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The third game in the Fallout series, Fallout 3 is a singleplayer action role-playing game (RPG) set in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC.
Combining the horrific insanity of the Cold War era theory of mutually assured destruction gone terribly wrong, with the kitschy naivety of American 1950s nuclear propaganda, Fallout 3 will satisfy both players familiar with the popular first two games in its series as well as those coming to the franchise for the first time.
Welcome to the nation's capital.
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The Brotherhood of Steel is a powerful ally.
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Customize characters with your Pip-Boy.
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The Story: Vault 101 – Jewel of the Wastes
For 200 years, Vault 101 , a fallout shelter, has faithfully served the surviving residents of Washington DC and its environs, now known as the Capital Wasteland.
Though the global atomic war of 2077 left the US all but destroyed, the residents of Vault 101 enjoy a life free from the constant stress of the outside world.
Giant Insects, Raiders, Slavers, and yes, even Super Mutants are all no match for superior Vault-Tec engineering.
Yet one fateful morning, you awake to find that your father has defied the Overseer and left the comfort and security afforded by Vault 101 for reasons unknown.
Leaving the only home you've ever known, you emerge from the Vault into the harsh Wasteland sun to search for your father, and the truth.
Key Features:
- Limitless Freedom! – Take in the sights and sounds of the vast Capital Wasteland! See the great monuments of the United States lying in post-apocalyptic ruin! You make the choices that define you and change the world. Just keep an eye on your Rad Meter!
- Experience S.P.E.C.I.A.L.! – Vault-Tec engineers bring you the latest in human ability simulation – the SPECIAL Character System! Utilizing new breakthroughs in points-based ability representation, SPECIAL affords unlimited customization of your character. Also included are dozens of unique skills and perks to choose from, each with a dazzling variety of effects!
- Fantastic New Views! – The wizards at Vault-Tec have done it again! No longer constrained to just one view, experience the world from 1st or 3rd person perspective. Customize your view with the touch of a button!
- The Power of Choice! – Feeling like a dastardly villain today, or a Good Samaritan? Pick a side or walk the line, as every situation can be dealt with in many different ways. Talk out your problems in a civilized fashion, or just flash your Plasma Rifle.
- Blast 'Em Away With V.A.T.S.! –Even the odds in combat with the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System for your Pip-Boy Model 3000! V.A.T.S. allows you to pause time in combat, target specific body parts on your target, queue up attacks, and let Vault-Tec take out your aggression for you. Rain death and destruction in an all-new cinematic presentation featuring gory dismemberments and spectacular explosions.
- Mind-Blowing Artificial Intelligence! – At Vault-Tec, we realize that the key to reviving civilization after a global nuclear war is people. Our best minds pooled their efforts to produce an advanced version of Radiant AI, America's First Choice in Human Interaction Simulation. Facial expressions, gestures, unique dialog, and lifelike behavior are brought together with stunning results by the latest in Vault-Tec technology.
- Eye-Popping Prettiness! – Witness the harsh realities of nuclear fallout rendered like never before in modern super-deluxe HD graphics. From the barren Wasteland, to the danger-filled offices and metro tunnels of DC, to the hideous rotten flesh of a mutant's face.
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 Fallout 3 = video game crack. |
| Review Date: November 4, 2008 |
| Reviewer: , |
For those of us who have played Oblivion the obvious will be when you first start to assume that this game is a lot like that game. To some extent there are certain elements to that assumption that do hold true. However as the game really starts to unfold and you realize the world you're in that Bethesda has created that this is not Oblivion with guns. This is an epic post war nightmare that is both beautiful and haunting.
This the type of RPG that every gamer dreams of. A rich story in the main quest and an amazing amount of detail at every turn. The real meat of this game though is the side questing and the exploring of the landscape. You will literally spend HOURS checking out every nook in this game and not knowing what awaits you at the next turn. This is the type of game that will both make you use your head, and get your blood pumping at the same time. It's called balance and it's done to perfection in Fallout 3.
If you are not a fan of games where you have to take your time and you are looking for something to pick up and shoot things Fallout 3 is not your game. If you love games that require you to conserve your inventory and make crucial choices that will affect your outcome one way or another Fallout 3 is your game. If you are looking for something that is quick and easy, Fallout 3 is not your game. If you are looking for something that takes time, patience and you enjoy exploring Fallout 3 is your game.
The point is that you really need to know the genre of RPG to enjoy a game like this. That's not to say that if you have never played one that you won't enjoy it just expect to be a bit overwhelmed at first and allow the game to unfold which is where the patience aspect comes into play, because once it does you will be sucked into it's world and have a very very hard time putting it down if you do connect with it. These are the types of games that RPG gamers long for and this one hits it out of the park.
