A strange thing happened during a mini-marathon session of Fallout 3 last night. The game became…fun.
I’m not saying that I didn’t like the game before yesterday (it was my #3 Game of the Year after all), but it definitely wasn’t what I would classify as the traditional definition of “fun.” Fun games are games like Mirror’s Edge, Call of Duty, and Portal; all active and exciting. Fallout 3 though, was feeling drawn out, tedious, and like somewhat of a grind. I was getting killed a lot and often having to try things over and over again before I would get lucky. Last night, though, it all started to come together, and I attribute it to two specific things that happened: First, I got up to level 8, which I feel is when I my character really started to get strong enough to compete and not get killed by every Molerat that crossed my path. Second, and more importantly, I realized two things at the same time; that none of the achievements are difficulty-based, and that I could change the difficulty to easy (or even very-easy) mid-game.
So it may be a bit of a cheaper way to play, but I’m having a grand old time ripping through the Capitol Wasteland with strong weapons, a surplus of ammo, plenty of HP, and more bottlecaps than I can spend. Good times.
I didn’t find the game all that difficult, but that’s maybe because I did A HELL OF A LOT of exploring (I was around 75hrs in when I finished the main campaign!) and found a lot of cool/useful stuff whilst doing so.
Besides, this is the only game I think of where you are encouraged to put as much “strange meat” into your mouth as possible and not worry about the consequences. So, how could you, of all people Mark, fail to like this game?