[PC] [360] [PS3] Fallout 3

[Crazy Man]

http://www.crispygamer.com/features/200 ... -much.aspx

And I found myself, from the start, overwhelmed by my own inventory. (Should I take the Fire Ant meat with me, or leave it behind? Questions, questions.) I found myself vexed by those weird lobster bugs underground. And I found the choices I was constantly making in the game to be largely arbitrary. Which Tag Skills do I focus on? Which Perks? Which Special Stats? Ten hours probably isn't enough time to see tangible effects in stat-boosting. But after 10 hours of carefully making these choices, shouldn't I get something -- anything -- in return?

As I endured those 10 hours -- and don't give me any of this "you're not an RPG person" business; while role-playing games are far from my favorite genre, I have played my fair share of Dragon Quest games over the years -- I tried very hard to convince myself that I was having fun, that I was intrigued, that I was moved in some profound way.

Beyond all of this, what I resent most is the way the game was marketed. Watch commercials for Fallout 3 and you think you're about to play some sort of mind-blowing hybrid of BioShock and Halo 3. Which is terribly, terribly misleading. Sure, sales numbers have been high for the game. But the numbers that I'd really like to see is how many copies of Fallout 3 were returned after consumers got them home and realized that they'd been duped -- yet again -- by savvy ad execs.

Again, I can't take anything away from Bethesda for making an incredibly ambitious game. The critic in me says, "Huzzah! Here's an old-school hardcore RPG! It's huge! It's epic! It comes in an awesome Collector's Edition which includes a lunch box! And it's a big thumb in the eye for casual games! Suck my V.A.T.S., Nintendo!"

But from a personal standpoint, from the lifelong gamer in me, Fallout 3 isn't much fun. Or intriguing. Or moving. During the wee hours of the morning, whenever I'm looking at the shelf of games in my office wondering what to play, it's clear that I'll likely never be in the mood to make a return to the Wasteland.

Any expert RPG reviewer will tell you that Fallout 3 is a terrible RPG because it has an inconsistent game world filled with plot holes, terrible writing, lacks choices and consequences that effect the plot, lacks improvisation, that by the end of the game no matter what skills you invest in, your character becomes a "master of all trades," and that the game was basically dumbed down for retards. The game is pretty much 70% shooter, 25% exploration, 5% role-playing.

This guy didn't like it because it's "overwhelming."

If this guy were to play Deus Ex, he would probably have a seizure when Paul asks him what starter weapon he wants to have at the beginning of the game.

[Bradford]

If this crispygamer guy thinks Fallout 3 is overwhelming, I wonder what he thought of the last two Elder Scrolls games or Mass Effect. Fallout 3 is much more straightforward than any of those games, and honestly, I don't necessarily disagree with your criticisms of it, but in my first ten hours or so I've certainly enjoyed it more than Mass Effect, and also enjoyed that it's not as easy as Oblivion was.

[icycalm]

Bradford posted some comments in the reviews subforum, but since he never actually wrote a review, I am transferring them here (as well as a reply by Worm):

I am going to start posting my opinions one part at at time about what the game does well and what it does poorly, and if things go well perhaps eventually reach the point where a review could be written.

I'd like to address the game in terms its role-playing characteristics (or lack thereof) last, as I find that to be the most difficult part to analyze.

Also, I think there is a lot of opportunity to compare the game to Mass Effect (because it is the only other recent game I can think of that has a hybrid fps/turn-based combat mechanic) and to the last two Elder Scrolls games, for obvious reasons. I also have a sense that it might be useful to compare it to Deus Ex, but I haven't played that game since its original release, so I could be way off base on that.

Combat mechanics:
Due to the manner in which the enemy encounters and 'levels' are designed, I found it prohibitively difficult to play the game as a pure fps. This is unlike Mass Effect, where once I got through the first 4-5 hours of the game, I felt no need to use any special skills or otherwise utilize the pause mechanic to do anything at all (except during boss fights).

I think this is a good thing. In Fallout 3, one-on-one you are the equal of most opponents. However, by equal I mean very nearly equal. If you find a lone super mutant, and charge straight at him, you will certainly kill him but lose a good chunk of health in the process. Several factors contribute to this. The primary one is lack of accuracy at anything other than close range. Another is that the enemies scale to your experience level at a well implemented rate.

