Fallout 3: Review

Just buy it; I can't honestly offer you any more appropriate advice regarding this game. Far too rarely in my video gaming 'career' have I come across a game which exhibits the perfection that you will find in this title. This game literally has nearly everything a person could want in a piece of entertainment media, but we'll get to that in a moment...

In Fallout 3, you are 'the vault dweller' - a character of your making who will have the race, sex, and appearance of your choice. The year is 2277, two hundred years after a nuclear war between the United States and China has ravaged the entire world. A few families managed to buy their way into underground fallout shelters, or vaults. Your character is a descendant of these fortunate few.

Your story begins in Vault 101 where you are raised by your father until he disappears during your teenage years. Without ruining too much of the storyline, I will say that events lead to you being forced to leave the vault for the first time. As you stumble into the blinding light of Washington D.C.'s Capital Wasteland, your adventure truly begins. In your quest to find your father, you will traverse the wasteland that was once the greater D.C. area while exploring settlements, ruins, and the general wreckage that was once a thriving society.

The moment that you take this fabled first step out of the vault is the moment that the game opens wide to your whims. You can search for your father or head in the opposite direction. You can wander the wasteland helping its citizens or become their worst nightmare, stealing and murdering across the massive game world. You can explore long-forgotten locals, search for valuable commodities to trade for weapons and armor, and even take up permanent residence in two of the settlements.

Regardless of your reason for traveling this vast (and I truly mean vast) wasteland, you will be forced to fend off packs of savage raiders, slavers, and various forms of mutants - whether mutated variations of familiar wildlife or entirely new creatures which are the result of 200 years of life in the irradiated wastes. Combat against these dangers involves an intriguing mixture of real-time combat and the V.A.T.S. system, which lets you freeze the action to queue attacks on one or more enemies and even target specific body parts. These V.A.T.S. attacks are more likely to cause critical damage and are a great way to sort out the chaos of tough battles. The game also offers a wealth of combat options through weapon variety and character specialization.

These character choices are one of the strong suits of the game. Each time your character gains a level you are able to choose perks which can help specialize your character to fit your play style and interests. Through this specialization you are able to create a savvy negotiator, a mad scientist, a crafty sniper, an explosives-wielding maniac, or many other possible combinations. The sheer number of different types of character you can play, along with the many choices you face in the game itself will have you playing through several times over.

Both main and side quests are intriguing and fun, if you choose to play them. Most feature several possible means of resolving the problem or completing the goal at hand. The world's non-player characters are lifelike and each gives a sense of individuality and uniqueness. Every single line of dialogue spoken by these characters is fully voice-acted and while many characters share the same voice actor, the other differences between these characters do a good job of making each seem unique.

Overall, the game world is very lifelike. While it is often barren in places and makes heavy use of the colors brown and gray, this only helps to reinforce the idea that the player is in a hopeless wasteland of post-apocalyptic horrors. You really get the feeling that the citizens of the wasteland struggle to survive. The game developers also did a great job of showing the dark side of humanity in this setting. While many of the wasteland's people wish only to survive in peace, others stay alive by killing, stealing, selling others into slavery, and even feeding on the flesh of their own species.

As I earlier mentioned, there just isn't much missing here that one would hope to find in a piece of entertainment media. The game has it all: action, suspense, horror, drama, comedy, and best of all a believable, lifelike world and intriguing story. Combine that with great game play, combat, character development and growth, and it's easy to see why this game is such a winner. Topping it all off, the game has fantastic replay value. At the time of this writing, I have logged over 300 hours into this game and have four different characters I am currently playing along with another one planned for the future.

If you love gaming the way I do and haven't played this title yet, do yourself a favor and pick it up. This could be one of the greatest gaming experiences of your life.