Fallout 3 Fallout 3: Post-play impressions and reviews

woges said:

It's out here on Friday.

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Are you sure? It's not that I don't trust you. But here in Norway some shops said 31st of October, others said 30th, so there was some confusion.

It was released today here.

Well, I now have a whole three hours under my belt and my thoughts are...mixed. I found the opening truly painful. Just woeful. Getting out into the Wasteland and Megaton was certainly better but it's still missing something for me (thus far).

The wasteland looks and sounds spectacular and the atmosphere is fantastic. It probably looks too crowded but that's being pedantic. I've been a little surprised at the number of skill checks and even consequences - so far, they've done quite well with that.

On the other hand, the early quests I've done have been dull and none of the characters have been interesting. The voice acting is ordinary at best and some of the dialogue is quite awkward.

Lastly, VATS...dunno. It's better than the realtime gunplay but hasn't quite grabbed me yet. Trying to play a sneaky sniper, the gameplay has come off as a bit Deux Ex (not necessarily bad) but I'm not sure VATS can support all the combat.

All that said, there is a solid RPG framework and with some better quests, I might really enjoy this.

It sums my experience pretty well too.

The questing however became better last night, then I initially thought. The starting sequence was : "Cool, then i wtf and lastly - please wheres the door, i just don't care".

I am cautiosly positive! .... and hopeful.

Hm, this is a game i won't vote on for a while. Exploring the wasteland was so much fun and listen to the radio. I change my mind all the time and i currently love it. Hope its stays in this "zone" ( ).

(Playing with a xbox controller on the PC and having Windows Live running. Cool pointless feature - now my brother can keep track off me while he plays NHL! )

I like the darkness of the game. People are shabby and nasty without feeling cliché. Wasteland is atmospheric.

Ive some peeves though. Walking around in houses or dungeons hurts my eyes and brain. Too dark and messy to get about (without constantly using the pipboy which is annoying and on the border to cheating). Melee is ridiculously overpowered. I put no points in melee but stilll have better results than with small guns which has thrice the points. Also VATS is inferior to real time combat.

Fallout 3 has been released for PC? I believed the initial release was for 360 only.

Mmm last comments from beginning playing aren't that bad. I've seen the collector edition, a big metal box like survival kits in fallout 1 (if I remember well). Damit after Oblivion I swear that I won't be cough again to buy a RPG I don't like at all, I feel curiosity will blow out the good resolutions... When will I learn from past errors?

mute said:

(Playing with a xbox controller on the PC

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Imho this "Games for Windows" logo certification just boosts the sales of the controller manufacturers, nothing else.

MS isn't manufacturing these controllers as well, are they ?

Well, MS is probably getting well paid for the XBOX logo atleast. Games for windows logo isn't the same as they are forcing us to the controller. It merely states that if it supports a controller, then it will support a MS XBOX controller.

I am glad the support is there. Although after i activated the Live part of the game (couldn't resist since i am brainwashed ) the controller lost some functionality. I had to delete the fallout.ini files for making it work again. Mostly irritating.

About logo, they are ugly crap on box games, for example The Witcher Collector and EE suffer of this problem.

The Fallout 3 collector edition manages this problem, it has a light external package to support the logo, and the game box is virgin of any logo. Quite good. That said the package isn't that great, the box is fine but apart that the Fallout 1 puppet is... what it is, the internal game box is just the standard, there's also one making of dvd and a small illustrated book. Ha well I knew its contents.

Ok now waiting one year to play it, the time it gets patched!

For most games I don't care about the X360 controller, but for platform style stuff it is nice to have logo support. And the PipBoy functionality is more fluid with the controller than the normal PC config.

finally out of the vault, and i get a lock up. Thank glot that one can ctrl-alt-del into task manager and kill the program!

Explored a little, so far so good. I think the character creation process was interesting, albeit a little drawn out. That's cool tho, now for my initial setup phase where I run around the "opening area" and test out how i want to set up all my buttons and what gunplay and all that is like. I have to say that the existing configuration isnt that bad, and i can play the game switching back and forth from first to third person, exactly like i played Oblivion. Game looks and runs good at 1280 x1024, except for the lock up...

