Fallout 3 (Xbox 360)

Let us go, through certain half deserted streets
10/28/2008 5:25 PM | 5 Comments | Page 2 of 3

The "economy," as it were, goes beyond barter. For instance, scraps of food are readily available in the form of meat from killed creatures, tins of pork and beans, and the delicacy of squirrels or iguanas on a stick. This food heals the damage you'll take, but it tends to be irradiated -- so as you eat, you get sicker and sicker. You can deal with this by occasionally visiting doctors or by using doses of Rad-Away. Or you can be more careful about what you eat, which means being more careful about taking damage. Clothes are often a tradeoff between boosting an important stat or reducing damage. There are even player-housing money sinks if that's your thing. It's all game design woven into the game world, as skilled and distinct as in BioShock.

Here is no water but only rock

The main storyline almost isn't enough to bear up under the sheer size of what Bethesda has created. The plot touches less than half of the world, which is there to be discovered (Fallout 3 will not plot your walk through the sights; it seems happy to let you miss what you're going to miss). There's a thematic unity with the previous Fallouts, which were concerned with the simple facts of food and water and grew into epic stories about technology and corruption. But here the more personal angle of your character's "daddy issue" replaces the previous games' sense of obligation to the Vault. Your family is not a band of survivors. Your family is one man. This motivation works no matter what direction the story takes. Compare this to Oblivion, where you couldn't very well decide not to save the world if you wanted to "finish" the game.

But the real storyline here is how you develop your character and navigate the choices. This is what makes Fallout 3 a great RPG. It's got plenty of meticulous stats and picky skill checks, but what sets it apart is the way you navigate the moral geography. Who do you help or hurt, and how do you do it? That's the far more compelling part of the storyline, and it's the bulk of the character development, even more than which perk you take when you level up (which is also pretty compelling). In this regard, Fallout 3 is very much like the games of Obsidian and Black Isle, but without their dated top-down contrivances.

In the room the women come and go

Not that there aren't any contrivances here. There are, and they give Fallout 3 a split personality. On one hand, the game is terrifically moody and immersive, nearly as much as Far Cry 2. But on the other hand, the world is chopped up into separate boxes divided by loading screens, where characters simply vanish when they walk through a door. The animation is terrible for anything but slow-motion death scenes, and the game looks particularly awkward when it attempts some sort of coordination between two or more characters. It's enough to make you want to leave your companion at home.

The combat might be a sore point for some players, but I loved it. Bethesda's objective seems to be letting you play it as a turn-based slow-motion decapitation sim, or as a slightly clunky shooter. Take your pick or just alternate as the mood strikes you. For folks who prefer to play it as a shooter, Fallout 3 offers weightless ammo, and plenty of it. Those of us who mostly use the nifty turn-based "V.A.T.S." system will never want for a bullet. V.A.T.S. lets you target body parts, shoot the weapon out of someone's hand, or cripple him so he can't chase you. At least, that seems to be the idea: In practice, there never seemed to be a reason to do anything other than simply close the distance and queue up a series of sure-fire headshots. Hand-to-hand combat (use the biggest blade you can find!) and explosives are overkill, as they should be. But well into my second playthrough, the ridiculously gory deaths still haven't gotten old.