Fallout 3 anyone?

[emsley]

If you have it what do you think of it? Even though it has been getting rave reviews everyplace I go I'm still not sure if I want to get it.

If its elder scrolls with guns then I should enjoy it, I read that one guy set up some mines as people were getting married in the game and on the way out of the church they exploded as they stept on them.

Now that's got me interested.

[Kenshinsama]

yes its like oblivion but the world of fallout is really the only reason Im buying this game. the world is so...flocked up and you dont know who you can trust. the atmosphere for this gamke is just too good. I would say goto your local gamestop and pick it up used. if you dont like it you can take it back within 7 days. or you can goto blockbuster ^^

 

but do play this game!

[emsley]

Second hand is better, I normally copy a game then part exchange it because you can not take back a PC game if the seal is broken.

[Wizard]

On my second run right now. If you enjoyed Oblivion, you'll enjoy Fallout 3 and it's brand of (Bethesda) humor. But if you enjoyed Fallout 1 & 2, prepare to be disappointed because it doesn't keep the same dark sense of humor and writing as the previous games and we're stuck with a mostly lifeless, under achieved world that had a lot of potential but fell short. The only town with any sort of character of it's own is Megaton, the first town in the game.

 

As such, there are no shades of gray in the game. There's pure good, sugar coated anti-hero and dick. No actual evil path in the game. No child killer reputation. Sure you get bad karma, but it doesn't really mean crap because you can still be an avenger and kill every evil bastard, then go back to killing innocents.

 

The game also suffers from several things that Oblivion suffered from, such as a majority of skills and perks being utterly and completely useless, emotionless animations and models and once again, we have a gimped version of Radiant AI. Laziness in coding pathways shows too, as some quest NPCs seemlessly die randomly because of waypoint errors. Also, import NPCs still exist. So if you want to go on a killing spree, they'll come back to life and hunt you down. Thankfully it can be turned off with;

 

bForceReloadOnEssentialCharacterDeath=0

bEssentialTakeNoDamage=0

 

But killing children is still impossible.

 

Bethesda released it in good spirit, but cannot shake the nagging nerve that the game is really an MMORPG but without the MMO applied. You do quests and level and beat the game. There is no New Game+ or a way to continue any left over quests either after you beat the game. You have to do it all before doing the main quest. It's very possible to completely skip most of the side quests and just grind it out to level 15 and beat the game in 8 hours.

 

VATS is terribly fun though, so points to that. It's a fighting aid (basically from medium to short range "I-Win mode") and not a gameplay mechanic to make it seem like it's turn based.

 

yes its like oblivion but the world of fallout is really the only reason Im buying this game. the world is so...flocked up and you dont know who you can trust. the atmosphere for this gamke is just too good. I would say goto your local gamestop and pick it up used. if you dont like it you can take it back within 7 days. or you can goto blockbuster ^^

 

but do play this game!

Nope, it isn't. The world, as visually impressive as it is, is mostly filled with boring, unmemorable and emotionless characters.

 

I am OK with the fact it's an FPSRPG, I'm OK with the fact you can't kill kids (there are morals about that), I'm OK with the fact the AI is gimped and that it game is really just Oblivion with guns, I'm NOT OK with them adding their brand of witless, uninspiring and for intent and purpose, "Bethesda" humor. It's terrible writing.

 

The game, as a whole, is enjoyable, but if your coming in and hoping that it's a successor to Fallout 1 and 2, you'll end up being several disappointed. You'd think with it's freeform sandbox gameplay it would hold true to the original Fallouts, but terrible writing hold it all back. Just plain laziness on Bethesda's part to make a complete game with all the bells and whistles of the originals. I do give props to the Inon Zur, most of the music is good. We just need the god damn SDK to come out so people like me can completely flock up the world.

[Kenshinsama]

On my second run right now. If you enjoyed Oblivion, you'll enjoy Fallout 3 and it's brand of (Bethesda) humor. But if you enjoyed Fallout 1 & 2, prepare to be disappointed because it doesn't keep the same dark sense of humor and writing as the previous games and we're stuck with a mostly lifeless, under achieved world that had a lot of potential but fell short. The only town with any sort of character of it's own is Megaton, the first town in the game.

 

As such, there are no shades of gray in the game. There's pure good, sugar coated anti-hero and dick. No actual evil path in the game. No child killer reputation. Sure you get bad karma, but it doesn't really mean crap because you can still be an avenger and kill every evil bastard, then go back to killing innocents.

