Preface

Everyone has an opinion. There’s a rude saying that compares opinions to a part of the human anatomy that practically says one’s opinion is worthless. So why read any reviews? If you’re not a terrible cynic you may be able to pore through a handful of reviews, develop and understanding for what sort of lens the reviewer sees games with and define some sort of truth from the fluffy words of praise or harsh criticisms that would have no tangible value.

You might be thinking, “Get to the review already!” or “Stop wasting my time and give me your score!” but without a preface you may not understand the “lens” I see games through and how to get what you need from my opinions. If you really can’t stomach anymore though feel free to jump ahead and read the review.

So what does any of this mean for my reviews? Why should you care what I think? Some would claim that the big boys writing up game reviews on their ad-congested sites will proudly throw a bold ‘9′ to ‘10′ up for the right price. I’m the farthest thing from that. Not only am I not getting paid for a specific opinion (and who seriously would?) but I’m going to tell you exactly what sort of lens I look through when I play a game.

I’ll admit that I’m hard to please with games. Like many of you, I’ve played them as far back as I can remember, but they are a fierce passion for me. When I play a game and I’m up to my neck in “fun” or “frustration” a sliver of my mind, somewhere in the back, will ponder something along the lines of “This part must have been hard to code“, “They must have run out of time and rushed this part” or a multitude of similar thoughts.

General Review

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! I apologize if the previous four paragraphs felt unnecessary but hopefully that was ample preparation for this review.
Fallout 3 is an ambitious, sandbox game similar to Bethesda’s previous well known title, The Elder Scrolls series. In this game you play the “Lone Wanderer”, a former vault dweller, who has left the safety of his subterranean home to find his father in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was once Washington D.C. This game offers you a lot of freedom, so much that if the player chooses, the ultimate motivation may end up not being to search out your paternal unit but to abandon the main story and romp about the wasteland doing what they please. Best of all, the player even gets to decide what their character looks like and wears.

As is the tradition of RPGs, Fallout 3 features stats, which are called skills in this game, that dictate your proficiency in using and repairing of weapons and armor, communicating and bartering with people and a plethora of other factors that influence your game experience. While the player can sneak by, outwit or run from danger the game is primarily a shooter.

With the charm and immersion offered from this bleak but fleshed-out world, along with the flexibility in play style and the ease of the VATS (Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System) the game should have no trouble appealing to anyone above the target audience age (16 and older in the U.S.) The violence, gore and demoralizing wasteland is not for the young or weak at heart.

Some players end up not only molding their respective characters’ abilities, but their identities as well. After spending hours in the Wasteland and making choices time and time again the players’ gestalt realizes a character (hopefully) as real as the world Bethesda Softworks has presented.

The Basics

Visuals – They’re good. Whether you can get to see all the fancy bloom, water, light and shadow affects depends on how powerful your PC is. I can’t really tell you what it looks like on the Xbox 360 or PS3 but I imagine it’s no slouch. In the post-apocalyptic world your color palette is somewhat limited to various shades of worn and ruined yellow, grey and brown. For the areas that do not sport these melancholy hues the game uses a filter that makes the entire world look aged. Some people like this artistic choice while others don’t. Personally, I got used to it and forgot about it.

Gameplay – Plenty of freedom and fun. When I couldn’t outwit someone verbally or swipe a key from their pocket I would reload my game just to see how many ways I could get around a conflict. This was even something I’d do for combat. When approaching an enemy I’d try settling the dilemma by running in firing my assault rifle, decimate the entire room with explosives or (my favorite) my opponent with a single well-placed rifle shot.

Sound – It’s okay. I’d like to praise the sound design of this game but can’t do so in good conscience. The music fits the dramatic tones and futuristic 1940s themes and the sound effects are never that distracting or irritating. My dissatisfaction rests primarily with the voice acting. Liam Neeson does a great job voicing the player’s father and a few of the other voice actors delivered believable performances. I understand that when you’ve got as many characters as this game has and ALL of them speak, time and money quickly run out. However, this does not excuse the awkward acting and repetitive voice clips. Such flaws not only chip away at the player’s immersion into the game but they are annoying,

Score

I don’t like the idea of trying to quantify something as abstract as the experience of playing a game. Instead, I use what I like to call the AUSE system. Each letter in AUSE represents a level of enjoyment, as delineated below.

A – Awful

U – Unsatisfactory

S – Satisfactory

E – Excellent

I really do hope you read my preface, because you still might find yourself a bit confused even if you have.

Fallout 3 – Awful

I really wanted to give this game at least a Satisfactory but, after discovering the presence of a multitude of bugs (both small and large) and flaws, I can’t rightfully say it’s satisfactory. After installing the recent update I experienced AT LEAST two crashes a day and in my search for answers, I found that a large number of people were wrestling with similar or worse frustrations not just on the PC, but also with the XBox 360 and PS3 versions. One mission in the main storyline was almost completely broken and I was only able to get past it after cleverly working around it. Even before the patch I found myself opening up the console and learning commands to fix the problems that were left in the game.

I have Bioshock on my computer and, despite experiencing many drops in frame rate and choppy sound, it never crashed. These show-stopping bugs in Fallout 3 were not a result of my computer’s inability to run the game but rather some very poor coding.

I’m sorry Bethesda, but I can’t save Big Town if you’ve given me no robots to repair.

I’ve worked as a Quality Assurance Tester and have studied game design. Not only does Fallout 3 have more bugs than a suspiciously cheap motel but  the game designer seems to have forgotten their number one responsibility, “Be the advocate for the player.” For example, like most modern game developers, the designer failed to realize that not all gamers own a HD set up so the tiny menu text is nigh unreadable. I’m looking at you, Dead Space.

So, in the end I choose Awful over Unsatisfactory for one reason. If Fallout 3 were an eagerly anticipated car that had a broken fuel gauge, a radio that gets only a few stations, no air conditioning and an engine that gives out at one point in your commute or whenever it feels like, it means the car wasn’t properly manufactured. It is particularly reprehensible when hundreds of people, if not more, encounter these flaws, especially when they paid for what they were led to believe was a finished product. Giving us a new coat of paint and seat covers (in this case, downloadable content) isn’t going to fix any of the existing problems.

The ending sort of sucks too.