The controls of Fallout 3 also owe a lot to Oblivion, and players can traverse the game using either first-person cameras or over the shoulder third-person cameras. We went into the game planning to play it as a third-person action game, and that's totally viable until 3-4 hours of play. As the game gets more difficult it just makes sense, and is much easier, to play the game in it’s native first-person view; even so it’s nice that the developers gave us the option. The best addition to Fallout 3 is probably the Pip-Boy 3000, which can be activated with a quick press of the B button. This accessory is your central hub for weapons, notes, the inventory, armor options, a map, and anything else that needs to be accessed while playing through the game. It is a great central hub and in our opinion should be added into every single RPG going forward, in some way. The upgradable stats control everything from health to lock-picking skills to how many pounds of supplies you can carry; the perk system is even more interesting because the options to choose from are vary unique (random helper in battles to exploding heads).
Creating “Oblivion with guns” was no easy task. The developers answer to all the problems created was the innovate V.A.T.S. (Vaultek Assisted Targeting System, a way to have turn-based battles without the boredom. Basically Fallout 3 can be played through the entire game using only the first-person shooter style of gameplay, or by using V.A.T.S. players can really experience the game for everything it is. By clicking the RB button the game will freeze, zooming the camera in on your nearest enemy. Next you must choose what specific part of the body to target, each region being represented with a percentage of successful attack. The amount of times you can use V.A.T.S. is not unlimited and must be recharged before use in battle again.
The mass variety of weapons in the game (each of which can be upgraded) react differently in V.A.T.S., giving a different percentage of attack depending on a number of in-game factors (distance, object interaction, etc.). When used hand-in-hand with the upgradable ability system and interesting perk list, the combat in Fallout 3 is as deep as it gets without involving real life. After our first play through, without doing any side-missions, ended (somewhere around 20 hours) our character was a level 17; just over half way to the top. This means there is plenty of room to level up, even after the main quest is completed (you cannot replay with the same character, the game saves right before the final boss so no worries there).
Although there are a big enough number of different enemies we never really felt as though the game’s difficulty ramped up enough. We are always excited to get to that “really hard” part of any role-playing game, Fallout 3 never had one; at least not during the main quest. The world is massive in size and each different town or location has it’s own unique feel to it; that what you are doing is actually having an impact on the universe. Unfortunately there is no speedy way of transportation (such as the horse in Oblivion) until after you have discovered (and visited) a specific location. This is not really an issue later in the game but up to that point we did a ton of running, and climbing, and walking; and then a little more running between locations.
Fallout 3 uses the Oblivion graphical engine and improves on it, somewhat. The game definitely looks better, with cleaner colors and more detailed character models, lighting effects, and draw distances. On the other side of the coin the game could and should look better. Luckily the fact that it’s not Gears of War 2 in the graphical department never really pulls anything away from the gameplay. It would have been nice to see better textures and some collision control that worked but for the most part fans will be happy with the looks of Bethesda’s creation but we can’t wait to see what they do next with the franchise. All the audio dialog and sound effects are amazing to listen to, especially out of a nice 5.1 surround sound system. On a whole we have had more fun with Fallout 3 then anything we can remember in the past couple of years, this game is that good and some small hiccups cannot take that away.
The presentation of the game, as a whole, is what really takes Fallout 3 and boosts it into a level high above most of the other games being released this year on the Xbox 360. The fact that, even after all the side-missions are completed, there is still some exclusive downloadable content (details unknown) coming at some point even excites us more. From the moment we booted up the title to the minute we started writing this review our life was engrossed by Fallout 3. Bethesda had us hooked and obsessed for the entirety of this gaming experience. We can only hope that the mass number of action titles coming out this Fall don’t allow this masterpiece to fall through the cracks. Fallout 3 is everything we could have ever imagined and there is no reason that if you own an Xbox 360 you should not be playing this game; go buy it.