As far as the combat system it's both a mixture of action RPG and somewhat of a turn based element with what is called the VATS system. More or less this allows you to make a choice of which body part you want to target and will show you a percentage of if that part will be hit. Then you go to a cut scene which shows your results. You will find this element very fulfilling when you see an enemy taken by surprise and watch in glory as body parts explode on the screen when it works right.
This is a game that has endless amounts of game play value. There are so many choices and out comes you will be able to explore every part of the game. Finish every quest and still be able to replay it totally different if you chose to do so with a completely different outcome. That is rare to find a game like that with so much quality.
The version I own is the PS3 version so let me say first the game looks amazing. I am playing it on a 47 inch 1080 LCD TV with a 7.1 surround sound system and it just crushes on every single level. Are there glitches? So few you won't even care when you see them. The rumors that the PS3 version is somehow less a game from certain reviews is a lie. It's amazing and worth every single penny and your time.
Video game crack at it's finest and certainly game of the year for me.
Thanks again Bethesda for creating an epic world for me roam in. |
Excellent game, comprehensive review.
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| Review Date: November 7, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Ira Carmel, Sacramento |
I recently bought 3 new games for PS3; Little Big Planet, Resistance 2, and Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is by far the winner for me. Little Big Planet is incredible in its own right, but Fallout 3 deserves 10 stars. Resistance 2, has great graphics, but the single player really lacks something that it had in the first game. I understand that the online play is now amazing, but I'm a story guy so that's what I'm playing for.
Food analogy for these three games;
Resistance 2; A nice brunch, but some of the guests are irritating.
Little Big Planet; Awesome snack party! Lets play again!
Fallout 3; A 10 course meal of the best of all kinds of food. WOW!
This review for Fallout 3 has minor spoilers.
All three games are great, but so far I've had the most fun playing Fallout 3. The scope of the game is huge, it feels huge, it looks huge, it sucks you in. The plot seamlessly welds together, and the detail is incredible.
My wife, who is an amazing artist, took a look at this game while I was playing and commented the following; "Whomever designed this game really knew what they were doing. The color pallets are very well chosen so that everything in the scene has the correct lighting feeling for the time of day."
I especially *love* the little details that make this game. First amazing detail; Hacking the terminals is *very* close to the way you would break into a real OpenVMS machine if you had console access. The terminals themselves look like old VT100 terminals. You can break into a VMS machine from the console (physical terminal) and the commands are not exactly the same, but when I saw my character typing them in, I was so happy. I think the authors of this game should be commended for their accuracy, and for their design choice. The OpenVMS system is very old, very useful, very strong, and very stable. The similar commands fit in *perfectly* with the look and feel of the terminals the robot company makes in the game.
Next up, the super mutants totally take lines from the villain "Humungous" in Mad Max: Road warrior 2. "No more games!" with the same delivery. This little detail is so perfect. There are little nods like this to the Sci Fi genre throughout this game.
Even the starting sequence of this game, and the load "slides" which are modeled after 50's micro fiche are so perfectly in character for the rest of the game that you find yourself wishing the load times when they show were longer so you could pore over the details revealed.
This game is so huge, and incredibly wide reaching. This is demonstrated by the example of a side quest/area that is introduced through deft foreshadowing into the game when your character inquires about the local area at one of the towns in the game. The person you're talking to refers to this nearby place to stay away from. "Its bad mojo!" So of course you think "Well I have to go there next!" Next stop, terror! And 3/4 of the way through the side quest you're asking yourself "Maybe I really should have listened to this guy" as you're dying and irradiated in a terrifying area of doom! This minor side quest is so big, and perfectly executed within the game that you really feel like you're paid your money's worth.
I think one of the things that some other reviewers mentioned is how cool it is that you can treat the game like a real time game, or as a more turn based game by using the V.A.T.S system. This lends flexibility to the game allowing you to play it either as the biggest open ended fps you've ever played or as a giant post apocolyptic RPG.
Game strategy is introduced subtly by the npcs, making you feel like you are there. An example of this is a side conversation you have with a kid who tells you about the calamity that happened to his town. He describes how his father would rant about the invaders and how to defeat them, but the kid doesn't understand what his father meant. You end up using the strategy to avoid death it a wonderful high quality Sci Fi B movie plot line yourself later.
Each storyline in this excellent game is peeled back like layers of an onion, that you slowly uncover. The graphics are eyepopping sure, but I must give the writers for this game the highest praise. This is something that the author Neal Stephenson writes about in his book Diamond Age. The idea that you can have incredible immersion games that have a completely realistic physical environment a la the matrix concept, but without a gripping storyline you've got nothing. Well Fallout3 has the story lines, and it has them in spades. It has the eye popping graphics, and the incredible detail. This game has it all.
