By Thomas Hodgson

I Reckon Ye Ain’t From Around Here

In the late 90s, Fallout was the way a role-playing game should be. For those new to the franchise, Fallout is basically your chance to live as Mel Gibson’s character in the movie Road Warrior. A savage wasteland torn apart by an atomic war, members of the free world locked themselves in fallout vaults until the dust settled. Decades have passed and it is now your time to explore the remains of a once great nation, for better or for worse.

Hearing initial reports that Fallout 3 was becoming a first-person experience, I was afraid of what might show up at the door. Taking the original RPG classic straight out of their over-the-top view and turn-based element seemed like more risk than any reward Bethesda could have possibly predicted. But much like the brave new world of the game, they went into the direction of the unknown with authority and put our worrying to shame.

In an attempt to keep something of the turn-based nature intact, you can use the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (VATS) to take characters into a slo-motion Max Payne-esque battle mode when you can aim at certain parts of the body, having certain percentages to hit each and a certain number of turns to shoot.

The problem here is that the same percentages to hit or miss someone carry over into first-person mode. Unlike your typical first-person shooter, what you see in your sights is not necessarily what you’ll hit or where the bullets will fly.

Secondly, the dynamic to VATS is flawed in the sense that after you’ve spent your turns, you’re left to run around waiting for more to respawn, shooting in the first-person mode to pass your time. I understand how they were attempting to connect to the fan base, but ultimately, it would have made more sense to discard.

If there is one thing to be said about Fallout 3, it is that it’s absolutely massive. You will get winded in real life from watching your character run across the estimated 16 square miles of game terrain. And for containing such a limitless horizon, every little crevice of the wasteland is graphically superb. The only faults aesthetically are the character animations and the almost entirely useless third-person mode. Everything else is a post-apocalyptic nirvana for the senses.

Fallout 3 is as vast and expansive as your creativity and morals allow it to be. It will provide you with excitement and replayability until an actual nuclear fallout arrives. There is no right and no wrong and you could essentially never play the same game twice. And although it’s not the Fallout of old, Bethesda has taken a change of pace in a welcomed and incredible new direction. The atmosphere ~ which is far and away the greatest to ever grace a role-playing game ~ remains unscathed. Aside from a lack of variety in monsters and the awkward-looking character animations and third person mode, it is an incredible game from start to, well, the finish that is nestled hundreds of hours away. The rest is up to you.

PROS: A game with potential as limitless as the world that was created around it ~ just massive amounts of pure badass at every corner. It will own your soul for hours at a time, that is, if you choose to have one

CONS: Character levels cap at 20, the character animations are a kindergartener’s art project, and the enemies aren’t too diverse, but these are just stones being thrown at a behemoth of pros

RATING: 5/5 Stars