First impressions of Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360 after having played for about 3 hours; amazing. I never played Oblivion (also created by Bethesda), which has the same open-world, extremely huge, feeling. I’m coming from a background of mostly playing first person shooters, mainly Call of Duty 4, and haven’t really dabbled in an RPG type game in quite a few years. I’ve always been a fan of RPG/adventure games, I love the Final Fantasy series as well as the Zelda series, but lately I’ve been finding the in your face action of FPS’ more appealing. With that said I was a little hesitant to pick up Fallout 3 based on the fact that Gears of War 2 comes out this Friday and I have a feeling that Fallout will get pushed to the side for a little while. None the less, I decided to pick it up yesterday.
I had only read a few reviews, seen a couple gameplay videos and talked to a friend who has the game already, and that was enough to convince me that I may actually like this one. Like I said before, I only got to play the game for about 3 hours last night after going to get a beer and $1 burger over at Bar Louie, so these are just my very first impressions of what I experienced in that short amount of time. I even skipped all of the presidential election stuff on TV, just so I could play the game (not to say CNN.com wasn’t open on my laptop). Time to start the game…
The game starts off at the very beginning of your life, your birth. This is where you get to choose your character name and what you will look like when get older. It’s a clever way of designing the character you want to play for the remainder of the game. This is basically the tutorial section of the game. It teachers you how to interact with objects, use your pip-boy, shoot a guy, etc, and it’s a creative way to learn the controls of the game. Eventually you must escape from Vault 101 and go in search of your father. When I first stepped foot outside of Vault 101, I was immediately blown away by how amazing the world looks. The textures on the ground and buildings and just the vast landscape that was laid out before me. It seems like the world is way too big for one person to explore, but I guess that’s why they estimate that the game would take over 100 hours to complete if you did everything there was to do.
Outside of Vault 101 I got to explore the world a little bit, but I soon realized if I ventured too far away from where I was supposed to go I would die due to lack of a weapon. So I headed towards the town of Megaton to find out more information about my father and where he might have gone. Once in Megaton I immediately started adding quests to my pip-boy, some of them I couldn’t do right away (I tried) and some of them were instantly do-able. I don’t want to give away too much about the game itself and what you will encounter so I’m not going to give you a play-by-play of what went on in Megaton, but let’s just say I must be retarded because I got stuck pretty early on and didn’t know what to do, HA! I eventually figured out what I needed to do and left the town to head towards more dangerous territory in search of my father.
My search lead me to the first actually dangerous place I had encountered so far, a subway. I barely made it through the subway alive. I think one of my arms was damn near blown off due to a fatal error on my part. Here’s a little hint, when you use a computer to turn some gas on, make sure you’re not standing right next to the chain door when you shoot into the gas filled room. Luckily when I got to the other side I was able to quick travel back to Megatron to heal up and rest. Quick travel (if that’s what it’s called) is a great feature that allows you to move instantly between places you’ve already discovered on the map. It would take forever to walk back and forth from certain places so this is a great addition to the game. And that is where I stopped for the evening.
Yep, just that little bit of the game took me 3 hours to complete. There were a lot of people in Megaton to talk to and I hit that little snag trying to figure something out early in the game, so that didn’t help speed things up. But no worries, I had a great time just running around exploring the world and seeing what there is to see in the wastelands. So my final verdict for this one is it’s a great game. If you’re a fan of action/adventure/RPG’s similar to Oblivion, with huge open worlds to explore then definitely check this one out. If you’re a fan of fast action-packed first persons shooters, you might want to wait until the price drops or you can find a used copy. Some of the trailer videos make it out to be sort of a run-and-gun RPG when it’s not. There is a lot of talking and a lot of story involved, so if you’re bored by that sort of stuff, I would be careful about purchasing this one. Bottom line is the game looks and feels amazing and I would recommend that everyone at least give this one a rent.
Add Comment