Fallout 3 post-review

A preview of a review of Fallout 3:
Last summer I was still bummed out about a woman who decided I wasn’t worth going out with. One particular weekend I let my sister borrow my car for the weekend and the sermon at church was about “the gift of being single.” I am thinking about this message, pissed off, riding my bike and the wind is blowing against me. I think to myself “If Jackson wants to buy an Xbox 360 he needs to go through Janelle and she would probably not think very highly of it. I’m single. I can buy an Xbox 360 if I want. I’m going to do it! That’ll show her!”
But the game that made me want a 360 instead of a PS3 or computer or whatever was Fallout 3. I had gotten the first Fallout back in ‘99 because it was one of the few games available on Mac. I really liked the non-linear plot and interacting in a world with choices with consequences. I re-played the game again about four year ago and it was still cool. The sequel was a very good addition and the general criticism of sequels being simply the original but bigger didn’t apply since the nature of the game was so open-ended it didn’t hurt to have a new bigger game.
So then I see a commercial for Fallout 3 somewhere online. It was pretty short but it ended saying “Fallout 03… Fall 08” and I am excited. It would not be until after I bought the 360 that I realized that it was the summer of 07. So I spend a year playing this and that game especially Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It was put out by the same company which was producing Fallout 3. Also open-ended and awesome and beautifully done and a huge suck of my time.
Then finally Fallout 3 came out.
I have probably already put in forty hours of game time in the week since it has come out. I keep expecting my friends to start an intervention or something but one of the actual gifts of singleness is a lot of free time. I am still working and even hanging out. If anything I have given up coffee shop time and sleep for the game. BUT I will not be continuing this pace for very much longer.

Actual review of Fallout 3:
The first criticism I heard online about Fallout 3 was that it would end up being “Oblivion with guns.” This did not sound too bad to me because Oblivion was one of the best games I have ever played… but at the same time I understand part of what they were saying. Fallout had a flavor and a spirit in its style of RPG that was sometimes dark and gritty or morally ambiguous. Oblivion was more black and white and had a heroic flavor rather than grittiness. Also I always felt that the greatest strength to Fallout was the social system where you could have all kinds of conversations with different people and what you said had an affect on the story of the game. Oblivion’s social system was pretty lame. It was more of a mini-game to advance plot lines. Fallout 3’s creators heard a lot of rumbling about this and managed to create a system very similar system to the original Fallout series with the neat addition to give new dialogue options based upon skills and perks. My character is a science based pulp hero and in conversations I can short cut plot quests and add interesting tidbits based upon my high Intelligence or Medicine skill. Once I even had the option to reprogram a medical droid because I had a computer based perk.

Combat in Fallout 3 is almost nothing like it was in the originals but this makes sense sine they were a turn based system. That was okay ten years ago, it was just fine. But in a console centered world that wouldn’t fly for a half a second. They have an aiming like function (as far as I can tell this is the only reason to have high agility) that took me a while to figure out but once I did feel that I a terror to evil-doers in the waste land.

When it comes to combat in an RPG there are two ways to mess up. The Final Fantasy system is just simply too easy. I never had the slightest challenge unless it was requiring the patience to monster crunch to level up so I could walk through the big boss. The other is when there are too many deaths. Re-loading sucks a lot of fun out of the game especially if I have to go over the same plot of land ten times. In general what I want from an RGP is a system of combat that requires medium skill and wise character advancement. If I spent all of my points to advance my social skills I deserve to get my butt kicked in a hard fight. Buy if I spend my points well to balance the various needs of the game and I don’t rush the super-mutants with my bbgun I don’t want to die very often.

One of the Oblivion based fears was the enemies advancing at the same rate as the character. In Oblivion you could easily walk through the whole main plot as a level two character fighting level two monsters. This is lame. Fallout 3 has some of this but certain areas are simply lethal to beginning characters. But as I went up levels and felt that Raiders were chumps suddenly some kind of post-apocalypse bear practically pulled my arms off. It was pretty cool and I had to start walking around a little more carefully.

I beat the game with the ultra-good guy character. I enjoyed the game but considering how many hours I put in such a short time I think it is best that I not start another game any time soon.