In fact, it’s only when it begins shooting that the game comes awry a little. The VATS system – where you use a pause-time system to call shots at different areas of the body of your targets, spending a regenerating pool of action points – isn’t quite all we hoped for. When it works, its cinematic shots show the slightly camp ultraviolence off to its best, with heads dissolving into red mist. When it doesn’t work, it leads to unfortunately silly-looking shots. Sadly, this is mostly showcased by one of the most common of the early enemies. While a wolf’s attack sequence involves backing off before leaping, the hulking mole rats simply charge and leap at you insistently – in other words, at close range they’re very close, meaning that when you select VATS you’re shown the unfortunate sight of your character bending over and unloading round after round into a beast running against his legs. And even when it works there’s the nagging sense, at least with an unskilled and therefore inaccurate character, that you’d be better off just pointing the gun at your target and pulling the trigger yourself.
