Fallout 3 Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

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

_______________________________________________________________________

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