Photo courtesy of Bethesda Softworks”Fallout 3,” released Oct. 28 on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, lets players take the role of a character in a post-apocalyptic future.Within the first few hours of booting up, I not only had complete control over the capabilities and appearance of my character, but also whether or not to chase after my missing father or go wandering off on my own; save or destroy a post-apocalyptic village; help or crush a loopy engineer with a dream of being a writer; and befriend or enrage countless inhabitants of the nuclear wasteland that was once Washington D.C. As the game went on, I found out that I could do almost anything I could think of. I could lie or brute-force my way past guard-posts, steal any supplies I needed or help characters in exchange for goods and services. I could even gun down an entire town in cold blood, if I was a good enough gunman.
This is the first game I’ve played where the possibilities literally seemed endless and everything you did felt like it mattered. If you get caught stealing, you’re going to have a whole posse of angry wastelanders gunning for you. If you’re a jerk to someone, they’ll be a jerk right back. All the characters I met felt like real people with real personalities, struggles and backgrounds.
The game is set in the bombed-out husk of Washington D.C., where robots and the sooty remains of nuclear powered cars are all that’s left of a formerly utopian America. The wastes are lovingly rendered to make them just the right shade of death and decay without making it depressingly boring for more than five minutes. The entire map, stretching from the Mall to the suburbs is covered with settlements and other points of interest, which means you could literally spend days exploring.
That’s the strongest point in the game, but it’s not the only reason to play it. Although it has some focus on real-time action, it’s largely a role playing game, even in combat. You can fight out all your battles as if you were playing a first-person shooter, but in the end this makes for some clumsy and frustrating game play.
The real joy of battle is using the V.A.T.S., or Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. This lets you freeze time with the press of a button, peruse your range of enemies, select a specific part of the body to aim for and then queue up your actions. The V.A.T.S. displays probabilities of success for each shot, and once you confirm your choices you get to watch them play out in glorious slow-motion. The gory and cinematic presentation of this system complements the game’s dark humor, which permeates from start to finish.
This is another shiny gold star in this game’s favor, but it’s not all fun and sunshine. Although the combat is great when you can play it as an RPG, the first-person shooting is as ugly and awkward as your character’s stolen wardrobe. The jumping is ineffective, there’s no proper reticule to aim with, the zoom on weapons is almost nonexistent and enemies seem to have much better aim than you could ever hope for, taking successful shots at you with an AK from a football field away. This makes taking down snipers or other distant enemies laughable.
The game is also riddled with buggy artificial intelligence, goofy looking character models and some recycled voice-work that gets pretty grating in highly populated areas. The AI is by no means a perfect simulation of the harsh reality of the wastes, even though the creators put a lot of effort into making the environment feel authentic. People’s movements are stilted and sterile, and the only way they can convincingly interact with each other is through gunplay. It’s certainly a step- up from the original “Fallout” games which were extremely limited in their graphic capabilities, but it’s not up to par with other blockbusters like “Metal Gear Solid 4” or even “Grand Theft Auto IV.”
Still, even when characters are walking through walls and dropping dead for no apparent reason, it’s fun. It can sometimes add a bit of frustration when the game decides to freeze, but this doesn’t happen often, and the ability to replay the portion of the game since your last save opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
“Fallout 3” isn’t perfect, but it’s a game that can capture the imagination and attention of anyone who picks it up. If anything is a must-buy this month, it is “Fallout 3.”
Richard Poskozim can be reached at [email protected].
