No Mutants Allowed is right.

You know folks, I'm gonna say it right now folks, in the time leading up to the release of Fallout 3 I thought No Mutants Allowed was over doing the complaints about Fallout 3, but you know what? After playing the game I have to say, NMA was right on the money. Fallout 3 is noticeably inferior to the first two games, and honestly it's inferior to Fallout Tactics as well in my book. So, I know what some of you might ask, why do they think that way, and in retrospect, why do I hate Fallout 3? Well prepare to be enlightened.

The core mechanics. The first two Fallouts where open world, well though out RPG's with many quests that often had far reaching consequences for example in Fallout 2 you could murder children if you wanted to, but you had best be ready for the consequences that game with it. If you killed three or more, you would have bounty hunters come after you, in addition you your horrid karma in pretty much every area of the game. You see, Fallout 3 offers none of that, and it doesn't even have to be child killing as in this day and age in America, something as taboo as that wouldn't float at all but it can't be that hard to think up something that would have similar and far reaching negative repercussions. In addition to the karma system being screwed over, the combat mechanics are dumbed down and Oblivionized, which for all purposes is not a good thing at all. Combat is exceedingly easy, even on the hardest difficulty setting and trust me, I've played the game on Very Hard and the only enemies you have to watch out for are Deathclaws.

The writing in often a target of ridicule and criticism, and rightly so, as it's amateurish and sloppy a good 99% of the time, however it sometimes has flickers of brilliance from time to time. In addition to awful righting, the skill checks and dialog check are often ridiculously stupid. Here's an example. Upon meeting Three Dog, owner of Galaxy New Radio and walking black guy stereotype, you will discuss why he keeps "fighting the good fight" and after a few lines of dialog, you get an Intelligence dialog check if it's high enough that reads as follows [Intelligence] "So, you fight the good fight with Galaxy News Radio?" moments after he just got done explaining why he "fights the good fight" or another good one is when you explain why the mole rats die from the repellent she made, however to be fair some of the skill checks do make sense such as when she wants you to go to the RoboCo robot factory, as you can skip it entirely if you have the "Robotics Expert" perk, which does make sense, but things such as this are few and far between.

The main story makes no damn sense and seems utterly pointless. So the water is irradiated and your dad wants to make it drinkable again, ok seems like noble goal however you dad is suffering from a case of Doing it wrong. This is a more sense able solution, "Filtering through earth removes essentially all of the fallout particles and more of the dissolved radioactive material than does boiling-water distillation... In areas of heavy fallout, about 99% of the radioactivity in water could be removed by filtering it through ordinary earth." and yet your dad wants to use the Jefferson Memorial to go about a lengthy and time extensive process using a GECK, and making you run pointless errands around the wasteland and it all end up with an extremely cliche' ending. Oh yeah, and giant robots. The side quests however, are often pretty damn good with the best being Blood Ties, The Replicated Man, and You Gotta Shoot'em in the Head. The three I just mentioned are the cream of the crop, offering many skill checks and dialog check, multiple ways to finish the quests, and believable NPC reactions.

Bethesda's voice acting often comes under fire as being mediocre, which isn't far from the truth if ya ask me. Ever since Oblivion, they have started to hire big name talent such a Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean in Oblivion's case and the former being the game a whole 10 minutes. With Fallout 3, Bethsoft hyped the fact that Liam Neeson was in the game, and I have to be honest, I was unimpressed. His delivery was iffy at times, however, I won't put full blame on him, as he had shit to work with. The rest of the voices are the usual Bethesda odd ball local talent, some of which is good (Wes Johnson) and some is just mediocre at best. Another noticeable flaw with Bethsofts voice work is the over saturation of voices, i.e you hear a voice so much you wanna go on a murderous rampage.

*Insert overtly epic sounding bombastic battle music as you gun you way threw Super Mutants near the Capitol Building*. Seriously the music is...odd. At times it more reserved and more ambient sounding, but when you fight enemies it changes into a faux epic movie score.

The change from Isometric, turn based combat was criticized by NMA, and honestly it's not that big of a deal for me, BUT Bethesda implemented first person perspective and real time combat horrendously with a insta-cheat option, VATS, which renders all skill pointless. However, NMA was indeed right, Isometic, turn based works best for Fallout.

Now for the biggest complaint, was Bethesda the right developer for the job? Honestly, no, they weren't. Once Bethesda picked it up, it's fate was sealed. The core concepts where dumbed down and Obivionized, striping away a thoughtful story, skills, and writing for a more mainstream, XBOX audience, and it really shows and in closing, "Bethesda...Bethesda never changes" have never rang more true.