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Fallout 3
Graphically... Oblivion, which came out two years ago, is more intense. Is it normal for the community to push out high-definition texture packs? Just another element of porting the game; it was designed to play on a 360 and it shows. It shows in blotchy textures, low-polygon environments, and models that look like marionettes hung from a single string. Clever design masks this well, with unique-looking characters and decent voice acting, and insane amounts of HDR, this game's equivalent for Vaseline over the lens of apocalyptic boudoir. There are plenty of other camera tricks, like super-wide--almost fish-eye--rendering of the turn-based combat, lots of radial blur, narrow depth of field, and anything else that obscures the game's detail shortcomings.
The water effects are great, the shadows are practically responsible in a world burning with HDR, and the fire and smoke effects are... recognizable. No, from a looks perspective, they tied things together well, with a lot of real hard art work put in, and it does a lot for this game. I just wish they bothered to give everything a rasterizing pass once for the PC game.  There are other weird things, like not being able to drop items sometimes, quests and events triggering automatically, quests and events not triggering when I trigger them, invisible parallel universe combat dropping dead people from the sky (free ammo!) getting stuck on desks, getting stuck on mushrooms, getting stuck on radscorpions... The game hangs, the game causes your PC to restart, and the game will corrupt your save files. In fact, during the course of the game testing, not once did I turn on my PC without being prompted to Start Windows Normally. This game doesn't just play like a port it seems to run on an emulator. Things did get smoother, the game must have gotten bored with restarting my computer. I began to enjoy the game. I snuck around and killed plenty of freaks and mutants. Once you get stronger, there's more V.A.T.S. killing and less running around backwards wasting ammo, and the Fallout 3 V.A.T.S. is a decent simulacra of the original, up to the point where you freeze your sights on the back of some mutant's throat and nothing else. The targeting system requires that you pause the combat with everything you want to hurt in-frame, which can be frustrating in close-quarters fights.  Of course the simplest way to play through a second time is as an inhuman sociopath--the "Karma"-based morality system is the same as ever; you're either a douchey goody-goody or a baby-stabber; there is sometimes the middle ground of being a greedy fuck, but little else. No surprises there. For a vault-dweller, you're surprisingly worldly. The main quest is short and begging for an expansion pack. It's engaging but straight-forward. The side quests do a good job of exploiting the atmosphere of the game, and pretty much every major location exists as a stopping point for the main quest and as the hub for at least one side quest. All the minor locations are spokes of the side-quests. The open-world nature of the game actually makes the game feel smaller, since you basically have access to everything, and nothing is added as you progress through the game. But that doesn't make what you have less interesting.  I think people from the Vaults smell different, because everyone knows you're the main character. This makes it pretty easy to stay busy, but I couldn't help but feel pandered, and it sometimes breaks the immersion. But it's nothing compared to sneaking around, stealing things. You can steal from people and trade their stuff back to them. You can shoot anyone in stealth mode, and most of the time, their friends won't notice it--even if you're using high-powered rifles. Other times, sneaking is no good whatsoever, and everything charges right for you. The AI just turns itself off, goes and checks its email, like when I came across two groups of raiders in a shoot-out. I decided to wait for one side to thin out the other side, and pick over the bodies--this was early in the game and I couldn't take people easily at all--when for whatever reason, they all put aside their differences and decided I was made of money and rad-free pie.
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Add Comment
17 User Comments 1 - Posted by
steven12234
on January 21, 2009 - 3:57 am What a cock you sound like a fucking retard....have you just done this review late to see how you could flame ppl. Fuckhead 2 - Posted by
Blanks
on January 21, 2009 - 9:09 am Great review, it's nice to see a real critique of the game rather than the usual fawning.
3 - Posted by
Kyle-11
on January 21, 2009 - 10:19 am Good review, my feelings about the game are very similar, especially the part where the game feels like an Oblivion TC. I have noticed a lot of trolls or maybe shills attack anything negative about Fallout 3 like they had a vested interest in it, seems so weird to defend a game to the point of swearing because someone has a different opinion.
4 - Posted by
ooomy
on January 21, 2009 - 10:33 am This might be THE most worst review I have ever read.. This is Flamebait!
5 - Posted by
qwplayer
on January 21, 2009 - 11:52 am Everything he says in this review is true. I experienced all those glitches, dumb AI, plenty of BSODS, random crashes to desktop etc. But for some reason I still enjoyed the game a lot. I never played Fallout 1/2 and Oblivion so maybe thats why. No need for flames, there is nothing wrong with this review. 6 - Posted by
headkase
on January 21, 2009 - 12:04 pm I'm quite the opposite of your review. I never played Fallout 1 or 2 (although I recently purchased them off of GoG) so Fallout 3 was my first introduction to the canon. I really wanted to like Oblivion, really!, but I just couldn't get into the fantasy setting. Fallout 3 for me is everything I liked about Oblivion in a setting that just does it for me. I think its a great game. I will be buying all three DLC's. I played with mouse/keyboard my first run through and I didn't really consider the controls to be overly awkward so I guess your mileage may vary. Half-way through my second and now well into my third plays I'm using an 360 controller for Windows and I find it just fine too. It's too bad you haven't received as must enjoyment out of Fallout 3 that I have but if its not suitable for you then thats just it. I can't make you like it! :) 7 - Posted by
Kurtis
on January 21, 2009 - 1:14 pm It makes things more interesting when there is really polarized feedback like this. For those of you making blanket statements calling this a terrible review, etc... It doesn't really bother me, as we're all entitled to our opinions, but I would encourage you to actually state specific points. Otherwise, your feedback isn't doing anybody any good, and if you're taking the time to post a comment, I can only assume you care about giving real feedback. User comments can be very useful to people reading this review, so just keep that in mind. That being said, whether you agree or disagree with this review, thank you for sharing your thoughts! We welcome all feedback here, so keep it up. :) 8 - Posted by
Jeffery2345
on January 21, 2009 - 2:42 pm A good review in my opinion, however I disagree about the turn based part, VATS isn't turn based just a pause for called shots. I hate that this is what we get for a third fallout, this isn't a sequeal it's a spin-off. It's nice and all that, you get a large world to explore but get's boring when virtually every place looks the same and all you seem to find is darts, teddy bears and financial reports, Should have called it junk hunt the game. The main story is really stupid. Bethesda couldn't even be bothered to create some new antagonists either, we get the Enclave, and supermuntants, niether of them should be present, but that might have been ok had the story been decent.
