Thursday, January 29, 2009

Gaming Thursday: Fallout 3


There are some games that I can just play, without any clear goal in mind when I sit down. Those games are traditionally made by Bethesda (the hours I have put into Morrowind and Oblivion are second only to World of Warcraft). So when they put together Fallout 3, I knew I would have to play it, even though I have yet to play the first two games in the series.

Wandering around post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. is a wonderful experience. The characters that I've met and the mutants that I've killed have combined for a great ride thus far, and I'm really barely into the game.

The combat is fairly straightforward, you can play it completely as a first person shooter if you really want, but you will likely get incredibly frustrated with how often your gun misses in the beginning. For that, you have the VATS system on your arm. This allows you to focus your weapon on various parts of the enemy and let the computer targeting take over for a few shots while you watch your character's handiwork. I must say that it is satisfying every time I get a critical head shot and the bad guy's head explodes and I get to watch his eyeballs fly through the air.

Since I haven't been following the plot line too much, I can't say much about it, but I care about it much more than I did in either Oblivion or Morrowind. That, plus all of the side missions are really fun (and funny), so I don't ever feel like it's necessary for me to go back to the main quest until I really feel like it. I also really like the dialogue options. For the most part, I'm a straightforward good guy, but when I have the option to say something incredibly snarky and hilarious, I can't resist. For this, the writing in the game is great, I've laughed out loud a number of times at people's comments and things that I've seen and it really helps for getting immersed into the world.

The only problem with Fallout 3 is that it is distracting me from a number of games that need to be completed (Dragon Quest 8 and Okami in particular), but it's a good distraction, and I'm sure I'll wind up sinking way too many hours into it... especially now that I just found a really cool handheld chainsaw thingy!

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