Fallout 3 Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

Easily one of the best games of 2008, and of all time.

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Given to me as a gift when I was around ten, Fallout 3 was such a strange experience for me, one that made almost zero sense at the time. All that I amounted doing was walking aimlessly down the road south of Megaton, trusty baton in hand. To be murdered only a few raiders at some bridge, clueless and dazed. I restarted again and again, never really gaining any real ground in the game.

Since then, Fallout 3 has held a strange, mystifying identity for me. It signaled my transition from a purely FPS gamer to a RPG aficionado, and I’ve loved the genre ever since. Playing it for the millionth time at a much older age, I’ve come to appreciate the game as pretty damn awesome. From a purely critical lense, this game manages to hold interest with it’s abundance of content, enemies, and weapons, but falters when you stop and take a look at lackluster questing and story.

I like this game. I REALLY like this game. So let me just go on a bit of hypercritical rant of the atrocity that is the main quest. Seriously, I feel like Bethesda said, “Hey, you know those first two games this one is based on? Let’s NOT ground it in California, AND steal the plot of both games and mash ‘em into one.” Really, little creativity is brought  to the table in terms of actual narrative, with it literally being the plot of the first two. I was hoping this is where Fallout 3 would have shown some muscle, rather than this paper thin mess. Still, the narrative isn’t really the strong point of Western RPGS, case and point with the ENTIRE Elder Scrolls franchise. Its the quantity and/or quality of side quests available.

Regardless, the Capital Wasteland is still rather fun to explore.

To demonstrate the exact volume of questing available to you, I’ve been playing this game for over six years, and I’ve STILL encountered new content. I doubt anyone has encountered every single quest in the game, let alone scrap the surface. The variety is unquestioned in this department, from you delivering some Naughty Nightwear to a shifty stranger, to blowing up an entire town with a nuclear bomb. Even with it’s variety, I find that questing in this game is more synthetic than others, nearly half having the “go to location”, “kill some baddies”, “and come back to get a cookie” formula. For every "HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME" quest, there's at least five acting as filler. While engaging, questing is marred mostly by a quantity over quality mentality, making it feel a bit grindy over extended periods of play.

While activity a tad lackluster, Fallout 3 compensates for this deficiency by supplying you with an arsenal of weapons and a combat mechanic called VATS. From plasma rifles to rocket launchers to even miniature nukes, the weapon variety (while not as varied as its predecessor) is something to salivate over. 

VATS was more subdued in the earlier titles, not really incentivising to use it. This time around, the “v” key will be your best friend in this game, capable of getting you out of tight spots with most of your body intact. It effectively puts you in a slow motion sequence, where your character auto fires on a selected body part of an opponent, usually without them firing back. And therein lies it’s only major flaw, VATS in late game can get rather godly. So much so that if five enemies are present, five rounds will be expended and the battle won.

This might not be VATS’s fault, but largely a developer based one. Implementing a turn-based leveling system and combat mechanic to a real time RPG is bound to have mixed results. By level 17, it took little more than a glance at a charging raider to have him implode into conveniently segmented body parts. Leveling is a bit of joke as it wasn't really built for the real time combat, enemies never standing a chance at later levels.

VATS at work

While on the topic, enemies are surprisingly variant here than most RPGs. You’ll find yourself combating giant, mutated mole rats one minute, to blowing the head off a Hulk cosplayer the next. Enemies are unique, various, and quite the challenge during earlier levels, becoming little more than an annoyance later down the line.

Fallout 3 still manages to maintain that charm it had on me over six years ago, having an insane amount of content, keeping weapons variant and satisfying, and enemies numerous and challenging. Disappointingly, the game suffers with an uninspired main quest, semi-grindy side quests, and little late game challenge. Even with Liam Neeson voicing the character’s father, no particular set of skills or actual necessity was brought with the role. Regardless, Fallout 3 is fun and engaging, having aged extremely well, maintaining replay-ability, and decent graphical design. Easily one of the best games of 2008, and of all time.

Verdict

9/10

Excellent

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money

Written By: Ice Cold Tabasco

Indeed, once you play this expansion, the most infuriating thing is not the enemies, melee oriented gameplay, or tedium, its letting go of some of the best characters Fallout has ever seen.

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The first piece of DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, Dead Money, was met with mixed reviews, all with legitimate reasons as to why it was great or not so. In my opinion, Dead Money did a lot right when considering the story and characters, but less so with gameplay.

Being dumped outside of the Sierre Madre casino, stripped of all your equipment and given a unique energy weapon, you are tasked with breaking into the Sierre or die. Now, this aspect of Dead Money is rather interesting, being stripped to only the bare essentials with a seemingly impossible task to complete. It creates a tense, nearly palpable atmosphere as you hunt for a few more bullets for your revolver or a single stimpack to bring you back up to speed, transforming an RPG to a survival horror romp. With limited success in many areas.

