Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Sitting in front of me is one of the most hotly anticipated and debated titles of this year, or even the past few years.  Interplay built an incredible universe with Fallout and Fallout 2, and many of the readers at this site cut their RPG teeth on these two fantastic games.  When Bethesda Softworks purchased the Fallout franchise, it presented a chance to see another game in that universe, but many cited serious concern that the game would simply be a mod for the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion title from 2006.  The shift from an isometric turn-based perspective to a semi-real time shooter spelled a fairly wide departure from previous titles. Could Bethesda Softworks bring us a new Fallout title while still preserving the always brutal, sometimes funny, universe we grew up with?

Before I get too far into this review, I need to make a few qualifications.  I’ve played the game fairly non-stop since I received it last week and I’ve just scratched the surface of all of the available content.  When I reviewed Oblivion I spent roughly 150 hours on the game completing every available quest, making the review quite late.  With this particular title, I wanted to ensure that I had covered enough of the title to securely state that it did or did not capture the feeling of Fallout without compromise.  I wanted to ensure that I had a review ready before people put down their hard earned cash.  I’ve completed the bulk of the storyline, but I assure you that I could easily spend 150+ hours on this title as well and still not complete everything.  I will do my best to ensure that the review is as detailed as possible while avoiding spoilers whenever possible.

The game opens with your birth.  In this introduction section of the game you’ll select your sex, how your character looks, the stats that govern a great deal of your abilities, your three tag skills, and you’ll get an overview of the control changes that move this game to a first or third person perspective. As the story inside the vault unfolds you’ll end up leaving the safety of your underground shelter.  As your eyes adjust to a sun you’ve never seen, you can see the destroyed world on the horizon in every direction.  Welcome to the horrifyingly beautiful dystopian world of Fallout.

Fallout 3 uses the same nuts and bolts that we saw in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to bring the world alive.  The engine has been modified and improved, bringing some new bells and whistles to the table.  The Speedtree technology that supported Oblivion makes a return here, so you get a wide variety of faces, now with facial hair.  The variety in clothing has also been increased.  Some folks wear mechanic coveralls, the more hearty survivors suit up in leather armor.  Some factions brand their leather with their logos or the names of their groups.  Headgear is just as varied with everything from motorcycle helmets and hockey masks to steel combat helmets and power armor helms.  When you run into Mutants they are usually more prepared, wearing weapon web gear and higher level soldiers sport metal armor.  The Ghouls are usually far less prepared, their clothing as tattered and ruined as their leprotic flesh. 

The hitch with a post-apocalyptic world like that of Fallout is that the landscape is essentially ruined.  You know what to expect – crumbled buildings, debris strewn everywhere, and emaciated feral animals scratching out a meager existence.  The key here is to differentiate the areas enough so players don’t feel like they’ve played 100 hours of the exact same area.  While there are certainly large stretches of destroyed wasteland to explore, there are well over 100 zones (I think the number is closer to 300 based on the map I have in my 464 page Prima guide for the game) to uncover and explore.  Some areas have a common floor layout (for example, subways) but the rest of the areas are unique.  Many of the areas you’ll discover are smaller settlements, but there are a few surviving cities like the central hub city Megaton, and the massive Rivet city.  Downtown D.C. is absolutely shattered and difficult to navigate without taking to the underground passages.  Since you can fast-travel to any location you’ve previously discovered, you won’t feel like you are trekking through familiar landscape for long anyway.

The texture quality and use of color is surprisingly high in Fallout 3.  While the world is devastated, the level of detail is amazing.  Nature has begun to take back the world, and as such you’ll see large swells and craters in what remains of the roads in the area.  The scenery is dotted with broken signposts and various billboards.  Not all of the areas have been destroyed however; there are some buildings that have been meticulously maintained, despite the destruction around them.  The only hitch that I could really find with Fallout 3 was the occasional Havok engine skeleton dance and the somewhat ridiculous way that people explode when you shoot them.  A long standing issue with the Havok engine makes an appearance here. Occasionally dead bodies continue to jitter and dance after death, often to comedic effect.  In an attempt to mimic the bloody mess perk from previous games, the Havok engine is used to cause enemies to explode in a display of blood and guts.  Sometimes, and more often after taking the bloody mess perk, enemies will lose their legs, arms, head, and sometimes more no matter where they are shot. Frankly it is just a bit over the top, and the pervasiveness of the effect cheapens the perk. 

