Part 2, The Second Opinion

Since I`ve been a die-hard Fallout fan ever since I was a little gamer, I asked my colleague Ema to allow me to share some of my thought on the latest addition to the Fallout series, from Bethesda. He mentioned earlier that opinions vary from "best game ever, worth 100/100" to "what a disappointment!" and I must admit that this probably is one of the most difficult games to review this year.

I had my share of doubts ever since I heard a Fallout 3 was going to be completely different and my doubts only accentuated when I heard "Oblivion" being mentioned in the same phrase. Fortunately, the most annoying feature in Oblivion (level scaling) didn`t make it to Fallout 3, but other features certainly did, and I can`t say I`m glad.

First of all, one of the things that I appreciated the most in Fallout 1 in 2 was the fact that it had humor, from the perk descriptions and drawings to the dialogues. Fallout 3 tries to be funny, but fails miserably and everything looks like it was written by a 5 year old with the sense of humor of a dying tree, and the dialogues are equally poor.

Admittedly, Oblivion also had a poor dialogue system, but at least Oblivion had something going in favor of it, and that was books! Yes, books and other kinds of written material, that added substance to the universe and proved that work was being done to create a believable universe with a well known history. This was also the case with Morrowind, which had a very large collection of books and scrolls that could be read throughout the game and allowed the player to understand more about the world around him. Fallout 3 replaced all these books with... burnt books! They are all over the place and serve as nothing more than a reminder that someone didn`t have enough time to fill them out with information...

Second of all, the combat is just as shown in the videos and just as I feared. Chaotic is the word that describes it best. Action Points have little meaning now since they regenerate very fast when you`re not in VATS, and the combat goes something like this: see an enemy, go into VATS, shoot the head and watch it die, take cover until you have full AP, rinse and repeat. Doesn`t that sound like fun?

The game is too easy, whether played on easy or hard, thanks to the VATS system. Increasing the difficulty just seems to add more health to the enemies, but also gives you more XP per kill. I was very surprised to see that I could clear an entire "super mutant" base at my measly level 2, just after I left the vault, with my Chinese Officers Sword! In fact, some of the best weapons in the game seem to be melee ones, since you can "dance" around enemies and avoid their fire while constantly hitting them.

Accuracy with melee weapons doesn`t seem to be a factor unless you`re in VATS, so you have two options: either play a small/big/energy weapon specialist and kill everything in sight in the VATS, or play a melee oriented fighter with stealth for nice criticals.

For ranged weapons, when you`re in VATS, accuracy seems to be determined more by luck than skill or anything else, since you can miss from 2 paces while having a 95 small guns skill or you can score a lucky head shot from 10 yards away. When using the VATS system, I`ve often seen a 95% chance to hit even with my laser rifle (and I had a 20 energy weapon skill), from quite a long distance, so I have my doubts as to how accurate the system really is. I was surprised to see that on more than one occasion I had a higher chance to hit the head than the torso, when standing face to face. What`s up with that?

I remember reading in another review that you could kill anyone you wanted, and this added extra realism to the game. I only want to mention that in fact you are not allowed to kill certain people (those required for the main plot) as they`ll only be knocked unconscious for a short time. I had lots of fun killing everyone in the vault, before escaping, only leaving the overseer`s daughter alive for the aforementioned reason. I guess she can`t stay mad at me after I knocked her out with a baseball bat for 5 times.