Fallout 3
By Bethesda Softworks
Genre: RPG/First-person shooter
Players: 1
Rating: Mature (17+)
Downloadable Content: Available, 1 pack released so far, out of 3 planned
Distribution Model: Retail or over the content delivery system Steam; interfaced with Microsoft’s Games for Windows – LIVE
Release Date: October 31, 2008
How would you survive in a world ravaged by nuclear devastation? Would you become a psychopath, blasting everything that moves, or a diplomat, more disposed to talking your way out of (and into) situations? Or maybe you’d prefer a combination of both?
Furthermore, how would you tackle these problems in a period firmly in the future of the 22nd and 23rd centuries, though rooted in the past? At every corner, references to Forties and Fifties pop culture catch your eye, and your ears are filled with sweet jumping jazz, boisterous big band and sentimental slow dance tunes. And in the ruins in which you search and do battle, echoes of the long-dead past still linger, speaking of the paranoia, of the Red Scare as it existed in the Fifties.
That’s exactly the scenario that is presented in the series of games started in the late 90s and continued to this day, Fallout.
In Fallout 3, you journey through the vast Capital Wasteland, what is left of Washington, D.C. and its environs 210 years after a nuclear holocaust decimated the world in 2066. Though the setting may be futuristic, the design of the many locales echo the “future science” motif of the 1950s, with polished, sterile surfaces as well as talking service and combat robots. The people you meet are by turns friendly and helpful, but also paranoid and dangerous, and there are certain factions who, angry at the world, just attack you on sight, heedless of the fact that you might be more powerful than they are.
Through a journey rife with high adventure, intrigue and moral decision-making, you escape from a very sheltered life in a Vault designed to keep large numbers of people safe, but from which your father escaped also; you must find him and learn why.
Many dangerous non-human opponents await you, as well, from dogs to larger, more dangerous fauna to grotesque and powerful mutants. You must fight or evade them to succeed.
Fallout 3: A Post-Nuclear Adventure which no one should miss.
Graphics: 10 out of 10.
Sound: 10 out of 10.
Controls: 10 out of 10 for both PC and Xbox 360.
Gameplay: 10 out of 10.
Replay: 9 out of 10.
OVERALL (not averaged): 10 out of 10. You shouldn’t miss this game if you can at all play it; it’s probably the best game of its type out now. It uses the same technology as the previous game by Bethesda, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, though modified, so like that one, it’s definitely a beautiful, open-world RPG which almost never ends.
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