threevue

Believe it or not, quite a few things happen behind the scenes here at Threevue HQ. For instance, did you know that we spend lots of time procrastinating, napping, and dry-heaving from worry worting? Bet you didn’t. And because we’re so busy, sometimes we let reviews of games slide right through the cracks. Cleaning House is a feature in which we attempt to right the wrongs of our past, and provide you with some quality, half-assed product. Enjoy!

Russ:
Although I don’t want to admit it, I was slightly drawn towards Oblivion. But its mixed reviews and fantasy-world setting were enough to keep me away, anxiously waiting for my swan song (at least initially): Fallout 3 was developed by the same company, and there wasn’t an elf to be found anywhere. I haven’t played a solid RPG in a while – I feel that games like Mass Effect and Fable II were more like “adventure” games than a bonafide grinding/leveling role-playing experience – and I was ready to jump in whole-heartedly.

I’m glad I did. Fallout 3‘s FPS viewpoint brings an intimacy I’ve never experienced in an RPG, and I loved it. Most of my RPG experiences don’t expand beyond the Final Fantasy games, and I’ve never felt any connection with the main characters; but in Fallout 3, I was immersed. If you look beyond the critics’ gripes (mostly just pop-up and somewhat glitchy gameplay) you’ll find yourself dropped into a world that is both parts old and new, ugly and beautiful, frustrating and exhilarating. I completed all 30 missions and discovered 100 locations in less than 40 hours of gameplay, and I was disappointed that my adventure ended so quickly. Thankfully, the DLC extended the experience significantly, although in hindsight I partially wish I had waited for the Game of the Year edition and spent $60 instead of the $110 I paid altogether. Then again, experiencing each new chapter of the game as it was released was a lot of fun, too. At the end of the day, Fallout 3 is one of the best games of 2008 that bled well into 2009, and a truly must-have experience for any Xbox 360 owner.

93/100

Tyler:
Russ said it; Fallout 3 is an experience. And in that experience is a gigantic whirlwind of people, locations, items, enemies and a storyline that sometimes collide into each other in less than favorable ways. In this game’s case, it’s unforeseen glitches. Dead NPCs, prematurely-ended quests and accidental thievery can put a damper on any adventurer’s journey through the wastes. Thankfully these instances in Fallout 3 are hardly game-enders; in fact, they serve to reinforce the notion that this game is massive. So massive that it’s hard to feel satisfied even when completing side-quests. As a player you feel that there has to be more out there, another quest in the next town. That’s what Fallout 3 gives you. Now that’s pretty immersive if you ask me.

While those collisions don’t ruin the game, they do tend to break the illusion and the flow of the play. Added to this are the rickety animations and robotic models of the characters, the repetitive dungeons subways segments and fact that sometimes the game just doesn’t give you clear information and you kill the wrong people or make the wrong deal. I can deal with those things, the only real wish I have for Fallout is the tightening of the shooting. Think of how you firefights in COD4 play out… skillfully, accurately and with a certain finesse, right? Now how about Fallout 3… stiff, analog and not the most fun, am I right? If you don’t agree then just imagine playing the whole game without VATS. Good luck sniping!

I hope it’s clear that I frontloaded this review with all the worst things I have to say. In the end, after playing the game for so many hours, helping the tykes in Little Lamplight, fending off the Garys, leaving Vault 101 for the last time and fighting along with Liberty Prime, I came to really love this game. Like, “one of my favorite games of all time” love it. All of the misgivings I listed above are still there, but like Dennis Quaid in Enemy Mine, I’ve now spent years with something that I originally had trouble dealing with, but after so much time I now I know and love it (and it’s having my baby). I’m still not done with the game, but Ive played it for over 80 hours. With two more DLC packs to go, I’m very hesitant to complete what has been one of the best video game experiences of my life.

95/100

Giang:
Somehow The Wasteland may be described as a barren landscape. At the same time the world feels so full of life. You quickly learn that this infertile land is one of opportunity – quests, loot, a variety of towns and recognisable landmarks that echo a once standing D.C.. And how you approach it is entirely up to you (it is interesting to note that ironically, the Vaults are a place where life is a fruitless existence).

Most of the missions you encounter can offer reward or ramifications. This all ties in the with the game’s Karma system, dictating whether you’re good, evil or neutral. Progression through the main story line will also present you with these choices, even though they are few and far between. And it all climaxes at a rather dissatisfying ending. All NPCs look like wax mannequins and their animations are startlingly underwhelming. Everyone seems to be ice skating and moon jumping across the world, including yourself when you’re in third person view.

Real-time combat can be a frustrating experience if you opt for the FPS controls. The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) rather offers players an opportunity to assess and think about how they might approach the situation – something is near impossible with regular shooting controls. You pause time, target a creature (human, dog, mutant, weird lobster thing) and a specific body part (limb, head, tentacles), each one having a percentage of chance to hit. Once that’s done you press play and watch the decapitation unfold in vivid, blood-spraying slow-mo. It’s an incredibly satisfying and fun to watch system, especially if you have the gratuitous ‘Bloody Mess’ perk turned on.

Gaining a level offers players to cash in skill points and a perk, allowing players to customise their game style. You could go all Rambo, with focus of melee attacks, or be the silent killer, picking off enemies with stealth and precision. What you end up with is a character that should be deeply fine tuned to your playing system.

This game is filled with choices. Where to go, what you do and say, who you kill and how you do it. It can get clumsy at some spots, but otherwise it’s a well imagined world that will keep you continually seeking out for more.

93/100

Steve

Gargantuan: (adjective)
enormous; colossal
Epic: (noun)
A literary or dramatic composition that resembles an extended narrative poem celebrating heroic feats

There are a great number of terms that can be used to describe Fallout 3 when trying to give people a better sense of what the game is all about; action-adventure, RPG/FPS hybrid,  and post-apocalyptic science fiction to name just a few of them.  However, the two definitions listed above are probably the two most apt terms I can think of to describe the experience I had playing this game.

To say that Fallout 3 is huge really does do it a disservice; I put in the region of 130 hours of play time into it (including all of the DLC).  This is due in large part to the fact that playing it is like having the videogame equivalent of ADD – it’s far too easy to start what is essentially a simple 30 minute fetch quest, only to find you’ve spent ten hours wandering around, meeting people, finding new quests, getting into random fights, pillaging loot, and becoming genuinely absorbed into the rich world that Bethesda have created.  In my opinion, this quality is Fallout 3′s single greatest strength, and one which had me captivated by the time I left Vault 101.

It’s because the game is so absorbing that it’s easy to forgive much of the games faults: it’s filled with minor glitches, the FPS elements are a little clunky, sometimes choosing the wrong option in a dialogue tree will result in quests being denied to you; couple this with the game’s too-frequent autosave feature, and you can find yourself having to revert to an older save and replaying sections of the game again just to correct a mistake made in the blink of an eye.  It’s also worth noting that using the VATS system slows the combat down to a crawl – whilst I actually quite liked this (though the combat isn’t exactly frenetic, the slower pace does make it feel more methodical – even tactical) it does make the game quite slow in places.  Those who suffer from a lack of patience may not be so ready to forgive this.

However, as previously mentioned, all of these faults are relatively minor when weighed against just how utterly compelling this game is.  Whilst Fallout 3 may be a little technically deficient in places, it has a vast amount of charm.  For example, a side-quest in one of the DLC packs sees you clear an area of enemies; the game then rewards you, not just with XP for completing the quest, but in a strange juxtaposition to all of the violence that’s just occurred, lets you play tag with a child that lives in the area you’ve just cleared out.  After moments like that, I find it hard to say anything bad about this game at all.

94/100