Along with the Havok strangeness, there are a few clipping issues that occasionally ruin an ambush or surprise.  You’ll also occasionally see this with the lipsynch, or infrequent graphic oddities like the PiPboy being too bright to read.  In a game this large, I’d have to say that my graphical complaints are minor at best.

I was very happy to hear that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion would star such voices as Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean, and Lynda Carter.  When the Emperor bought it so quickly, it seemed like Mr. Stuart likely phoned in his performance in about 15 minutes.  Similarly, if Lynda Carter was in the game, I don’t know who she voiced.  While the voice acting was good, other than the solid performance of Sean Bean, the star power was rather lost on me.  Fallout 3 features Ron Perlman in the voice-over intro, like he has for the past two Fallout games.  He is also joined by Liam Neeson as your father, and Malcom McDowell as President Eden.   This time around we get quite a bit more interaction with these characters.  President Eden is almost always present if you simply turn on the radio, and you’ll get guidance and information from your father throughout the game.  The voice talent is used very well, but there are plenty of stand-out performances beyond them.

There are hundreds of characters to interact with in Fallout 3.  I can’t think of a single person I talked to in the game that gave a bad performance.  The ghouls in the game (or at least the ones that aren’t trying to eat your face) sound raspy and rough, their voices labored by the decay in their irradiated bodies.  Mutants sound like the stupid ogres that they are, grumbling and growling as they swear to crush you into dust with their sledgehammers.  Occasionally the voices don’t match the people that are speaking, and as I mentioned earlier, sometimes their lips don’t synch, but beyond that the voice work is solid. 

In Oblivion there was a bug that was never quite fully addressed – mudcrabs.  Many characters in the game lost their marbles and many of their free interactions revolved around discussing the sea creatures.  "Did you see those mudcrabs?  Horrible creatures" was heard throughout Tamriel and it got old rather quickly. There are a few repeats in Fallout 3, usually in enemy threats against you, but there was nothing that will drive you nuts. 

Veteran soundtrack composer Inon Zur provided the soundtrack for Fallout 3 along with the soundtrack for Crysis, Company of Heroes, Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Twisted Metal: Head-On, Lineage II, and many more.  The game soundtrack does exactly what it is supposed to do – it hangs in the background, giving a little bit of ambience to your adventure.  When enemies engage you, the soundtrack will switch into overdrive, with pounding drums and orchestral flair.  There is a hospital in the game that you’ll end up exploring, and I thought the music in that area was spot on – creepy and fitting with the blood and gore that ‘decorated’ this area. 

I really need to ask the guys at Bethesda Softworks what they used to create the sound of the “Gore Bag”.  It is a vile and stomach churning sound that I can only imagine truly approximates the horror of reaching into a mesh bag filled with intestines, skulls, and other miscellaneous body parts.  Like the graphic work in the game, there is a high level of detail in the sound effects in the game.  Laser weapons sound space-aged, miniguns have that characteristic spin up before they fire, and mini-nukes rattle the room, making fantastic use of the surround sound features of the system. 

First person shooters are routinely the strength of the PC platform.  There is no substitution for the mouse and keyboard interface, but as controllers have gotten more accurate, this advantage gap has certainly lessened.  Fallout 3, at its base, looks like a first person shooter, but it really isn’t as simple as that.  The turn based nature of the Fallout series meant that Bethesda Softworks had to build some sort of turn based system or they could lose the entirety of the old school Fallout fans.  To that end, they have integrated something called the Vault Assisted Targeting System, or V.A.T.S. for short.  The V.A.T.S. system is essentially the body part targeting system present in the previous titles, with a few differences.  No longer can you target the groin or eyes, so you won’t be able to complete the entire game using eye shots and the BB gun.  There are often specialized areas such as the combat inhibitor on robots, or the antennae on giant ants, but the face is your primary target for the vast majority of the game.  When you start creating your own ambushes using landmines, you might switch that up to tear off the legs of your incoming enemies.  I can certainly say that the V.A.T.S. system is not a get out jail free card, and once you start engaging multiple enemies you’ll find out why.  You can split your attacks between multiple opponents, or different body parts, but once those action points are used, you’ll have to wait until they regenerate over time.  You can use items to instantly regenerate your AP, but many of them have negative effects including radiation, or worse yet, addiction. 

