For 200 years, Vault 101, a fallout shelter, has served the surviving residents of Washington DC and its environs, now known as the Capital Wasteland. Though the global atomic war of 2077 left the US all but destroyed, the residents of Vault 101 enjoy a life free from Giant Insects, Raiders, Slavers, and yes, even Super Mutants. Yet one morning, you awake to find that your father has left the comfort and security afforded by Vault 101 for reasons unknown. Leaving the only home you’ve ever known, you emerge from the Vault into the harsh Wasteland sun to search for your father. Fallout 3 is a singleplayer action role-playing game (RPG) that combines the horrific insanity of the Cold War era theory of mutually assured destruction gone terribly wrong with the kitschy naivety of American 1950s nuclear propaganda.
Mind-Blowing Artificial Intelligence – Facial expressions, gestures, unique dialog, and lifelike behavior are brought together with stunning results Modern super-deluxe HD graphics
User Reviews
5 Stars Simply Incredible
This is an absolutely top notch game. I’ve been an avid gamer for around 20 years now. I’ve played countless games and this is one of my all-time favorites.
I’m a big fan of both Role Playing Games and First Person Shooters. Fallout 3 is both, although probably more of an RPG. For me it’s quite hard to kill normal opponents without using the targeting system, which pauses the game. But this didn’t bother me at all or lessen the experience in any way. The only thing that I would change would be to give the player the ability to control the camera during the slow motion combat shots. The camera angle can be poor at times.
The graphics are great, the atmosphere is very convincing and it’s just good fun. It’s also a somewhat odd mix of being very serious and yet very silly at times. I guess I would describe it as quirky, but in a good way.
The game is definitely not for younger people. The games is very gory, the language is about as bad as it gets, and there are quite a few references to prostitution and drugs.
I’m about 15-20 hours into the game and I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve read that the game can be completed in 20 hours. But that seems crazy to me. I put 90 hours into Oblivion before I even took the main quest seriously. Fallout 3 looks like it’s going to have that kind of playability for me, and then some. I didn’t really enjoy the combat in Oblivion nearly as much as I enjoyed just exploring the world. With Fallout 3, I enjoy both.
This is a must buy.
5 Stars A great 3D sequel to one of my all time favorite games
I have now played Fallout 3 intensely for a week and I have to declare myself satisfied. I know not everyone is pleased with it, but I can’t for the life of me understand why. If you loved Fallout and Fallout 2 this is a very satisfying and faithful adaptation to a new 3D environment. Another famous older RPG, Diablo, will be coming out on a 3D engine, so this may give some hint on how successful that one will be from moving from a 45 degree overview to 3D. I love the transition. The main thing to emphasize is that this is an RPG, not a 3D shooter. If you try to play it as a shooter you are going to have a tough, tough time. You’ll not have enough ammo (unless you spend all your time fighting with a lead pipe or baseball bat). And you won’t be able to maximize advantages of your character design. Now, I know some won’t like this basic fact about Fallout 3. But I love it. I hate 3D shooters. I don’t and won’t play them. The only kind of computer game I enjoy is some form of RPG. I don’t play computer games the way I used to, so I’m very selective in the gaming I do these days. Since 2001 about the only games I have played to any extent have been Asheron’s Call (an MMRPG), World of Warcraft, Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 (a RTS game with RPG elements), Dungeon Siege and Dungeon Siege 2, Oblivion, and, now, Fallout 3. I bought this for Playstation 3, so that I now have two PS3 games to play (along with Oblivion).
My fear was that the new Fallout might not resemble the previous ones. The 3D environment gives a startling visual innovation, but deep down the game really does resemble the two earlier games. The look of the game manages to be both vaguely futuristic and strikingly Art Deco, just as in the earlier games. The weapons tend to be largely the same. I took a gamble in creating my first character that this would be the cast and chose to train early on in energy weapons and small arms (in the original games I found that pulse pistols — which utilized few action points in the V.A.T.S. system — combined with taking perks emphasizing criticals to heads were more effective than the huge weapons that ate up action points) and the game truly has gone along those same lines. In the original games I never did get over the thrill of getting my first combat shotgun (the first weapon that did really significant damage). Same with this one.
