channelflip: Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is huge, and we’re not just talking about anticipation and hype here. It’s set after the global atomic war of 2077 where you are born into an anti-nuclear vault in the former Washington DC area, in a post-nuclear distopia with 1950s American stylings.

After an impressive tutorial and character creation level which takes you on a journey through key moments of your childhood (up to the point where your scientist father goes on the run from the Vault, with you fleeing close behind) you are plunged into an incredibly impressive open world stage of Wasteland, shanty towns and urban centres.

This is all backed up by an incredible attention to detail in appearance that gives the whole thing a sense of reality that was unexpected on this scale, and a wealth of things to do whether you want to follow the main plot and track down your father. Do your own thing busying yourself with side quests or general exploration.

Even just talking to everyone you encounter will take you hours. The game is rich in well-written dialogue and has been populated with a bevvy of rounded and developed characters. But its not just talking and fetch quests. Oh yes, there are mutants. And feral dogs.

Fallout 3 will also challenge your conscience, with the options available to do some pretty nasty things to people. Even the bullying you encounter in the tutorial level inside the vault gives it a dark edge and things only get worse and the game responds to your choices admirably.

You have a karma meter which combined with NPCs own moral predelictions, will determine how characters treat you. Your actions will also effect you in other ways, for example, if you harrass a shopkeeper whose wares you rely on, he or she might bite you in the ass if they get fed up and leave.

On a more micro level the game occasionally doesn’t register things, for example, I picked a lock to a bar and the guy inside just started chatting to me as if I’d walked in invited. But in general people react to you pretty realistically and will ask you what you’re doing if you just sit down and hack their computer in front of them.

Although your character alignment responds to how you play, your levelling doesn’t. In an impressively deep yet comprehensible system that will no doubt be much more popular that Oblivion’s, you can choose the spread of your attribute, skill point and perk allocations. The amount of choice available gives an impressive amount of variety to the kinds of characters you can create and consequently to the different types of gameplay experience available. This is backed up by the range of moral choices and also by the wide range of dialogue options available, giving you a sense that your character really is unique.

In general the game world looks great, but it is let down a bit by its character animation, which has clunky unrealistic movement and poor lip syncing. Frustratingly, this means the third person view is rather hideous, unless you happen to like the idea of playing a lurching Quasimodo type character. You will also notice a few framerate drops and the occasional bug. But in general, considering how much is going on, it performs admirably.

It’s quite difficult to express how much there is to this game in a short review. The main story line could take you 20 hours to complete if you rush it, but there is so much in the world that you could easily spend 100 hours in the game if you want to explore everything. And because of the variety of play style and character choices given by the deep RPG elements, replayability value is also high, and the quality of the experience is such that you will want to replay. This is going to be a real contender for game of the year. It’s exciting, well-presented, thought provoking, and definitely earns each of its 5 stars.

For the best of the rest:

Gamespot:
A lot of games make a big deal out of player choice, but few in recent memory offer so many intricate, meaningful ways of approaching any given situation. You fulfill or dash the spiritual hopes of an idyllic society, side with slavers or their slaves, and decide the fate of more than one city over the course of your postapocalyptic journey through the Washington, DC wasteland. Your actions have far-reaching consequences that affect not just the world around you but also the way you play, and it’s this freedom that makes Fallout 3 worth playing–and replaying. It’s deep and mesmerizing, and though not as staggeringly broad as the developer’s previous games, it’s more focused and vividly realized.

Euro Gamer:
Fallout 3 is such an embarrassment of riches, it’s hard to know where to begin. The news is definitely good though, because whichever way you stack it up it qualifies as a landmark game. Like BioShock and Oblivion, unpicking its merits is something of a Gordian knot. But that is, of course, precisely its charm.

1 UP:
Fallout 3 begins with your character’s literal birth and ends with…well, that’s up to you. It might never end, should you opt to hit the (metaphorical) pause button on the role-playing game’s main quest. What happens in between, from your formative years in the shelter of Vault 101 and well beyond your eventual escape into the irradiated, postapocalyptic Wild West outside, evolves via a nice mix of guided narrative and player choice. Help a townsperson kick his drug habit and you’ll earn good karma; feast on the corpses of your enemies in broad daylight, on the other hand, and people might think you’re a little weird. How you deal with the challenges of the Capital Wasteland affects what nonplayer characters will fight by your side, where your early quest-hub town is, and also some details about the game’s final chapter.