Combat sequences are frequent in the game, so you’ll be using V.A.T.S. often.  The game takes into account your weapon type and condition, your skill level with it, distance, armor the enemy might be wearing, your character stats to determine your percent chance to hit, and the approximate damage you’ll do with a successful hit.  Obviously, a shotgun is going to have a harder time than a pistol at longer range.  When you have selected your targets and have spent your Action Points, the game will give you a slow-motion view of the results, whether it be a hit or a miss.  Enemies will continue to fire at you, making the event only semi-turn based.

The V.A.T.S. system does have two drawbacks that I’ve run into a few times during my play time – collision and targeting.  While the game does take into account body position (e.g. it’s hard to hit a Mirelurk in the eye if it just charged you with its head down), sometimes it is hard to simply select the appropriate target you’d like to hit.  There have been times where I’ve had to exit V.A.T.S. and re-initiate it to get the game to let me select the head as a target.  Similarly, sometimes you’ll be locked on with a 95% chance of a headshot and miss completely as you hit a stairwell or other object.  Even though you could clearly see above the target and should have a clear line of sight, when the game switches to the cinematic third person perspective you’ll find yourself off target. 

I said that the game looks like a shooter on the surface, but I’ll caution you against playing it that way.  There is simply not enough ammunition in the game to play the game like a traditional shooter.  Tactical combat is important, and the V.A.T.S. engine will become more important the lower that ammo counter gets.

The rest of the control scheme is exactly what you’d expect, but I do want to point out something that I think so many developers miss – individual control over volume levels, and brightness.  You can adjust the music, voices, ambient noise, special effects, and more, as well as the brightness of your monitor at any time.  I have profound hearing loss in both ears so this is a real hot-button for me.  Subtitles are also a major issue for me, and Bethesda has included those as well.  Those of us in the hearing-impaired community thank you sincerely.

I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t comparisons between Oblivion and Fallout 3.  Both games play from the same perspective, and the engine is common between them.  There was ranged and up close combat in Oblivion, as well as dialog options that provide light moral decisions for the player.  The puzzles in Oblivion were fairly easy, and the quests were straightforward.  Fallout 3 is directly opposite of that in a lot of ways.  The first thing you’ll notice is that the game is focused more heavily on ranged combat than Oblivion was.  Also, there are puzzles and minigames that are more challenging than anything we saw in Oblivion.  For instance, lock picking requires that you use both thumbsticks to find the correct tumbler position and then slowly turn the lock with a screwdriver.  Harder locks require more exact positioning and the pins will break easier than they did in the past. Unlike Oblivion, you can’t see the side view of the tumblers, so you’ll have to pay attention to how much the pin is being pushed out of the lock and how much resistance you are receiving on the lock. 

No matter what your skill level or stats are, you’ll be required to utilize quite a bit more logic when you get to the frequent computer hacking puzzles.  Provided you have a high enough science skill to attempt the hack, you’ll be presented with a hex grid full of words ranging from 4 letters to 9 letters in length.  Hitting one of the words will tell you how many letters are in the correct position.  You only get four attempts (unless you back out and try again, which resets the puzzle), so you’ll get a pretty decent logic workout.  There are items that will help you solve these puzzles a bit easier, but you likely won’t find them in the first 30 hours of gameplay, so prep your brain in advance.

These minigames aren’t the only puzzles in the game.  You’ll face some puzzles that require you to check notes that are stored in your PiPBoy, as well as others focusing on deciphering numbers.  Another one asks players to match musical tones.  The puzzles are quite varied and none of them are so easy as to be a pushover, keeping the challenge going throughout the game. 

