[/caption]This is the sweet sixteen post in our Game of the Day series.
Last year I tended to waste time in World of Warcraft or retread ground in classics such as Zero Punctuation. In particular this gave me an inroad of interest to Fallout 3 which I then saw on display Game Stop and got for Christmas with my PS3 (my girlfriend rocks).
After being simultaneously addicted and disappointed in Oblivion, I felt confident in my expectations of this post-apocalyptic sandbox RPG. And so it was that I ended up spending a great deal of December out in the Capital Wastes, searching for my father, and restarting three different characters until settling on my goodie goodie Vash (sneaky sniper). This was my first foray into the Fallout universe, I had no clue about the underlying story elements or that somewhere a dog was waiting to call me master, but I loved it. In fact I determined it to be my "Game of the Year" despite having only played it for the last 2+ weeks of 2008 (we gave each other our presents early so as to enjoy them more thoroughly).
The sheer amount of things to do in this game is mind boggling, and they've only slightly lost their luster in extreme repitition. People may lament the lusterlous landscape, but I found it to create an environmental ambience different from most games. The washed out colors made seeing the greens of mutants, mushrooms, and tree people even more explosive. Deliciously large explosions meanwhile exacted colorful moments amongst said props. And let's not discount the wonderful sunrises and sunsets capping far-reaching geographical vistas. A raised freeway extending off into the distant hills above ruins and rubbish with the sky on fire? Fantastic!
Balance is one aspect I believe could have done with more polish. It's difficult to specialize in sneaking and sniping early on, but makes you insanely overpowered later depending on how you distribute your characters' perks. My latest character, Faye, can run top speed without eliciting unwanted attention from nearby foes, assuming I stay out of direct lights. I have to make a conscious decision to be more brash in my moments so as not to spoil the delectable feeling of danger. After some point money and items become worthless to hoard, but I do anyway out of habit. It makes me wonder why anyone would bother improving their bartering skills. Who cares if I get less caps when I just sell things to make room for more things, not that I need the money. Maybe I need to increase the difficulty, but then ...
There are times, especially with Mirelurks, that you simply cannot get off enough shots to kill them before they close in on you. This is probably less of an issue on the PC version when using a mouse for aiming, but I tend to rely on VATs a great deal since I can't focus for crap with the analog sticks. Many times I'll use them to add challenge, but those Mirelurks (and Deathclaws too) are so deadly up close that it becomes a frantic sprint for survival.
Moving on, though, let me mention the random encounters which are the spice of life that keeps the game interesting after you've done every known quest. Enemies respawn in common locations, but then there are also these "encounter" spawn points where occurances happen periodically. Even knowing where they occur, I particularly enjoy these. I look forward to ones I haven't seen in a while, because there's no way of knowing when they'll happen again! Some examples: an old fridge surrounded by ghouls/mercs who can't decide how to divide its contents of water, a person who's actually a bomb and warns you as you approach (never fails to make me laugh, sadistically), a slave being chased by slavers, a couple wastelanders waylaid by Deathclaws, etc. I only wish that Regulator (cops) and Talon Company (mercs) attacks were more widespread and random, because they're especially challenging at higher levels.
Sometimes you'll gain a follower, maybe temporarily for a quest or someone you picked up along the way. These suffer the same problems as in Oblivion in that you'll accidentally attack them because they get in front and then turn against you when damaged. Also, they can't jump, so terrain short-cuts tend to cause a lot of unnecessary battles or waiting around. And finally, they can get stuck. Jumping and getting stuck are two sour points on all the NPC creatures actually. Giant Radscorpions in particular seem to always spawn sticking straight up halfway underground.
So there's bugs, yeah, and the PS3 version suffers some system-freezing crashes. On the other hand it's hours of fun and I'll probably never see all the content. You'll certainly never get to try all the different combinations in all the quests. The main story is somewhat generic, but has a fantastic ending (critics didn't like that the game does end, but the manual mentions that upfront) and some nice "twists". Voice acting to carry the story is a bit stale, but then it's based on the Oblivion engine which had the same issues. The dark humor is fantastic, especially for cubicle dwellers as I used to be. All in all, best game of 2008 in my opinion!
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