 

The game also suffers from several things that Oblivion suffered from, such as a majority of skills and perks being utterly and completely useless, emotionless animations and models and once again, we have a gimped version of Radiant AI. Laziness in coding pathways shows too, as some quest NPCs seemlessly die randomly because of waypoint errors. Also, import NPCs still exist. So if you want to go on a killing spree, they'll come back to life and hunt you down. Thankfully it can be turned off with;

 

bForceReloadOnEssentialCharacterDeath=0

bEssentialTakeNoDamage=0

 

But killing children is still impossible.

 

Bethesda released it in good spirit, but cannot shake the nagging nerve that the game is really an MMORPG but without the MMO applied. You do quests and level and beat the game. There is no New Game+ or a way to continue any left over quests either after you beat the game. You have to do it all before doing the main quest. It's very possible to completely skip most of the side quests and just grind it out to level 15 and beat the game in 8 hours.

 

VATS is terribly fun though, so points to that. It's a fighting aid (basically from medium to short range "I-Win mode") and not a gameplay mechanic to make it seem like it's turn based.

 

yes its like oblivion but the world of fallout is really the only reason Im buying this game. the world is so...flocked up and you dont know who you can trust. the atmosphere for this gamke is just too good. I would say goto your local gamestop and pick it up used. if you dont like it you can take it back within 7 days. or you can goto blockbuster ^^

 

but do play this game!

Nope, it isn't. The world, as visually impressive as it is, is mostly filled with boring, unmemorable and emotionless characters.

 

I am OK with the fact it's an FPSRPG, I'm OK with the fact you can't kill kids (there are morals about that), I'm OK with the fact the AI is gimped and that it game is really just Oblivion with guns, I'm NOT OK with them adding their brand of witless, uninspiring and for intent and purpose, "Bethesda" humor. It's terrible writing.

 

The game, as a whole, is enjoyable, but if your coming in and hoping that it's a successor to Fallout 1 and 2, you'll end up being several disappointed. You'd think with it's freeform sandbox gameplay it would hold true to the original Fallouts, but terrible writing hold it all back. Just plain laziness on Bethesda's part to make a complete game with all the bells and whistles of the originals. I do give props to the Inon Zur, most of the music is good. We just need the god damn SDK to come out so people like me can completely flock up the world.

 

 

If what you say is true my only playing it for a few hours kinda pisses me off. I was expecting it to be very much like the original. I will still buy ot but maybe I will wait till its around 40 bucks. I loved the older games and liked watching my friends play the pen and paper versions of it. guess I will get guitar hero this week than:P

[gavin19]

Definitely pick this one up.

 

Cons -

 

1) The leveling isn't the same as Oblivion in that you can't artificially level up your skills to become some omnipotent superhuman, well as far as I can tell so far. You need to level up to be able to add skill points, ie you can't repair like 20 weapons and improve your 'Repair' skill that way. You are also limited to level 20, whereas in Oblivion you could have got to around 50 or so.

 

2) Once you complete the story the game ends for good, unlike Oblivion where a lot of fun was to be had after the game itself was over.

 

3) The play area is large but a hell of a lot of it is burned out buildings and ruins, and a lot of it is blocked off by large structures and conveniently placed piles of rubble, which is annoying.

 

4) During the game, more so early on, you can be picked off from a safe distance a lot by Raiders and the like, when you are out exploring. Iit can be hard to tell where the shots are coming from, by which time you have already lost a fair bit of energy. Despite all the rubble and burnt out cars there isn't very much cover out in the open to exploit either. This wouldn't be so bad only your own character's shooting accuracy at distance is abysmal, until you get up a lot of levels. In effect, you have to charge down targets until you get within a decent range to make shots count, again taking damage all the while. This is ok against 1 or 2 opponents, but a whole group is just slaughter.

 

5) Travelling to a place must be done on foot initially, then it can be fast travelled to. This wasn't so bad in Oblivion where you could mount your trusty steed and gallop off to the next town, in F3 it can be monotonous and treacherous at times.

 

6) Weapons/Armour can only be repaired by having another one of them in your inventory. That is, to repair a .32 Pistol, you need another .32 pistol of similar or worse condition to use to repair it. Some NPCs do offer a repair service but they are woefully skilled, at least early-mid game.

 

7) A lot fewer NPCs that you can interact with compared to Oblivion, which had around 1500 IIRC. I don't know exactly how many F3 has, but it is noticeably less.