Another part of the other Fallout games that required constant management was the inventory.  You’ll face a similar challenge in Fallout 3, but it is based on weight rather than positioning in a box.  Your strength will determine how many pounds of weight you can carry, so even if you are a sniper shot you won’t want to use your Strength stat as a dump stat.  To help with this, you’ll use your repair skill to combine weapons of the same type.  This allows players to improve the condition and damage capability of the weapon and consumes the second item in the process, reducing weight.  This works for weapons, clothing, hats, and armor, so you might consider keeping a high repair skill if you aren’t a particularly strong character.

There are 20 character levels in Fallout 3.  Each level will bring stat points to spend (how many is based on your Intelligence stat) as well as a new perk. Every other level you also get access to a new set of perks, slowly expanding a list of potential skill enhancements.  While the traits and perks have been essentially combined for Fallout 3, I didn’t find myself missing them.  What old school Fallout fans may notice however is that all of the perks are fairly positive in nature.  While traits in Fallout and Fallout 2 may have brought negative effects with their positive bonuses, you won’t find that in Fallout 3.  The perks grant bonuses such as the Thief skill which grants +5% to Sneak and Lockpick Skill.  Later perks are more exotic, such as the Mysterious Stranger perk which grants a random chance of an unnamed NPC coming into your combat area and working with you for the duration of the battle.  The four perks attainable at Level 20 are fairly overpowering, granting a full view of the entire map, instantly regenerating V.A.T.S. Action Points after a kill, enhanced ninja-like melee combat skills, or the ability to regenerate health while in direct sunlight.  Since there is no “re-spec” available, you’ll find yourself agonizing over which perk to select – you only get 20.

Many have expressed concern with the open world of Fallout 3.  The game is a completely open sandbox title, but unlike Oblivion, it is content-rich.  You can’t take 10 steps without discovering something, and that trend continues throughout the game.  I spent the first 40 hours of the game on the East side of the map having never discovered or explored a single item on the West side.  The choice is entirely yours.  The compass system will light up a waypoint which will guide you in a somewhat generic fashion to your objective if you want, but I found it far more rewarding to simply wander the world and let the discoveries just happen.  Like any GPS solution, occasionally the compass will provide you with a route that is not necessarily the easiest path to your objective, so learn those side streets early if you plan to wander through downtown D.C..

As I said, the gameplay in Fallout 3 is fairly straightforward on the surface.   What amazed me is the game could also be diverse.  The puzzles, the perks, the minigames, and the rich and twisting storyline combine to give players a chance to experience the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout in an all new way.  Arguments will rage between old school Fallout players and the new players who have never had the opportunity to play a Fallout title as to whether the game meets their expectations, but I can say that it easily exceeded mine.

As I mentioned earlier, the Prima guide for the game is 464 pages.   It would be ludicrous to think that I could summarize a game this large even in a review of this length.  For 60 bucks you’ll get more than 40 hours of storyline if you ignore everything but the primary thread.  What amazed me is that there are almost zero FedEx missions, instead players are asked to solve problems ranging from locating a lost sibling to convoluted missions that’ll take you across the entire play area to unravel.  So many missions went completely opposite of the way I expected, asking me to make moral decisions, sometimes with potentially fatal consequences for one of the involved parties.  The dialog options are improved from Oblivion’s writing style, and the decisions aren’t always as cut and dry as they may appear on the surface.  Many missions also have consequences – I was asked to wipe out an entire town of people, and when I refused I found myself the target of some local contract assassins.  Many games extend their longevity by simply rehashing old areas or repeating content with new enemies – Fallout 3 doesn’t fall prey to this trap.  It isn’t a PR bullet point – there really is over 100 hours of gameplay here; I’d have to guess maybe even double that number. As I said, it would be impossible to summarize a game this big in a review of almost any length.  The varied gameplay and genuinely challenging new puzzle types are simply the mechanics of how the game unfolds.  I’ve purposely left out discussing the rich storyline in the game to avoid spoilers, but let me assure you that it is compelling and often surprising.  There is more gameplay in this game than any four other holiday titles combined, and every minute of it is compelling.  The V.A.T.S. combat engine works better than I anticipated without providing a silver-bullet that would make the gameplay too easy.  I’ll be shocked if Fallout 3 isn’t game of the year.

Gaming Trend Score

95

1. Graphics: 95
2. Audio: 95
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 95
5. Value/Replay: 100
6. OVERALL:95