If you have played Oblivion and then turned to Fallout 3 you will instantly recognize it as the same game engine. I didn’t know this for a fact, but a tiny bit of research revealed that it was indeed built on the same engine. If you have played Oblivion, you will have little difficulty adjusting to Fallout 3. The one major difference is the V.A.T.S. system. By hitting your R2 button you have a grid come up that allows you to target parts of the entity you are shooting at along with the odds of inflicting significant damage. This can make a huge difference. For instance, in the early quest that involves you killing a large number of the very tough Fire Ant Soldiers if you can cripple one of their legs you can buy a lot of extra time to kill them. For some reason their legs are easy to hit. So, this aspect of the game is very different than Oblivion. But so many other things are the same. Navigating the environment is similar. I don’t want to make it sound like Fallout 3 is merely Oblivion set in the future. The two games are quite dissimilar, but there are unquestioned similarities.
The one thing I had some trouble with is a rather small list of quests to be undertaken at one time. A couple of times I had only two quests and was stuck on one of them and not high enough level to do the other (it involved me working through a territory that was just too tough for me). Since you can’t level very quickly just killing critters in the wilderness I was sorta stuck for a while. I finally caved in and hit a board to find out to finish the one quest.
I loved so many of the nice touches in the game that larger file sizes have made possible. For instance, I loved the pirate radio station, though I regretted that there were not more songs. It did, however, lend a really nice wrinkle to the texture of the game.
All in all, I’m having a heck of a lot of fun playing this. I’ll probably replay it as soon as I finish. I always like to play such games with both a highly developed offensive skill and a highly developed technical skill. For instance, this time through I’m playing a one-handed small arms, energy weapon character with extremely high charisma and verbal skills. Next time maybe I’ll do two-handed weapons character or perhaps even a big weapons character with very high science skills. I very highly recommend the game, but you have to realize that this is an RPG, not a shooter. If you are expecting and wanting an RPG, you will find it infinitely preferable to any shooter, but if you expect a shooter and don’t want an RPG, you are going to find this infuriating. But I found it to be a delightful sequel to two games that I loved on PC.
5 Stars Fair and balanced review of a great game
This is a tremendous game. It marries the depth of Elder Scrolls 4:Oblivion’s gameplay to the really wonderful atmosphere of the Fallout series. You roam a post-nuclear apocalypse Washington DC in an attempt to discover your origin and find your father. You also come across hundreds of desperate survivors of said apocalypse, and can choose either to help them or to take advantage of them. Your good or bad choices affect the way characters relate to you and what main-story “ending” you can see during the game.
If you’ve never played Oblivion or Knights of the Old Republic (the two games I think are the most similar to Fallout 3), here is the extremely simple but non-spoiler-y explanation: You create a character with certain statistics (e.g. strength, intelligence). These statistics govern the kinds of choices you have in a huge gameplay world. You explore the world, collecting items, fighting enemies, and completing quests (such as finding someone’s lost brother, discovering the secret of your birth, collecting a certain kind of item for profit). Every once in a while, your character “levels up,” meaning you can augment those statistics with the points you’ve earned in the interim between levels.
Veterans of Oblivion will find many familiar things. Dialogue proceeds in much the same fashion, albeit with better voice acting this go-round. Item management is similar as well, with a weight value and encumberance (although, more realistically this time, being over-encumbered doesn’t render you immobile because you’re 1 point over – it slows you down instead). Bartering is more advanced, because you can trade both items and currency for other items. You can purchase or win residences in the towns, and decorate them, very similar to Oblivion (except you can purchase useful items, too, like workbenches). Weapons degrade and can be fixed, but similarly to KOTOR, you now have the option of augmenting and creating new weapons. Fast travel also works exactly like Oblivion.
