Game Review - Fallout 3

Yea, I know it's late in coming, but here it is: my fallout 3 review.

First off, let me explain why it took so long to come up with a comprehensive review. This game is absolutely massive. Also, with the fact that there are expansions now, it seems like a good thing that I had a chance to experience them as well. It also helps that patches were released that made the game more stable, as the initial release was prone to crash easily, and repetitively in some cases.

With that out of the way, let's dig into this game shall we?

If you haven't played Fallout 3 yet, You are missing something special. Forget all the nay-sayers who preach on about how this game betrays certain things in the fallout universe, this game is a technical achievement in video games whose scope hasn't been seen since games like morrowind and oblivion.

Let's start with that, Fallout 3 runs on a modified version of the same engine that powered oblivion. Due to this, there are striking similarities between the two games. Missions, character interactions, combat (outside of VATS), zone loading, and much of the graphics are handled the same way. The game looks like oblivion was just nuked all to hell at some point. This threw me off at first, because the game FEELS almost exactly like oblivion, but what they've done with the graphics engine is absolutely stunning.

Fallout 3's graphics are essentially powered by shaders. Everything in the game uses them to render what you see. The pip boy itself is all shaders, including the display. To this end, however, FO3 can be pretty brutal on hardware. I noticed that leaving HDR on would cause crashing to happen more often, for example. Even with HDR off, it's a sight to behold. Nuka cola quantums won't glow anymore, but it's almost negligible when you are looking at the world as a whole.

This is one of those games that begs you to explore. If you stick to the story of the game, it's easy to complete the game in 6 hours, but the game world is considerably massive in comparison. Even after a year of playing this game, I'm still yet to uncover everything in this game.

Then there's the expansion packs. In a lot of games, expansions amount to little more then a new dungeon and some new booty, but packs like 'The Pitt' and 'Pointlookout' are expansive worlds in their own rite.

This game can easily suck away hundreds of hours if you let it. On top of that there are seemingly limitless items to collect, trade, and repair. You can even make a few from random junk you find littering the world.

The game also allows you to build your character any way you see fit. You can dump skill points into lockpicking and stealth if you with to go that route, or you can push for a brute, and dump everything into weapons abilities and damage reduction. And through the karma system, how you treat the world has real consequences. The hardest way I've found to play is to go for a completely neutral character based around bartering, but this too can be accomplished.

All in all, this was the best game of the year last year, and it still brings me back every day for at least an hour, to explore this dreamlike world of ruin.

Technical score - 90%
Game play score - 95%