9 - Posted by
qwertylesh
on January 21, 2009 - 8:03 pm I played F3 (unpatched) since it came out and wracked up more then 50 hours in it, played all the side quests, and went to every location, I can say that it not once BSOD'd my computer, take my advice, dont patch it, if you still get bsod's, fix that shit, its not the games faul your pc is unstable. (seriously, not flaming) your reivew had a strong taste of dissapointment, IMHO I dont think your right when you say if someone truely liked Fallout/F2/FT's that this will break their heart, it broke YOUR heart that it wasnt as all the hype made it to be, I can understand the feeling as I got suckered with Spore and its years of hype, but this was a truely enjoyable game, tedious in the end and its an obvious port, it does crash frequently (proces crash) I wouldnt put it in the catagory if the fallout series (i agree they are long dead) but it still is a good game to play for what you pay for, I thinik Bethseda did allright compared to one or two of the titles they have released before. 10 - Posted by
Havocunleashed
on January 26, 2009 - 6:29 pm Fallout 3 Is By Far The Best Game Ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11 - Posted by
helloImMark
on February 11, 2009 - 1:46 pm Umm... Mr Reviewer? You DO know that you can remap keys, right? You can remap almost every key and mouse press in this game. And the ones you cannot, like A) Accept and E) Exit, you can use a little ingenuity and download a program called AutoHotKey which will allow you to remap even those. -Mark 12 - Posted by
btox
on February 23, 2009 - 1:05 am I played both Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 each when they were new, and loved them. I also love Fallout 3. I played Oblivion only a bit and didn't like it (also played the first 3 elder scrolls: arena, daggerfall, morrowind).. so maybe that makes it easier for me to enjoy it since I don't see much similarity. The game is crashy, but that's in line with the trilogy.. the first two were crashy too. I've never had a BSOD, only crashes. I think a number of things stated in this review are incorrect. Fighting doesn't stop when you fire a shot.. you're not forced to use VATS. I've also played a lot of first person shooters on the PC, and the EASD controls for forward, step left, backward, step right are pretty common.. it's not like the developers picked things randomly at all. R is for reload, which is also common. The controls are oriented around the left hand which is on the keyboard.. the right hand is on the mouse. You are not penalized for using the mouse at all. I'm sorry the game disappointed the reviewer.. but it certainly lived up to my expectations. Perhaps my expectations weren't that high after Brotherhood of Steel.. X( 13 - Posted by
TheJew72
on February 25, 2009 - 9:01 am Paragraph 4: First, you claim that the game is so close to the original that it feels like a bad mod, then say the interface is so different that it loses how "genuine" it is. I feel like you're nitpicking just to have a different opinion than most, and are just trying to make yourself heard by posting a bogus story. You will continue to have these opinions as long as you feel like you will draw attention to yourself with them. You have no idea why you hate this game other than how popular it is. Also, "spc" would not be an acronym, smarty-pants. It would be an abbreviation. This semantic discrepancy makes me feel like you're less genuine as a writer. That is you deserve no praise for writing this bogus "look at me too!" review.
14 - Posted by
Kurtis
on February 25, 2009 - 11:36 am TheJew72: This isn't a tabloid, we don't write to make bogus claims to get attention. Just because you think 'everyone' likes a game doesn't mean literally every person likes it. Opinions are like assholes, as they say.
15 - Posted by
Failbot
on February 25, 2009 - 5:28 pm "Immersion, 2/5: Bad controls, buggy gameplay, BSODs" Controls can be remapped. I had no BSODs and had very few problems with bugs. The combat was "stop and go" how exactly? 16 - Posted by
Goldenhammer
on April 15, 2009 - 3:12 am yeah i see no similarirties between fallout 3 and oblivion... and ive played both i cant comment on however if its better or worse than the first 2 i have yet to play them... but so far as ive played i have yet to experience a bug or glitch and my controls work just fine =/ yes your entitled to your opinion but...i wouldnt speak for others in the fact of a heart break for true fall out fans... b/c i know my friends liked fallout3 and the love fallout =/ ne who... tou really couldnt compare it to oblivion true it was made by the same people but other than that it looks nothing like oblivionexcept maybe gameplay in which case isnt that bad...
17 - Posted by
BtD
on June 26, 2009 - 12:53 pm A very clear, well written review overall, and I agree completely. Fallout 3, much like Oblivion before it is a case of "almost, but not quite." If you're distracted by shiny objects and content to let your eyes glaze over for a few hours of mindless button mashing, its an okay game. It just doesn't hold up anything better than that.
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