There is never a time in this game where the game mechanics themselves get in the way of the play. You can save whenever you want, and the completely transparent mechanics submerge you into the game environment.
In conclusion, if you like adventures, and you like Sci Fi, get this incredible Game. |
Simply Incredible
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| Review Date: November 3, 2008 |
| Reviewer: HardCaliber, Michigan |
This is an absolutely top notch game. I've been an avid gamer for around 20 years now. I've played countless games and this is one of my all-time favorites.
I'm a big fan of both Role Playing Games and First Person Shooters. Fallout 3 is both, although probably more of an RPG. For me it's quite hard to kill normal opponents without using the targeting system, which pauses the game. But this didn't bother me at all or lessen the experience in any way. The only thing that I would change would be to give the player the ability to control the camera during the slow motion combat shots. The camera angle can be poor at times.
The graphics are great, the atmosphere is very convincing and it's just good fun. It's also a somewhat odd mix of being very serious and yet very silly at times. I guess I would describe it as quirky, but in a good way.
The game is definitely not for younger people. The games is very gory, the language is about as bad as it gets, and there are quite a few references to prostitution and drugs.
I'm about 15-20 hours into the game and I've barely scratched the surface. I've read that the game can be completed in 20 hours. But that seems crazy to me. I put 90 hours into Oblivion before I even took the main quest seriously. Fallout 3 looks like it's going to have that kind of playability for me, and then some. I didn't really enjoy the combat in Oblivion nearly as much as I enjoyed just exploring the world. With Fallout 3, I enjoy both.
This is a must buy. |
Fair and balanced review of a great game
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| Review Date: November 3, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Matthew T. Weflen, Chicago, IL |
This is a tremendous game. It marries the depth of Elder Scrolls 4:Oblivion's gameplay to the really wonderful atmosphere of the Fallout series. You roam a post-nuclear apocalypse Washington DC in an attempt to discover your origin and find your father. You also come across hundreds of desperate survivors of said apocalypse, and can choose either to help them or to take advantage of them. Your good or bad choices affect the way characters relate to you and what main-story "ending" you can see during the game.
If you've never played Oblivion or Knights of the Old Republic (the two games I think are the most similar to Fallout 3), here is the extremely simple but non-spoiler-y explanation: You create a character with certain statistics (e.g. strength, intelligence). These statistics govern the kinds of choices you have in a huge gameplay world. You explore the world, collecting items, fighting enemies, and completing quests (such as finding someone's lost brother, discovering the secret of your birth, collecting a certain kind of item for profit). Every once in a while, your character "levels up," meaning you can augment those statistics with the points you've earned in the interim between levels.
Veterans of Oblivion will find many familiar things. Dialogue proceeds in much the same fashion, albeit with better voice acting this go-round. Item management is similar as well, with a weight value and encumberance (although, more realistically this time, being over-encumbered doesn't render you immobile because you're 1 point over - it slows you down instead). Bartering is more advanced, because you can trade both items and currency for other items. You can purchase or win residences in the towns, and decorate them, very similar to Oblivion (except you can purchase useful items, too, like workbenches). Weapons degrade and can be fixed, but similarly to KOTOR, you now have the option of augmenting and creating new weapons. Fast travel also works exactly like Oblivion.
So what's different? Well, the story and atmosphere. Unlike Oblivion, you cannot choose any of a number of races, and the difference between "character classes" is nominal at best. You're always going to a citizen of one of the survival "vaults" in DC, and you will always have the main quest motivation of the story with your father and the mystery surrounding him and your origins. But this is not a criticism. If you (like me) are fascinated by post-nuclear-war sci-fi, you will find much to love here. The music, sound effects, and especially the graphics create an amazing mood and atmosphere. The wasteland is eerie and desolate, unlike Oblivion's lush, Lord of the Rings-style setting. Its setting on Earth, with easily recognizable houses, products, and other trappings of our own modern lifestyle make it much more relatable, and creepier still when you find charred skeletons in their bedrooms, frozen in the positions in which they died in the nuclear conflagration. Also, the non-player-character stories are MUCH more mature than Oblivion, full of raunchy language, killing, sex, and amorality. Note to parents - This stuff is on the level of an R-rated movie such as "Total Recall" or "Terminator." So it's probably not for the under 13-set.
Combat without VATS is just like Oblivion - point yourself towards your target and either shoot or swing your melee weapon. With the VATS system, though, the action is paused and you can target portions of your enemy, with a percentage to hit each. It is somewhat reminiscent of KOTOR in the game-pausing respect. Crippling a leg will make your opponent limp slowly towards (or away from) you, crippling an arm or two will hinder their ability to use a weapon, aiming for the head can result in decapitations and exploding skulls.
