Tangent Time - Fallout 3

Anyone who knows me online might have been wondering why I haven’t been playing Wow very much recently. Well it’s all thanks to Fallout 3 (and Christmas) a fantastic FPS open world RPG. I would suggest that this game is just as addictive, if not more so because it something completely different, as wow.

Fallout 3 is set is a post apocalyptic alternative earth where a world devastated by nuclear war is fought over by various faction of different moral standings. Throughout the game you level up your character and customize it to match your play style though skills and perks. Additionally your every action has an impact on the world, altering who you can talk to, how people will react to you and how the world appears. Overarching this is Karma a measurable indication of your actions in terms of good and bad. Karama has the most impact on how you experience the game, massacre settlements, enslave people and eat corpses and you will be unwelcome at towns and loved by slavers. However if you help out strangers, rescue people and kill slavers you will not only be rewarded by some of the townsfolk but a bounty will be placed on your head and Mercenary forces will start to hunt you down.

Combat can take several forms, you can fire all your weapons freestyle or you can enter V.A.T.S when essentially pauses the game and lets you allocate where your next few shots will land. This system is limited by your AP a regenerating value which determines how many shots you can fire in V.A.T.S at that time. The ability to sneak give you the option, to a limited extend, of back stabbing people or just sneaking past them and you can sometimes talk your way out of a fight. The mechanics also include the ability to critically hit, disable limbs and head shot.

The world is immersive, the game smooth and beautiful and the story engaging and complex but Fallout is not without its flaws. The worst so far has to be the poor AI, enemies seem to either charge straight at you or stand and shoot. Difficulty is only ensured by the toughness, damage output and number of enemies or a lack of ammunition. To make matters worse quite often enemies don’t path well around corners, obstacles and walls. On several occasions I have been able to take out Minigun wielding Super Mutants by trapping them in rooms and bouncing grenades in to them. I would have liked to see the enemy use cover, attempt to surround you and other simple but challenging tactics. My other annoyance was that upon achieving a new level you have to choose your skills and perk immediately this resulted in several very unwise choices that are irreversible. Allowing the player to skip assigning them immediately and return later and the ability to reset them (perhaps at a very high cost) would have been an excellent addition.

Overall it is a fantastic game well worth the asking price and the significant time investment. You can visit the official site with plenty of information about the game or visit the game Wiki which has details about all the skills, perks, quests, characters etc.

Images from the Fallout 3 Official Site