 

The main story is short, at least going by the multitude of reviews. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the aforementioned fault of having the game totally end when you complete it. Also I have noticed that large chunks of the story can be skipped by accidentally stumbling upon various places in-game. This is apparently in line with the previous Fallout games, but seems to be niggling a lot of people who were expecting to have to complete Quests A, B and C before being allowed near Quest D.

 

I know a lot of these cons are direct comparisons with Oblivion but I can't help it!

 

Pros -

 

1) V.A.T.S targetting system. Great fun, slo-mo head explosions etc (though even these can be tiresome after some time)

 

2) Vast landscape with great draw distance and an eerie, unpredicable atmosphere.

 

Can't think of any more except to say that it carries over a lot of good gameplay from Oblivion, though I honestly don't rate it as highly. Still thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless.

[Wizard]

1) The leveling isn't the same as Oblivion in that you can't artificially level up your skills to become some omnipotent superhuman, well as far as I can tell so far. You need to level up to be able to add skill points, ie you can't repair like 20 weapons and improve your 'Repair' skill that way. You are also limited to level 20, whereas in Oblivion you could have got to around 50 or so.

There isn't level scaling, which is why the level 20 limit works. There are several areas in the game where there are high level enemies, but once you get to level 15+, the game is esscentially in easy mode.

3) The play area is large but a hell of a lot of it is burned out buildings and ruins, and a lot of it is blocked off by large structures and conveniently placed piles of rubble, which is annoying.

The world is actually smaller then Oblivion's, but is filled with more landscape (does this sentence even make sense?)

4) During the game, more so early on, you can be picked off from a safe distance a lot by Raiders and the like, when you are out exploring. Iit can be hard to tell where the shots are coming from, by which time you have already lost a fair bit of energy. Despite all the rubble and burnt out cars there isn't very much cover out in the open to exploit either. This wouldn't be so bad only your own character's shooting accuracy at distance is abysmal, until you get up a lot of levels. In effect, you have to charge down targets until you get within a decent range to make shots count, again taking damage all the while. This is ok against 1 or 2 opponents, but a whole group is just slaughter.

Feels like Fallout 1 and 2! Which is "SCREWED!"

5) Travelling to a place must be done on foot initially, then it can be fast travelled to. This wasn't so bad in Oblivion where you could mount your trusty steed and gallop off to the next town, in F3 it can be monotonous and treacherous at times.

Refer to answer #3.

7) A lot fewer NPCs that you can interact with compared to Oblivion, which had around 1500 IIRC. I don't know exactly how many F3 has, but it is noticeably less.

Yes, but about 1400 of those were useless, random, "We just walk around and don't really do anything" NPCs.

The main story is short, at least going by the multitude of reviews. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the aforementioned fault of having the game totally end when you complete it. Also I have noticed that large chunks of the story can be skipped by accidentally stumbling upon various places in-game. This is apparently in line with the previous Fallout games, but seems to be niggling a lot of people who were expecting to have to complete Quests A, B and C before being allowed near Quest D.

Pretty much yeah, but Bethesda does it terribly job at this and takes a short cut by making it seem you know what the hell parts B and C were to get to D when you don't know what happened at all instead of explaining what B and C were.

[OverlordMondo]

I've had a lot of fun with it. It has similarites to both Oblivion and Fallout, which I think is a good thing. I think it plays a lot smoother than Oblivion. There's no carefully watching what you do so you don't level up the wrong ability and fall short a stat point and then get raped by level scaling, which I always hated about Oblivion. I think the skills are actually more generally useful than in Oblivion, also, as are the perks.

 

The biggest problem I have with it is that it crashes sometimes. Some people say it crashes all the time and they've barely gotten out of the vault. I didn't personally experience a crash some several hours into the game, but it does crash, and it is annoying.

[Skythe]

Get the god damn game and don't listen to these morons complaining about "Bethesda used a wrong shade of brown thus making this game utterly useless" kinda craptacular arguements.

 

I swear to god some of y'all would complain about one hair strand on a character model if given the opportunity.

[emsley]

hahaha

Im setting out to be disappointed so it might surprise me.

[Inky]

people act like fallout 1 and 2 were the be-all, end-all.

Fallout 1 had a good story and interesting game play for the time.

Fallout 2 had more bugs then the Amazon rain forest.

Both games interested me due to the story and style. the whole nostalgic style wrapped in a post nuclear holocaust really appeals to me. but neither could hold my attention with game play. I just don't like turn based combat no matter how you wrap it in story.