Therefore, one is forced to use strategic planning and/or stealth to overcome the majority of encounters. The pause mechanic, called the VATS system, assists in this by giving you a number of points that may be spent on 'free' attacks (technically in slow motion, but you can't really be hurt until after your commands are executed), and which recharge in real time. Engaging VATS brings up an overlay of the enemy that displays the percentage chance of a hit on its limbs, head, weapon, or varous other parts of the enemy (some of which are more vulnerable to damage than others). Again, these percentages tend to be relatively low (i.e., in the 30-60% range) when not at very close range. Thus one must combine tactics for sneaking close to an enemy prior to engaging, making decisions about direct attack vs. luring the enemy into a trap with explosives that you can lay, and dealing with the presence of other enemies that may be drawn into the area by the noise you make. This works because most of the enemies are legitimate threats, so almost every encounter must be taken seriously.

Overall, I think that makes for a successful combat system that remains interesting throughout the game. It is only improved by the design of the game world, which drastically changes one's combat choices depending upon the environment. There are essentially three types of environments in the game; wasteland, interior, and in the city. In the wasteland, enemy encounters are relatively few, and although the terrain is open, you are generally fighting lone animals that lack ranged attacks, and you can pick them off without much trouble. Interior areas (whether in the subway, buildings, caverns, etc...) are generally densely packed with enemies, but because you are able to get pretty close or lure them into landmines without them detecting you, they can be taken care of without great trouble. The city, on the other hand, is very different. There are powerful enemies with guns patrolling the surface streets, and so much rubble that cuts off potential escape routes that there is a strong sense of exposure. This creates a tense experience and a strong desire to be underground or in the dark instead of out in the open. This is a welcome departure from Mass Effect or Oblivion where there seemed to be no real desire on the part of the designers to have you avoid enemies.

So in the three and a half months since I wrote the above post, I've gotten completely bored of Fallout 3, and haven't played it at all in at least two months. In that time, I've come to the conclusion that I've already written about everything interesting in it.

However, out of a misplaced sense of completionism, I give you the following:

Level design:
Discussed in the Combat mechanics section.

Art/music direction:
Adequate but unremarkable.

Role-playing:
Well, you can certainly invent a role, like, in your head, and play the game in accordance with it. Within the game, you have the freedom to go pretty much wherever you want, and kill pretty much any npcs you want, so if the role you chose was cartographer or serial killer, you're in luck. Otherwise you're stuck with 'be good,' 'be evil,' or 'be neutral,' except that the 'be neutral' choice isn't actually a third option of being morally ambiguous or deliberately balancing opposing forces, but rather is what occurs if you simply are good half the time and evil the other half, so your little good/evil bar stays more or less in the middle of the scale. Yes, the game's quests have different outcomes depending whether you pick good or evil, and some of them have long term changes on the game world. However, since all quests can be completed as either good or evil, so your role-playing choices have no effect on whether you 'win' or 'lose,' either the quest, or the game, I found it difficult to care.

I'd give it three stars, for what I thought was a successful and interesting combat system, attached to a simplistic and often tedious game. Ultimately, the novelty wore off this 'role-playing game' as I realized that what I really wanted to do was not so much play make-believe in my head as engage in challenges designed by someone who is good at designing challenges. In Fallout 3 there was an enormous amount of opportunity to do the former and relatively little to do the latter.

Perhaps it's because my character was a fairly optimized build (lots of points in Small Guns and Repair), but I thought the combat difficulty was a complete joke. I played on Hard, and near the endgame, I spent more time using my assault rifle to hose down supermutants at close range than I did inside VATS. I agree that the environments allow for (and occasionally require) different tactics, and use of cover is important, but VATS rarely seemed like anything more than "free headshot mode." I mostly used it to one-shot the weaker enemies.

Any remaining challenge is removed by the generous inventory space afforded to your character. I never had to make tough decisions about what equipment I would carry with me; whenever I wanted to pick up more than the limit, it was always because I was gathering loot to take back to town and sell.

In addition, ammunition and health items are weightless, so you can stockpile them as much as you want and never worry about running out during a battle. If your character is reasonably combat-capable, only the beginning of the game will require any scrounging. I was swimming in stimpacks by level 7 and finished the game with over 100 of them in my inventory.

As I said, my character's skills were very combat-oriented, so I suppose you'll have quite a different experience if you dump your points into Speech or Barter. But, that approach just seemed foolish to me, considering the amount of enemies in the game.

