[Gonzosports]

It took about 4 sleepless nights, but I finished Fallout 3 on Saturday.

I missed a lot of the sidequests - I never fought a Deathclaw! - but did enough in the game, and spent waaaaaaay too much time on it, that I'm closing the chapter on Fallout 3. Once intrigued by the DLC, I will not be playing it, the game took more than its fair share of time out of my life.

My final (abbreviated) thoughts: In the end, more fun than Oblivion - and more fun than I've had with any other game in a while, but under closer inspection, not a particularly deep game. I think the presentation is amazing, as I do the graphics and the design of the world. Incredible - I can't imagine the amount of man hours to make such a living, breathing wasteland.

I liked the main story, but it does end way too abruptly, and the ease of the main quest is astonishing. I merely watched, as there is little strategy needed.

There didn't seem to be a huge amount of side quests, but when there were, they were often more detailed with several parts - I like this approach better than Oblivion.

I do not like the WOW element of explore two steps, kill 8 monsters, walk two steps, kill 8 monsters, level up, repeat, in many areas of the game. There aren't very many different monsters (a problem in Oblivion, too) and even worse, most of the human NPC "Raiders" are vanilla as well. Combat is more involved, and more fun than Oblivion, but...could've been much more if there was less of it, with more interesting/powerful opponents.

Would I recommend? Probably, AS A DIVERSION and entertainment. This is no Morrowind, and certainly can't be classified as art - beyond the incredibly imagined visuals and overall aesthetic. But, if you've got other ways to be entertained, I wouldn't recommend this - it's not a must play, and, takes way too much time to play through.

I realized I've ended up reviewing this more than my experiences with it, but I don't think of this as a review. Final thought, is I had a lot of fun, and because I'm always interested in Bethesda's work, I had to play - but I didn't learn anything, and the overall story, is, like too much video game narrative, still rooted in an adolescent reality.

[RLacey]

I'd love to have finished Fallout 3. Sadly, I've run into a well-documented but yet-to-be-fixed crash bug at the Jefferson memorial, so that the game hangs as soon as I enter it. Way to kill my fun .

[Fantasysci5]

My boyfriend is currently playing/obsessing about this game. It looks pretty unique. I hear there's an add-on to it, as well.

[Gonzosports]

Originally Posted by Fantasysci5

My boyfriend is currently playing/obsessing about this game. It looks pretty unique. I hear there's an add-on to it, as well.

There are three out now, with two more scheduled. After spending a gazillion hours on the game and finishing the main narrative, I said enough. It becomes a time sink with no real redeeming art/narrative values at some point.

(This game was a guilty pleasure...because the days of Bethesda making art, a la Morrowind are sadly, long gone.)

[ggreen737]

First off, the game is pretty short, I finished it at I think 18 hours. I did about 80% of the sidequests, and was one-shot killing everything by the end of the game.

If you still have your save file, go back and try out the side-quests, trust me that it makes the game a lot more fun because you really understand the world better.

It's a MUST PLAY in my book, IF you love cyber/steampunk, and sci-fi elements as crucial points in a game. Were there a lot of things I think could have been better? Yes.

[D.C.]

I really liked Fallout 3, but thought it could have lived up to its potential just a little bit more...

The world was huge and very atmospheric, but it sort of felt empty and deserted unless you were actively working on a quest. The quests were cool too, but I was expecting more consequences afterwards considering it was all open world-like. I thought it could've used more towns and more diverse NPCs as well. Although I should say I'm used to the BioWare kind of RPG, which is probably a whole lot shorter and a little more focused on just the story and character. It would've been nice to have more Vaults that were populated too, without just being kind of dungeon-like. I'm hoping Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas will have more of the stuff I'm looking for.

Don't get me wrong, though. I liked the game a whole lot. I especially loved the music. There's nothing more surreal than exploring the Capital Wastelands while "Let's Go Sunning" plays on the radio. Good times!

[ggreen737]

Haha, yes! I really appreciated the soundtrack in Fallout 3. There are so many "big band" songs from the 50's, I hope they play out well in future Fallout games. It's just so surreal to hear those oldies while headshot-ing a mutant with body armor.

[D.C.]

Fallout 3's score was pretty atmospheric too. The theme in particular. BioShock made great use of old music as well. I've got to say, there's something unbelievably creepy about hearing this play while exploring Rapture...

[larissa]

I waited to reply to this thread until I finished the game, which I just did last night. Oh, that ending!!

I enjoyed the gameplay a lot--I thought VATS was fun, I liked the stuff in the world, I thought the NPCs that were there were interesting, and so on. I actually didn't think the game was a patch on either Oblivion or Morrowind in terms of stories and quests--I agree there was really not a lot of depth. The sidequests were interesting, but I thought the quests in Oblivion were much better and more inventive--they were a lot more AG-like as well, with what felt like problems that required intelligence for solutions. (The main thing I thought comparable in FO3 was when you enter Dr. Braun's vault to get his G.E.C.K.--that sort of quest is really fairly clever.) I expected that the Karma system would have some cool consequences, but it didn't feel like that to me--just meant that there was a Jesus-like icon in my stats window. Basically, I felt like most of what I was being asked to do was go and kill something and bring an artifact back from the trip. And the lack of magic (aside from chems) was really sad--Bethesda is known for that and so it made the absence of magical effects all the more obvious, I thought.

I'm not sure whether I'll go back to it. It obviously has a lot of replay value and, if you're a dedicated role-player, you could create quite a few interesting personalities, I'd think. There are some cool mods already and I'm sure there will be more--I modded my MW and Oblivion up and got a lot more out of them that way. But overall, I feel like I just had a McDonald's. It seemed really awesome at the time but now I feel kinda gross and hungry again . . . meh.