Toronto Thumbs

REVIEW
Fallout 3

You were born in the vault. You will die in the vault. No one ever leaves the vault.

Vault 101 is an underground bunker inhabited by survivors of the nuclear holocaust and commanded by The Overseer, a man who ensures the vault’s security. No one ever enters the vault.

Your earliest memory is that of being born. Your father, who is also a doctor, talks to you. He says your mother and he believe you have a bright future. Something goes wrong and your mother needs help. You are carted away. A year later, you find a way out of your pen while your father steps out of the family quarters. It’s obvious your mother did not survive.

At the age of ten, you are given your very own Pip-Boy 3000. It’s a wrist-mounted computer vault residents use to monitor their health, inventory, and skills. It can also be used to tune into radio frequencies and perform other important tasks.

Life in the vault is depressing. A gang of bullies will pick on you and your childhood friend any chance they get. You ask your father if anyone has ever left the vault and he cautions you, saying to not talk like that around the Overseer (who is also your best friend’s father).

You flash forward to the age of 19. Your best friend is waking you up, going on and on about how they’re coming for you. The vault security guards know your father has escaped and have already killed his lab assistant. Now, it seems, they’re after you. Oddly enough your father never said anything about planning on leaving the vault. What could possibly have made him want to leave, especially after reminding you that no one ever leaves?

Vault-dwelling wasn’t the most ideal of living situations, but at least it was safe. Now, with guards chasing you and chaos erupting all around, you make your escape to the outside world: The Capital Wasteland. And this is where Fallout 3 truly begins to take a hold of you.

Nuclear war has left its mark on everything. Buildings and monuments that are somehow still standing are in decrepit shape. Animals have mutated into monsters. And people? Well let’s just say Fallout 3 presents the human condition in desperate circumstances. Some are vagabonds of the desolate world, traveling around looking to trade or barter with what few good-tempered survivors they come across. Others live like wild wolves in makeshift dens in old buildings, hunting in packs and attacking with little or no provocation.

And in the middle of all of this is you. Fallout 3 shows not just what happens to others in times of dire need; it shows you what happens to you. The choices you make affect how you will be perceived and the type of person you end up becoming. Some people you come across will be frightened. You can choose to help them, which would divert your attention from the task of locating your father, or you can leave them to their own devices. You do, after all, have problems of your own.

The Capital Wasteland is beautifully bleak and dead. The radio signals picked up by your Pip-Boy 3000 are noisy with static. The music they play sounds like it’s being played directly from a phonograph record, and the cheery selection of tunes (though there’s not many of them) present a fantastic contrast when juxtaposed with the dead and deadly world you find yourself in. Hearing “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire” while walking through an obviously scorched world is particularly haunting.

You’ll find items, weapons, and even clothing throughout your adventure. You can choose to pickpocket people you come across. You can raid the corpses of people you’ve defeated in battle. The world may appear empty, but there’s no shortage of things to find and do. Since the setting is post-apocalyptic, many of the items you come across are in rough shape at best. Finding several of the same type of item will allow you to make repairs to one of them with the pieces of the others. This is especially important to do with projectile weapons, which can jam up if they’re in poor condition.

Pre-war currency is worthless here. Instead, the inhabitants of the Wasteland either barter or trade bottle caps for goods.

Combat is obviously a huge part of the experience, and depending on how you choose to level-up and which skill sets you stick to, you could either be really good or absolutely horrible at it. There are two ways of fighting, too. The first is to play in typical first-person shooter fashion, aiming carefully and firing when you get a good bead on your target. The second is to use V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) to pause the action, plan which targets and which parts of the targets you want to hit, and then execute the command. When using V.A.T.S., the camera moves in a style reminiscent of bullet-time. Take-downs are often extremely brutal and the game has definitely earned its M rating from the ESRB.

It should come as no surprise this far into my description of the game that I absolutely love Fallout 3. In fact, it seems to be the general consensus among video game reviewers that this game is close to perfect. While I do enjoy it and find myself returning to it time and again as opposed to playing the many other games I need to review, the game does have its faults.

We’re given the option of playing in either first or third person perspectives, but when playing in third-person view, it’s painfully apparent that there’s a lack of polish. Your character doesn’t actually have his/her feet on the ground. Instead, you’re floating a good virtual half-foot above it. For the most part this is ignorable but when you’re climbing or are on bumpy terrain (which is to say, when you’re just about anywhere) it’s very obvious.

My second gripe – and it’s one I realize that no amount of patching can possibly fix – is that the AI of some of the NPCs is just awful at times. Interrupted speech, getting in the line of fire, and general lack of facial expression in times of severe danger are among the things that should be addressed in any follow-ups to this game. A lot of work has obviously gone into making the world of Fallout 3 a believable one, and for most games the AI problems wouldn’t be an issue because they would be on par with everything else in the game. But Fallout 3 is actually more than a game. It’s an incredibly compelling experience and one that, unlike most games, really pulls me into it. The fact that these few issues pull me back out either means the game could have used a little more attention in development or that I’m just looking for something negative to say because I subconsciously don’t want to say the game is perfect.

That said, I absolutely LOVE Fallout 3. I have a stack of still-sealed games on my coffee table that will be neglected for a few more days thanks to the great experience of walking around the post-nuclear holocaust Wasteland.

Posted in Awesome, Features, PC, PlayStation 3, Reviews, Xbox 360 |