The graphics are stunning. The level of detail is sky-high, and the settings created by the programmers are eerie, evocative, beautiful, sad, and frightening all in one. I think all the hate being spewed about this game, especially the PS3 version, is either overreaction or simply fanboy baloney. IGN's review, for instance, states that the graphical differences between the two consoles are negligible. There are reports of SPORADIC bugs and freezing issues on all three platforms (So far, in 20 hours, I have experienced one lockup - the "GOAT freeze," and noticed one clipping issue, where an enemy's body was passing through a piece of rubble. That's IT). I say: BIG DEAL!
I can tell you, as someone who owns Oblivion Game Of The Year Ed. on PS3 (and owned the non-GOTY edition on 360) that Fallout 3's graphics are better than Oblivion's. The detail is superb, the frame rate is silky smooth (I was shocked and pleasantly surprised by this!), there is just really nothing to fault. The difference between PS3 and 360 is probably comparable to the difference between an ATI or Nvidia graphics card on a PC. Maybe one does Anti-Alaising a little better, one does hi res textures better. IT IS SIMPLY NOT VERY NOTICEABLE. I am playing on a 50" 1080p HDTV, and have had no complaints about the graphics. Quite the contrary, I have been blown away at times, and I consider myself a discriminating consumer on this point. This game stands up against MGS4, Burnout Paradise, and Uncharted in terms of detail. The only thing marring it is a bit of pop-in when viewing things at great distances. But, given the amount of stuff in this vast world, it is easily forgivable (just as it was in Oblivion).
It should be said that downloadable expansion content has been announced for the PC and 360 versions, and not the PS3 version as yet. I personally do not view this as major, since: the game is huge as it stands; and DLC usually finds its way to PS3 eventually (((UDATE - it has just been announced that PS3 will receive all the DLC for Fallout between June and October of this year))), just as it did with Oblivion. I think it just comes down to which platform you own or prefer. I sold my Xbox and my PC is too old to handle a game like this. But you're not going to be ripped off by either console version. If you have a high-end PC and don't mind sitting in front of it, then you can't go wrong with the PC version.
Notice something? Throughout this review, I've kept comparing Fallout 3 to some of the best games of the past 5 years. There's a reason for this. Fallout 3 is a must-own, pure and simple. Any issues are negligible when put up against this game's atmosphere, scope, and detail. It is worth $60 easily, which is my very highest praise for any video game.
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Lack of DLC won't kill the awesome experience
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| Review Date: September 11, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Boethius, California |
Yes, I was just as pissed as everyone else when we found out that the DLC was going to be XBOX/PC exclusive. That being said, there are a couple of reasons why I didn't factor that into my review:
1. Since that time, we have learned that all the DLC will be on the PS3, eventually, and
2. The game alone is well worth the cost, DLC or not.
I had heard all the great reviews about fallout 3, and even though I am more of a fan of FPS games I decided to give it a shot and bought a copy when I bought my PS3. Being a fan of FPS games, the gameplay style was quite new to me at the beginning, and although I found it a little boring setting up my character the fallout 3 world was amazing and the story was also very good. As soon as the action started I was hooked on this game. Like a lot of the reviews I have seen, when I first made it out of the vault I was kinda confused, not quite knowing what was going on, and not getting frustrated by trying to make my way around Megaton. Coupled with the fact that I was moving out of state, I probably stopped playing the game for a week or two, and then I got caught up playing COD:WAW. That being said, as soon as I started playing Fallout 3 again I got completely hooked. I probably played 60+ hours in a few weeks, and that was just playing solely the main quest. Yes, I spent all that time just playing the main quest. You know a game is worth the money when you spend more time with the single player than you do with the single player and multiplayer combined for a standard FPS like Modern Warfare. Of course, as soon as I built my character up to a level 20 and beat the game I just had to start over again. This game has ultimate playability. You'll want to get all the PS3 trophies. You'll want to play with good karma, then bad karma, then neutral karma. You'll want to live in Megaton and then blow up Megaton and live in Tenpenny Tower. You'll want to explore all the options of the main quest. You'll want to explore all of the side quests, those with trophies and even the little side quests that you come upon unexpectedly (or if you use a walkthrough just so you can do EVERYTHING this game has to offer). In the end, there are so many amazing things that you can do with this game that it will be well worth the price you pay for it, even if you have to wait longer to get the DLC. It really does say something about the game in general that people are so pissed that they have to wait for added content via DLC.
In addition to all said above, all the things you can do, what really makes this game is the story. The post-apocalyptic story is extremely well done and exciting. The gameplay, the wide open worlds, the exploration, and the graphics all make for an extremely pleasurable gaming experience. And this is all coming from someone who generally sticks to FPS games only. I would recommend this game in a heartbeat to anyone, and I think it is a "must-have" for any console gaming collection, no matter what system you are on. |
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