So what’s different? Well, the story and atmosphere. Unlike Oblivion, you cannot choose any of a number of races, and the difference between “character classes” is nominal at best. You’re always going to a citizen of one of the survival “vaults” in DC, and you will always have the main quest motivation of the story with your father and the mystery surrounding him and your origins. But this is not a criticism. If you (like me) are fascinated by post-nuclear-war sci-fi, you will find much to love here. The music, sound effects, and especially the graphics create an amazing mood and atmosphere. The wasteland is eerie and desolate, unlike Oblivion’s lush, Lord of the Rings-style setting. Its setting on Earth, with easily recognizable houses, products, and other trappings of our own modern lifestyle make it much more relatable, and creepier still when you find charred skeletons in their bedrooms, frozen in the positions in which they died in the nuclear conflagration. Also, the non-player-character stories are MUCH more mature than Oblivion, full of raunchy language, killing, sex, and amorality. Note to parents – This stuff is on the level of an R-rated movie such as “Total Recall” or “Terminator.” So it’s probably not for the under 13-set.
Combat without VATS is just like Oblivion – point yourself towards your target and either shoot or swing your melee weapon. With the VATS system, though, the action is paused and you can target portions of your enemy, with a percentage to hit each. It is somewhat reminiscent of KOTOR in the game-pausing respect. Crippling a leg will make your opponent limp slowly towards (or away from) you, crippling an arm or two will hinder their ability to use a weapon, aiming for the head can result in decapitations and exploding skulls.
The graphics are stunning. The level of detail is sky-high, and the settings created by the programmers are eerie, evocative, beautiful, sad, and frightening all in one. I think all the hate being spewed about this game, especially the PS3 version, is either overreaction or simply fanboy baloney. IGN’s review, for instance, states that the graphical differences between the two consoles are negligible. There are reports of SPORADIC bugs and freezing issues on all three platforms (So far, in 20 hours, I have experienced one lockup – the “GOAT freeze,” and noticed one clipping issue, where an enemy’s body was passing through a piece of rubble. That’s IT). I say: BIG DEAL!
I can tell you, as someone who owns Oblivion Game Of The Year Ed. on PS3 (and owned the non-GOTY edition on 360) that Fallout 3′s graphics are better than Oblivion’s. The detail is superb, the frame rate is silky smooth (I was shocked and pleasantly surprised by this!), there is just really nothing to fault. The difference between PS3 and 360 is probably comparable to the difference between an ATI or Nvidia graphics card on a PC. Maybe one does Anti-Alaising a little better, one does hi res textures better. IT IS SIMPLY NOT VERY NOTICEABLE. I am playing on a 50″ 1080p HDTV, and have had no complaints about the graphics. Quite the contrary, I have been blown away at times, and I consider myself a discriminating consumer on this point. This game stands up against MGS4, Burnout Paradise, and Uncharted in terms of detail. The only thing marring it is a bit of pop-in when viewing things at great distances. But, given the amount of stuff in this vast world, it is easily forgivable (just as it was in Oblivion).
It should be said that downloadable expansion content has been announced for the PC and 360 versions, and not the PS3 version as yet. I personally do not view this as major, since: the game is huge as it stands; and DLC usually finds its way to PS3 eventually, just as it did with Oblivion.
Notice something? I keep comparing Fallout 3 to some of the best games of the past 5 years. There’s a reason for this. Fallout 3 is a must-own, pure and simple. Any issues are negligible when put up against this game’s atmosphere, scope, and detail. It is worth $60 easily, which is my very highest praise for any video game.
5 Stars Great game if you liked Oblivion!
First Off… Great Shipping by Amazon! I elected for Free 5-7 day shipping and received the game on October 30th… 2 days after the game released.
The game itself is very fun so far (only 1.5 hours invested). V.A.T.S. targeting system is a great addition to the RPG genre. I have not had a chance to build a weapon yet, but I believe it will add great complexity to customized weapons. Multi-level navigation can be slightly confusing with 2 map views (local and world), but can be learned after some gamelay. Graphics are very good (do not have 1080p TV yet) and there have been no slow downs or glitches yet. The designers have also added some fun things throught the game (like silly figurines that add bonuses).
highly recommended for fun, in-depth rpg, and good graphics.
5 Stars VAST AND GOREY AND DELICIOUS
the title says it all words cant describe this gore fest of excellent plot and story and vast exploration its delicious. YOU MUCH PLAY THIS GOREFEST OF EVIL
