Fallout 3 – First Impressions

Despite having a new baby and being in law school and having gone back to work after baby leave, I have been able to squeeze in some time on Fallout 3 and Mercenaries 2. This is about F3.

I’ve played Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and even played that mediocre Fallout Brotherhood of Steel (which we won’t talk about). I have always enjoyed the Fallout world and the care that has gone into the games. The artwork and art direction have always been great. As for the world: the sense of humor has been one of the best aspects of the games. The depth of the world is also fantastic: you can choose many routes to play, and many characteristics of your character and have vastly different experiences playing the game.

After many years (a saga you find online), a new publisher has finally made Fallout 3. While not the game that Fallout purists want, I think it pretty good so far in the first five hours of game time that I’ve logged. I recognize that third person isometric turn based games aren’t popular or even understood by the masses. (Which is too bad because my disabled brother NEEDS games to be turn based.)

The changes I’ve noticed so far:

• Not turnbased anymore. This helps with mass appeal but annoys the fanboys. Turn based combat can be turned on and I find it extremely helpful.
• First person perspective. Generally okay. I’d prefer the third person isometric feel. You can zoom the camera out which I’d also prefer (after all my hours playing GTA and Mercenaries) but I haven’t been able to get the motion of the character to feel natural in that camera angle. It always seems like the character is turned at an angle. Weird.
• Decreased humor. The old games had a wicked sense of humor but that would often “take one out of the game.” I haven’t seen any of that yet.
• Increased “realism.” The artwork for the originals was so good that looking at post apocalypse America was entertaining. This game looks much more like a desolate wasteland.

I haven’t had any problems but I’m playing the Xbox 360 version. My friends who have the PC version have stopped playing due to instability of the game.

UPDATE (2008-12-12): I’m not even done with finals but I see that I’ve logged almost eighty hours of game play. Uh-oh, my GPA will take another battering this semester.

Still, I think this shows that the game is definitely worth the money to me. Dollar per hour, this is way ahead of any movie. I’m also likely to start over and play through as an “evil” character.