Askgar

Having been avoiding it for a year because I’d heard it was a “Oblivion with guns”, and I really couldn’t get into Oblivion I finally decided to give Fallout 3 a try with the release of the GOTY edition (all of the DLC bundled for less than the combined cost of the DLC, and then there is the games cost), I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.  The main concern I had with Oblivion has been addressed, the stupid levelling system where you ideally wanted to have your primary skills as your LEAST used skills to prevent you leveling until you were ready, how counter intuitive, and replaced with a MUCH nicer, get X xp to level up and spend points as you wish when you level up.

They also seemed to have focused the game a lot more, while still leaving you open to explore.  By this I mean that instead of Oblivion where you are pretty much left on your own once you leave the starter area, in Fallout 3 it points you in the right direction, and when you arrive at a town (most of them so far that I’ve experienced), someone will speak to you, explaining the situation and often giving you a quest based around the town, or something that has happened to it, the infamous “Megaton” quest springs to mind.  The game also has real consequences, quest givers can be killed if you say something wrong and send them to their death (or just decide to shoot them), and in some cases they will have set up a “back up” hand in NPC, again the “Megaton”quest is where I’ve seen this so far.

I also enjoy the way that there are MANY different play styles, you can be good, evil, neutral, etc. but at times these are not obvious clear cut paths, at one point you have the option to do a favour for an NPC or pay them for the information, however there are alternate paths available, you can also hack into their computer, or steal their password from a nearby cupboard and access the computer to get the information you requre, bypassing the need to pay them for information entirely.

Another system I came across, completely by accident, was the repair system.  Instead of being able to “repair” an item with no visible parts, you have to canabalise other items of a similar type to repair the items you need, by doing this it is also possible to improve the stats of the item, i.e. more damage from a gun, more protection on armour, however I do not remember this being explained anywhere, it was just something I discovered by accident.

There are many other good points to the game, it is very atmospheric, even on the lowest graphics settings it looks good and runs smoothly on a bottom spec machine, something I did not expect, and without sound the game still works, although you do miss out on some of the touches.

However, there is one thing I REALLY do not like about the game, and at this point I should mention that I am playing on the PC if you hadn’t already guessed, the pip-boy menu system is horrible, if I want to view the map I want to press M, not Tab, “Data” then “World Map”, similarly to get to my inventory I want to use “I”.  Even if it took me into the pip-boy where I wanted to be I would not mind, however having to use Tab, then the buttons to find it, is already getting on my nerves.  This system will be a result of being a console game as well as a PC game, but just some extra shortcut keys on the PC version would have been appreciated. (If I have missed these shortcut keys somewhere then I would be greatly appreciative of them being pointed out).

Another problem, and this is a rather strange one IMO, is that I cannot find a single shortcut to the game on my system, not in the Start menu, or on the desktop, or in the “Games” explorer that is on Vista/Windows 7.  This could be another thing I have overlooked but it did annoy me as there was no easy way of me starting the game without “running” the DVD.  I would also have liked the game to run off of the hard drive with no CD inserted, however I understand the need for CD protection (unlike most gamers) and will accept it, it is unobtrusive and lets me play the game so whats wrong with it?

Anyway, that is enough on my”brief” decomposition of Fallout 3 for now, I should mention I have probably clocked up less than 10 hours so far and have not touched the DLC so this is very much a “first look” post, it could easily all go downhill from here.