Fallout 3 Review

I have to say my reason for posting my thoughts on the game and also a heads up, I've played both the 360 and PS3 version.

Visuals: Well, contrary to what Bethesda said about "eye popping prettiness" the game is actually pretty average looking honestly loaded with numerous visual problems such as messy and blurry textures, lots of jaggies (this is a huge problem in the PS3 version), screen tearing (huge problem in the 360 version), jerky animations (all 3 versions), and a host of other technical mishaps that honestly should have been worked out via testing, but judging from what I've played Bethesda has none.

Game play: Bethesda made some HUGE changes from the first two and Tactics, and not for the better. Gone are the relevance of stats, skills, and perks and replaced with a mediocre first person view and an even worse 3rd person view where stats are pretty much worthless, let me explain. You see, in Fallout 1 and 2, and Tactics where skills such as small guns for example, the overall effectiveness had many determining factors such as skill, distance, armor class of the enemy, and distance among other things would factor in to determine how effective you where at combat. FO3 on the other hand, skills are almost pointless, as you can simply get it to maybe 30ish out of a 100 and still slaughter anything. V.A.T.S (Vault tech assisted targeting system), the much hype "innovative" combat system is in reality a glorified cheat device. Let me explain. You see, when you use VATS the game freezes allowing "tactical planning" to basically see the enemy die the same way over and over. It also grants you a 90% damage reduction and 2x critical hit rate for no apparent reasons and both these factors can be enhanced with perks.

Story/Writing: One of the strong points of the first two was smart and clever writing and a good story, these are pretty much gone in FO3. In FO3, the writing is a at best average and a worst down right god awful. The main "story" is more or less a copy and paste affair from the first two. It involves water (FO1) and a Garden of Eden Creation Kit or G.E.C.K (FO2) and a whirlwind ride of Hollywood cliche's and pointless fetch quests in the effort to purify the water of the waste land for everyone. The sub-quests on the other hand still suffer from poor writing, they are actually well thought out, such as "The Replicated Man", "Blood Ties", and "You Gotta Shot'em in the Head" are among the best and offer plenty of choice, NPC reactions, and skill checks a plenty. In short the main story = fail and the sub-quests = really good for the most part.

Sound: FO1, FO2, and FoT all had really good voice action and music. Does FO3 offer the same. Not even close. The voice acting in Bethesda games have always been odd to me. It started in Oblivion with the hiring of Patrick Stewart (who's a great actor) but voices about 10 minutes of dialog in the game, yes 10 minutes. Bethesda continues this practice in FO3 as well with Liam Neeson (also a good actor) and Odette Yustman (The girl from Cloverfield, she does a horrid job by the way). The rest of the voice actors are the usual Bethesda quality, in other words from average to awful, with Wes Johnson being being light years above the rest of them turning in a good performance for Burke (despite the character being awful) and a humorous take on the Super Mutants. Music is a mix bag, some is ok and others are just way way over the top. The music is also composed by Inon Zur.

Fallout lore: This is a special category. So, who do the Brotherhood of Steel, and other familiar organizations hold up under Bethesda? It's a mix bag really. First off, their are two Brotherhood organizations. The Outcasts and the DC Wasteland detachment. The Outcasts are modeled after the westcoast brotherhood, and the DC detachment are a bunch of goody goody "Holy Knights of the Wasteland" as Emil put it that run around spouting stereotypical fantasy dialog such as Hail or Hail Sir Knight among other retarded things. The Enclave, the remnants of the U.S government are in FO3 for no reason at all other than to just be there. The Super Mutants are now Orc looking guys that eat human flesh. So in other words, Bethesda screwed them up, although The Outcasts are pretty cool.

Visuals: Pretty average for the most part with a few nice moments here and there, but over all it's simply average. 6/10
Game play: Dumbed down for FPS fiends that love pointless and not funny violence. Easy even on Very Hard as well. 5/10
Story/Writing: LULZ worth main quest dialog, and decent for the sub-quests. The 3rd grade special ED story doesn't help matters. 4/10
Sound/Music: Average music and crappy voice actiong (minus Wes Johnson). 5/10
Fallout Lore: To much to list. 0/10
Overall: To hell with it. 4/10