The Summer's Best and Worst Demo: Fallout 3
An open-ended look into Bethesda's post-apocalyptic action RPG feels unsettlingly familiar.
8/5/2008 6:58 PM | 6 Comments | Page 2 of 2
This is exactly the sort of situation we would have loved to
play in the demo; instead, we used pea shooters against mean dogs.
Finally, there's the question of fun. If I was trying to show an experienced gamer what makes
GTA IV wonderful, I wouldn't stick him with the first couple hours of the game; I'd open the doors to a mission like Three Leaf Clover, where they'd be able to see how intense the experience can be.
The same is true of
Fallout 3. If this game is anything like
Oblivion, it'll have 60 to 80 hours of gameplay, with the first couple hours being the least interesting. Why show those to a critical audience that has already seen examples of Megaton in previous demos, but will still draw quick inference between this new game and Bethesda's last?
At E3,
Fallout 3 made a lot of "best of show" lists. I'm sure Bethesda is thrilled with that. Even in an E3 that felt positively anemic on the game front, being called out as one of the five or 10 most crucial is significant. But I don't see it. I've been told for months that this is a dramatic step forward from
Oblivion, but very little of the open-ended demo I had supported that claim.