I made sacrifices in order to play FO3 this weekend straight; and was pleased. It’s easy to get caught up in exploring every nook and cranny of this post apocalyptic world, and the amount of engaging quests is incredible. I’ve had 3crashes in the 20+ hours I’ve played, which in the scheme of things is not that bad. The game runs great on my ‘medium’ performance pc.

FO3 makes excellent transitions between RPG and FPS, so it’s easy to switch focus on combat or story, which is great for holding my attention at length. I don’t know what else to say really until I’m done: it’s simply a great game.

Go Dogmeat!!!

Got it for myself this weekend.. It is a fun game that feels like a fallout. The scenery after stepping out of vault 101 really looks spectacular. Barren and dusty land all the way to distant horizon, like a nuke had gone off somewhere. When you begin exploring further this new world, you'll get to find signs of life..Human race is really something, no matter how bad things look, we always find our way like roaches. The new way isn't very nice though. The old elementary school for example is quite a nasty place...

Few words about npcs. Imo benth has done some really cool stuff here. Not your generic oblivion characters, nope they are really alive and colourfull people who curse, cry, laugh and so forth. Basicly every range of emotion and personality you can possibly expect from men and women whose whole life is centered around surviving in a hostile environment. Some go totally nuts (church of atom anyone?) or stay focused and use their time effectively. Naturally many people drop somewhere in between these two extremes. Just trying to survive for an other day would be the most typical attitude.

The devs have also writen quite many cool questlines and this time around they are proper rpg quests with choises..so i don't really understand whats this talk of bad quest writing actually is. Some of you guys must have really high standards.

A minor dissapointment for me has been combat. Vats is fun and cool, but its way too easy to kil mobs in vats mode. Although I boosted my agiliy to ten from the begining so maybe its because my character is actually Roland-good with his pistol The real time fps combat however is clumsy at best. Dont' get me wrong it does what it should,.but its not very spectacular. Firefights aren't very thrilling if you know what you are doing.

I'd give a grade "good" at this point. (6 hours of playing time).

About halfway through it by now, and "Good" seems to fit perfectly. There are too many things annoying me to call it excellent, but it certainly is well above my expectations.

Played a lot during the weekend so I probably have some 20+ hours into it. The game is 'good', it's very variable as to what experiences you have in a situation depending on many factors. For example, I read a passage from someone when they went to the 'Underworld' (city of ghouls), and what they described was completely different to what I experienced, but I mean *completely* different, probably because my character's karma is really high and I rejected some options while the other guy probably was more 'shady'. I'm looking forward to replaying the game with a really bad attitude to see the game through different eyes (and probably experience a different game).
As for if the game is a shooter or not, I do think it is a shooter. Not your typical 'shoot everything' shooter, but a shooter nonetheless. A shooter with RPG elements and many options, but combat is shooter-oriented.
The story so far is not strong, maybe because I haven't advanced too far into it (still need to find my father), but there are many side-quests and they're well done.
I loved the introduction to the game, all the way since the moment you're born to the time you leave the vault, well done.
I can't talk about the voice-acting as I ignore that feature in all games (I just read the text, much faster).
I've crashed a few times, but normally not an issue as the game autosaves every time you 'zone', and there are of course the quicksaves.
Game is recommended.

Bought the game today. I probably wont be able to give the game any serious time though. Is there anyone who knows of a website that discuss character building and the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system?

Its kind of funny the oens who gave it negative reviews have nothing to say...the more I play teh more I love this fallout game

rune_74 said:

Its kind of funny the oens who gave it negative reviews have nothing to say...the more I play teh more I love this fallout game

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I have yet to finish what I consider to be a 'significant portion' ... ~20 hours out of a 100 hour game? For some that might be more than enough to do a review, but not for me.

Where are all the FO3 haters now? Those who were claiming the game was going to be "horrible"? They're suddenly nowhere to be found.

Wow... the internets are dead! Everyone is play teh Fallouts!