FALLOUT 3

Fallout 3 is one of those games that comes once in every year or so that launches a ridiculous amount of copycat games that try to reach the height of popularity that it did, only a few other titles have and only a few have surpassed it in its genre and one of those was its sequel’s Fallout New Vegas. I have chosen this game for a few key reason’s, both personal and for the fact that the game did so well for so many more reasons, the first is because it’s the game that got me into full on gaming and made me fall in love the post-apocalyptic genre and for me most importantly the art of the post-apocalyptic world. The main reasons for why I chose this game are because of the incredible amount of stuff you can do in the game and the different ways you can play the game not to mention the amazing story of course.

In the game you are placed in the somewhat unfortunate shoes of the lone wanderer, don’t let the name deceive you, you start out as a vault dweller which is a reference to the original game, but after the your father, the vault doctor leaves the vault which no one has ever done so in over 200 years not since Armageddon occurred, so you are told, and you are forced out of the vault on your own accord to a certain degree to search for your father and what happened to him and most importantly why he left in the first place, your journey takes you out of the vault and back into a few other ones, and out into what’s left of Washington DC or at least what’s left of it, at the start you charge head on into the quest to find your father but are very quickly side tracked with helping others, or joining their rival to rob them or just plain kill them and their rival. The many quests you’ll undertake range from a whole variety of things and come from a colourful range of people, some quests are questionable morally and others are clearly for the greater good, and almost all have repercussions no matter what choice or side you chose, above all one thing is clear, all roads will eventually after hours and hours of playing will lead you to your father, after you as the player actually realise that he was the person you were looking for in the first place you angrily ask him why he left you and his reasons are pretty dam just, what happens next in the game can range from too many options, so I’ll leave it to you the reader to discover what happens next.

The mechanics of the game are also what makes the game so legendary in its own right, the first thing most player realise at the start of a game is that you can play it as either a first person shooter or third person shooter, which is different compared to other games that don’t have “mmo” at the start of their titles. On top of that, the gameplay itself is fluent, fast paste and above all engaging, it also introduced something that hadn’t been seen before since one it’s more original titles back in the 90s, a little something called V.A.T.S, V.A.T.S allows you to in a way pause the games to select an area of you opponent to possibly land a critical hit on, the parts you can shot are pretty basic and where ever you hit will have a different effect, say you choose the leg to shoot and the opponent survives, for the rest of the gun fight or melee fight that opponent will be limping, or if you shoot an arm, this may have the chance for them dropping whatever weapon they are using and possibly even break it if you choose to shoot the weapon itself, but there’s a catch to all of this and that is there’s a chance you will miss or the opponent may even dodge the shot, it also depends on your positioning too, if you plan on shooting them in V.A.T.S you need to have a clear shot of the target, and if you do, the results are very much satisfying.

All up the game delivers as something to keep you entertained for hours on end, whether you play it for the in depth story or the fluent gameplay or just to explore the wasteland to see what there is to be seen, no matter the reason people play fallout 3 either way you will get sucked into the world as the lone wanderer.

By Lloyd Clasby