game Play-----
The game play is very good, and I've already mentioned a lot about it such as the V.A.T.s system but there are a few things I don't like that I'll get on to later.

*Hacking*
Depending on the difficulty of the system your hacking will decrease or increase the password length. Hacking isn't explained very well in the game but here's my guide.
If you have a high enough science level you can hack certain level systems, when you hack roughly 15 words of a certain length will appear on screen and one is the password, you are given 4 tries to work it out. When you click on a word it will display how many letters in that word are right and in the right place meaning on your fourth go you should of worked it out. I find it is best to give up after 3 tries though because if you get it wrong you are locked out the system for ever whereas if you back out on three the password is rest and you can have unlimited attempts at guessing.

*Lockpicking*
Again you need a certain level to hack a lock and depending on your level you can attempt to force a lock with a certain percentage chance of successfully doing it, but fail to force it open and it is broke for good. The mini-game shows a big lock on screen and a bobby pin (you need these to break it open) you apply torque with the screwdriver with the right analogue stick and rotate the bobby pin with the left, it is basically the hot-cold game, the further you can apply torque without the bobby pin breaking, the close the angle is to the right one, get the angle right and apply torque and the lock opens.

*The controls*
Left Trigger - Aim/block
Left Bumper - Toggle 1st and 3rd person view
Right Bumper - Enter V.A.T.s
Right Trigger - Attack/shoot
Y - Jump
B - Enter Pip-boy
A - Activate
X - Reload and hold to holster weapon

*The perks*
Every time you level up (after gaining enough experience aqquired through killing and questing) you can get one perk, and the unlocked perks depend on your level, S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats and skill point distribution.

The perks can range from small things like:

Intensive Training - Allows you to invest another point into S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

Gun-nut - which raises your small guns skill

to completely random things:

Bloody Mess - increases damage by 5% but gives a chance that killed enemies will explode in to a bloody mess

Mysterious Stranger - Some guy will come along in V.A.T.s occasionally armed with a magnum and do some serious damage to the target

to very useful things:

Commando - Increases chance of hitting opponent in V.A.T.s while using a two handed weapon

Scrounger - You are able to find a lot more ammo in containers than you normally would. (Very useful as ammo is scarce and costly)


Now to what I don't like about the game play. There's no mini-map, personally I don't like this as it means I constantly have to load my pip-boy and check where I am. Instead on screen you just have a compass that rotates as you do, on it, it will show the direction of enemies near you and the direction of where you should be heading.
Battles also occur rather suddenly and you will be often just walking along, turn around and find a rather unexpected and unwanted raider lunging at you with a kitchen knife with no warning.

However those are my main faults, as for what I like. I think the money system is brilliant and witty as the currency is bottle caps, after all post nuclear war, all money and government is useless so now caps are used. (Well maybe not government *wink wink*) Items can appear rather expensive at first glance, but continue on your travels and you'll soon acquire a collection of caps and random junk to sell at shops.

The option to be either good or evil has very dramatic effects. In fallout you are instantly given the option to help a guy blow up the one and only town you are aware of in exchange for caps, I have yet to chose this option as it seems like complete madness, in the town are loads of useful clinics and a shops and a couple of bars and you can even get a house there, but I guess if I ever play as evil I'll blow it to kingdom come.

Fast travel is also a rather nifty implemented system which enables you to travel to any location you have discovered which means if you're heading somewhere and get bored you can just find a nearby location, make sure it gets marked on your map then head off somewhere else for a while.

-----The Graphics-----
Like already mentioned the game world is breathtaking but also seamless, this means you can walk from the very end of the wasteland, to the very end of the super mutant infested ruins of DC.
Every bit is beautifully put together and I really enjoyed the long strolls through the rubble to my next destination even when I was brutally attacked by slavers. What is really good about fallout 3 is that everyone is dead, there's just a few people left in civilizations scattered throughout the world which is brilliant for the developers as it means they were able to individually create every character for the game world and write them individual lines of dialogue, sure you hear people repeat the same lines over and over but the beauty is you don't hear anybody else say those lines.
Bethesda (the creators) has really managed to create a great wasteland and everything has some sort of novelty about it that just makes it all seem so real and creepy. The textures considering the seamless world are very good quality and I have yet to see any major graphical problem or any to be honest to which I am pleasantly surprised.
In summary the graphics are amazing.

-----The enemies-----

I wanted to add a section about what you might encounter on your journeys just to give you an idea of the game world, then I realised that it would be almost impossible to list all of them so instead here are my favourites.

Ferral Ghouls - There are many ghouls that are harmless. Ghouls are the people that didn't get in to vaults and suffered the heat and radiation when the bombs fell. At first they appeared to be alright but eventually their skin began to peel off it did increase their life span though. The ferral ghouls however are the ones that will attack anything on site and can be quite frightening in the darkness of the metro stations.

Super Mutants - These are basically mutated humans and extremely violent. They can be heavily armed and mainly infest the areas of the DC ruins. The brotherhood of steel is attempting to clear them out. They are very strong and come in four levels, the normal super mutants, the stronger super mutant brutes which have lost of armour, then the super mutant masters usually equipped with mini-guns and are ridiculously hard to take down, then in very rare circumstances the behemoths will appear, you're going to need a lot of fire power to take this thing down.

Raiders - Normal humans that fight violently for survival. If they see something they want it, and will kill you for it. If you can clear out a small camp of them they'll usually have a nice stockpile of weapons and/or ammo and medkits to nick off them.

The Enclave - The group claiming to be the government. Extremely heavily armoured and equipped with energy weapons, have fun taking a platoon of these out.

-----Sound and Music-----
I could go on for ages about how each enemy has its own unique attack cry and how every NPC in the game has it's own dialogue specific to them and their own voice, but what really makes this game for me is the music. On your travels there wont be music, it'll be a silent wasteland with the occasional ringing of explosions and gun fire. But bring up your Pip-boy and access the radio stations and you can listen to some rather cool stations.
My favourite being Galaxy News Radio presented by Threedog, he'll be regularly keeping the residents of the wasteland up to date on your activities as you help him out and the music he plays really sets the atmosphere, it completely contradicts anything that is happening on screen but it works brilliantly well and I always have it on even it means the noise reveals my position to enemies.

-----Summary-----

Fallout 3 is an amazing game, it can be extremely annoying to get used to the controls and layout of the game and the metro system can be infuriating to navigate and playing the game can take up hours of your life and destroy any remaining social life you might have, but unraveling the mysteries of post-apocalyptic Washington DC has never been so much fun.

Prepare for the Future.
5 STARS

-----Game Information-----
Players 1
8mb to save
Supports all HDTV settings
Supports surround sound
New content will be available for download which will extend the game past the hundreds of hours it already has
Certificate 18+