The heist of the century.

That tense atmosphere is brought mostly by the fact that you are equipped with an explosive collar, through the entire length of the DLC, that can be set off by various radios placed around the map. These things are the worst, fucking things, EVER! While it’s a straightforward addition when its introduced in the early game, it gets unfair later on, with these radios even becoming indestructible, forcing you to roll with the punches. You will die more times by stagnant radios than an actual enemies. To add on to this bullshit is this red mist that does damage to you once you step into it (In my case, playing in Hardcore mode will have your health degrade, regardless if you're in the Cloud or not). Not being as bad as the radios, but enough of a nuisance to make you double take and question developer decisions.

Oh, and the FUCKING enemies! Called Ghost people, they are often equipped with melee weapons and explosives, doing sizeable damage in single digits. But in numbers, they WILL fuck your shit up if you travel alone. Also, with limited ammo and weapons available at your disposal, they need to be dismembered to actual kill them. You will often fight with a knife taped to a stick to get by, as Dead Money foolishly favors the melee skill. The one no one uses, because guns exist.

Fuck. These. Guys.

While this can encourage the player to manage what limited resources they have, you can’t will ammunition into existence. You WILL need a gun, and you will need AMMO, using a makeshift spear is only a quicker way to get yourself killed. What I recommend is saving your ammo early on and going Kratos on everything that moves, then your sorta set, as you will run out of ammo, but with less frequency.

One remedy for this problem were the companions that are given to you as protection. Each with passive buffs like reducing the time it takes for a radios to blow your head off, or guaranteeing Ghosts die after they first fall. All wrapped up in genuinely interesting backstories, personalities, and motives for why they want to get into the Sierre Madre. They contribute to the phenomenal story and writing given to this expansion, only having me long for more of it when it was my time to return to the Mojave.

All in all, Dead Money does its job with providing a fantastic story and cast of characters, but is hampered with the gameplay aspects it attempts to erect. Indeed, once you play this expansion, the most infuriating thing is not the enemies, melee oriented gameplay, or tedium, its letting go of some of the best characters Fallout has ever seen.

Verdict
6/10

Above Average

Mirror's Edge Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

Mirror’s Edge is fun, when everything is working right.

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A year or so ago, Mirror’s Edge used to rank highly with me, being one of my favorite games of all time, up there with the best of ‘em like Portal and Fallout. While it is still a rather fun and enjoyable experience, coming back to playing on PC, issues started to surface.

Before we get to that, I just want to toss a bit of praise toward the art design behind the game, with high contrast colors and sharp shadows. The Frostbite engine hasn't aged a day, making Mirrors Edge one of the best looking game out there, pleasantly blending a bright, anime-ish style and realistic models and lighting. You will often finding yourself looking around at the sprawling city around you, with light bending over windows, smoke stacks wafting through the air, and the city bustling beneath you.

It's a looker.

Besides that, the games primary mechanic, first person platforming or parkour, manages to give you sense of speed and fluidity. When it’s working correctly. You will in frustrating frequency that a path that you have taken is a dead end or not traversable. Forcing you to break game flow for a path that you can take, which you would've never known otherwise. Either that or dying because of shoddy collision detection will have you plummeting to your death more than once. Regardless, if everything works in your favor, good times are to be had, providing a real sense of achievement when you pull off a course nearly flawlessly.

Where I wished Mirror’s Edge would have bared its teeth a bit more was with its story, which becomes rather forgettable and generic. What works for the story are the cartoon animated cutscenes that tell it, all being a nice little treat visually between levels. The animations are fluid and organic, forms flexing and relaxing in a realistic manner, all tied in with its anime influenced art style. I found myself racing through courses to get to the next animation.

Just plain awesome art direction.

Another thing that works for the game’s detriment in the gameplay department, is the combat system. While it has a fast and simple melee system which is quite good, disarming opposition of their firearms and using them is another story. You will occasionally find yourself getting slapped with the butt of a gun due to, once again, shoddy collision detection. Especially in particular sections where you NEED to get a gun to progress. It’s fucking infuriating and hurts the entire game.

Other than what was covered, there’s a few nitpicky things like a minor lack of level variety late game, level padding, and some hyper accurate enemies in various instances. These issues don’t occur often, but enough to annoy if they arise.

With the samey, generic military shooter released year after year, Mirrors Edge was a refreshing take on a wholly new concept that accomplishes it with mixed results. While the art design is stellar, gameplay fun and animations interesting, the ever present shadow of bipolar collision detection, generic story, and pissy combat takes a huge toll on the game’s enjoyability. Mirror’s Edge is fun, when everything is working right.

Verdict

6.75/10

Enjoyable