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After months of waiting, Fallout 3 is finally out! I’ve spent some time with it now, and it’s pretty awesome. Catch the full review after the jump.

Graphics

The graphic design in Fallout 3 is amazing. The textures look beautiful, the world itself looks awesome, and the environments, while mostly gray and brown, are varied enough to keep things interesting. The ambience in the game is awesome as well. The game managed to keep me on the edge of my seat every time I walked through a dark cave or a building populated by irradiated mutants and evil raiders. The characters look excellent, though their faces are a bit odd to look at, and the lip-synching can be off at times. But all-around, the game has great graphic design that keeps with the feel of post-apocalyptic Washington DC.

Sound

The sound in Fallout 3 is pretty cool. Many of the music tracks on the game’s main radio stations, Galaxy News Radio and Enclave Radio, are real period songs from the 50s and 60s, and seem to match the game’s overall feel well. The only thing that makes roaming the post-apocalyptic wastes even cooler is roaming the post-apocalyptic wastes while listening to "I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire". And, of course, dropping mini-nukes to "Grapes of Wrath" is pretty fucking awesome. Where the sound design really falls flat on it’s ass is the obvious recycling of character voices. It wouldn’t be a huge problem if the voice actors managed to change their voices even subtly for each role. However, when almost every Brotherhood of Steel Paladin has the same voice, it gets a bit unsettling. Nonetheless, the guns sound real, the ghouls manage to scare the living crap out of me every time I hear them (Seriously, turn the lights off and turn the sound up. It’s a whole new game.), and there’s really nothing like hearing someone’s head explode right in front of you.

Story

Normally, in a Fallout game, the story is the real draw. However, it would seem that Bethesda kind of dropped the ball on this one. While the story is engaging enough to get you to eventually finish it, the main story quests only last about 10 hours or so, and that’s playing it casually. I’m sure that with some speed playing one could finish the game’s main quest in around 6-7 hours. Also, the ending is just a bit underwhelming. I can’t say much without spoiling it, but it’s definitely not the best ending I’ve ever seen. The biggest flaw in the story is the fact that many of the points in the story can be completely skipped by passing a few fairly easy Speech skill checks while talking to NPCs. This becomes most apparent when you find out you can actually skip the entire final battle of the game with a few smooth words. So basically, by grinding the Speech skill, you can get through the game insanely fast, with almost no difficulty. It’s not all bad, though. Playing through the game without skipping parts is rewarding, with a good story that manages to at least keep the player interested in the game long enough to finish it.

Replay Value

If you’re a completionist, Fallout 3 is the game for you. With more side quests than you can shake a Fat Man at, the game supposedly tops out at around 50-60 hours. And even after you’ve finally finished all the quests, you can go back and be the paragon of the human race by saving people from slavers, killing Super Mutants, and eventually saving the entire Wasteland from destruction. And after that, you can always start over and replay it as the most evil being since Hitler by going around and killing everything in sight. And hell, even after that there’s the quest to top your level out as high as you can, just for the sake of doing so. There’s also many different custom weapon schematics to find, thousands of creatures to battle, and countless other things to do. It’s like the game never ends.

Gameplay

But where Fallout 3 really shines is in it’s gameplay. The game has hundreds of different weapons, many of them catering to different gameplay styles. Do you enjoy seeing heads explode from a safe distance? Get your hands on a Sniper Rifle. Like getting into the melee and beating the shit out of someone? Go grab a Power Fist (Think "pneumatic fists"). Like making things go boom? 2 words: Fat Man. (Mini nuclear device.) My main worry about the game was the Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System, or VATS for short. In the weeks leading up to the release of the game, I was worried that VATS would end up being a piss-easy "Kill target" button. Thankfully, the system uses AP (Ability Points) enough that you can only shoot 2 or 3 times before you run out and have to wait for it to recharge. Also, the accuracy of each weapon is low enough in VATS that it’s sometimes much easier to just fire manually and hope for the best.

The Stealth mechanic in the game is geared very well. It takes into account your Stealth skill, your walking speed (Holding shift lets you walk, FYI), the time of day, whether or not your PipBoy light is on, and what sounds you might be making to calculate whether or not an NPC has detected you. This makes the stealth detection insanely accurate, to the point at which I really never blamed the game for any failure I had. If I got busted picking someone’s pocket, it usually felt like it was because I fucked up.

The minigames are pretty cool, if a bit contrived. Terminal hacking is basically a word game, in which you have four chances to pick the correct password. Each time you choose the wrong one, it tells you how many letters you have correct. The problem is, unless you have a specific perk, if you fuck up the hacking on the fourth try you’re permanently locked out. Of course, you can always just start over by closing the terminal and retrying, but it still can take forever for those of us who suck at word games. Lockpicking is flavor number two of your usual choices between "Fuck with the pins until you can open the door" and "Rotate the bobby pin and try turning the screwdriver until you manage to break the pin or open the door." Picking works fucking great, with the game giving you subtle hints as you fuck with the lock as to what is the correct position for the bobby pin. Problem is, it’s piss-easy to break the bobby pin. However, the game provides you with more than enough pins to last you the entire game from the beginning.

The game’s Perk system is pretty cool. Every few levels you unlock more and more perks, each one catering to a different style of play. Some of them give a boon to your Unarmed and Melee damage, while others make you more effective at long-range. Some of them are just fun, like Bloody Mess, while some of them are truly useful, such as Nerd Rage.

The morality system is the only real complaint I have about Fallout 3. Though the game tries to give you negative feedback for any evil choices you make, it really just doesn’t fucking matter in the end. Yes, being evil and being good yield different endings, but the fact that the game has a cap on your negative and positive karma makes it insanely easy to go from extreme to extreme. You can be the biggest dick you can be up until the last few quests, and turn it around by giving water to a few people and saving a few lives. The same is true the other way: You could save Megaton, help everyone you could find, and right before the end kill a few people and BAM! You get Very Evil. Regardless of this small flaw, the gameplay in Fallout 3 is excellent.

Final verdict:

Fallout 3 is definitely a winner. Though it’s not the best game I’ve ever played, it was definitely worth the purchase. The great art and sound design manages to pull you into a post-apocalyptic wasteland set in the not-so-distant future. A good story draws you in, while excellent gameplay keeps you interested long enough to finish the game. I only wish the actual story was more rewarding and longer.

Graphics: 9/10

Sound:    8/10

Story: 6/10

Replay Value: 10/10

Gameplay: 10/10

Final verdict:   8 out of 10