Perhaps it's because my character was a fairly optimized build (lots of points in Small Guns and Repair), but I thought the combat difficulty was a complete joke. I played on Hard, and near the endgame, I spent more time using my assault rifle to hose down supermutants at close range than I did inside VATS. I agree that the environments allow for (and occasionally require) different tactics, and use of cover is important, but VATS rarely seemed like anything more than "free headshot mode." I mostly used it to one-shot the weaker enemies.

I played a mostly unspecialized character, except that earlier on I put a lot of points into Energy Weapons, which was obviously a stupid thing to do. I was probably level 10-11ish when I wrote the first post (and again, not very combat oriented), and level 18 now, and much more specialized into combat, so I have come to agree with your assessment. Initially, though, I think I got a lot more enjoyment out of the combat system than you probably did.

I agree with the rest of your post, too. For what it's worth, I think it had more potential to be a great game than, say Mass Effect, but lack of challenge is the primary cause of game mediocrity today, and is clearly the problem here.

I appreciate the reply, and if you disagreed about any of my other points, or if you think I left anything notable unmentioned, I would be interested to hear about those also.

[Qpo]

I like this game. I played as a "benevolent hard ass" archetype hero, being kind to women and children and rude and/or ruthless against pretty much everyone else. Or in stats terms: I focused on Unarmed, Big Guns, Strength, Endurance, and had really low Charisma and Speech, while taking the perks of "Good with kids" and "Good with women", both of which gave new, meaningful dialogue-options. I felt that I could act according to my character in any situation I faced and that everyone would respond believably.

I played on very hard and found the combat surprisingly difficult at first, as I kept running out of ammo and took a lot of damage any time I'd go into melee. But once I started using the V.A.T.S. things got a lot better, allowing me to land free strikes in glorious slow-motion: it was very satisfying to watch my avatar punch animals, raiders and all types of mutants so hard that their limbs were ripped the fuck off and sent flying.

It also took a while before I started to use the compass. I'd spy as far as the maxed draw-distance would allow, and if I saw something interesting I'd go there and investigate. But with the compass it became a lot less fun, with its markers showing where the closest points of interest were. It took me from spying into the gameworld with keen interest to staring blankly at HUD, turning exploring into "exploring". And there's a good map anyway, integrated well into the gameworld, so there really is no point at all for magical markers in the compass.

You can quick-save anywhere. I did use this a handful of times to redo choices in dialogues, but most of my loadings (other than due to dying) were to replay a particularly fun fight that I had just cleared. This way I could "direct" the combat-to-exploration ratio, keeping my bloodlust sated. Shitty design though to have quick-saving, why won't they just copy JRPGs and do something along the lines of "save only at inns"? All you'd need to design difficulty-wise is "how hard is it to get from this save to that save?", and it'd give some real weight to the wilderness.

The inventory comes in the form of a "Pip Boy" on your left arm, which comes with a neat animation of your avatar holding it up and looking down on its display every time you access it. Unlike Worm I had some real difficulties here, despite my high strength, as my arsenal was composed of stuff like miniguns and miniature nuclear missile launchers. I vaguely remember having a bunch of stimpacks and feeling they were too numerous, but if that was the case I probably used them as fuel for my fists to save some ammo.

The intro of the game is good. You start in a vault and there's both combat and dialogues, giving you ample opportunity to get used to your character. And as you hit the surface there's a "Redo your stats? Change face or gender?", allowing you to readjust anything you weren't happy with. (That's also an ideal spot for a hard-save in case you want to skip the intro if you start over.)

I explored a bit outside of the plot, but mostly went straight through the game, rudely rejecting any side-quest that didn't sound interesting. I don't remember if the plot had any interactivity, but I liked it, and throughout all of the game felt that I could stay in character. (It's usually a better test to play an "evil" character though.) Maybe it's exactly because I explored a bit but not too much that made it feel like my story was taking place inside an actual world, rather than a narrow corridor.

I played it about two years ago but that feels like a lifetime, so I don't remember it all that clearly, but I am planning to revisit it (this time as a "bad guy"). Once I do that I might expand on the above and attempt a review. But it's better than Mass Effect, and the reason I enjoyed it quite a bit is probably exactly because I "made up a role in my head and played the game according to it".