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Lately I’ve heard a debate of which is a better game. Is Fallout 3 better than Far Cry 2 or vice versa? Simply stated, Fallout 3 is the better, more solid game.
Hail to the chief
Nuclear war has broken out turning quite a bit of the world into a broken, irradiated, desolate wasteland. Part of the surviving population has figured out how to live and survive on whatever they can. The others live in underground vaults. You are one of the people who grew up in the vaults. One day your father leaves the vault, which means you have to leave the vault for your own survival. Right from the start, you’re gaining good or bad karma, which goes into one of the four endings. Karma is based off of things like whether or not you kill people at random, steal, help people, etc.
When you finally break out of Vault 101, you’re greeted with a beautifully rendered atomic wasteland that used to be Washington DC and its surrounding suburbs. Mutants and raiders wander the landscape, occasionally attacking each other. They mainly raid and kill people in certain towns like “Big Town” or “Arefu.” Also in each town, usually there is someone or just most of the townsfolk usually have problems that they need help dealing with.
The standard game is Oblivion with guns in Washington DC. Right from the start there are multiple story arcs that deal with situational contexts. While there is the main quest, there are multiple side quests. Even if you don’t go for the side quests there is a massive ruined world to explore. To give you an idea of different paths you can take, one of the side quest story arcs deals with one of the biggest towns in the game “Megaton.” You can either protect it from those who would otherwise destroy the town or you can join the ranks of those who want to destroy by detonating the bomb that “Megaton” is built around.
The radiation and addiction aspects of the game make you think about things in a more strategic way. This is because drug/alcohol addictions can drop stats while you’re going through withdrawal and radiation poisoning can lead to dropped stats or death itself. Use a drug or alcohol too much and you can get addicted. Eat most anything or drink something other than purified water and you’ll look at an increase in radiation because most things are irradiated. Being that there is a limited supply of purified water, you’d be looking at a rapid increase in radiation and an eventual agonizing radiation-related death.
Even with the amount of side quests the game has originally, the recent expansion Operation: Anchorage, adds to the story as you play through one of the most epic things in the game’s storyline. You play through the missions to liberate a less irradiated Alaska from the grips of Communist China. It also adds equipment that you might have seen but weren’t able to use in the original setting. Honestly though there really isn’t much to in the way of different modes but it follows Oblivion’s philosophy of drowning the player with options, so replayability is not hindered at all.
The VATS system works like a charm showing you your attempts to kill enemies in slow motion. If you do enough damage, or have done enough already, you do get quite a beautiful execution scenes that may have limbs or a head flying off your target. The one complaint that can be made is that it might slow down gameplay, but due to the artistry and how helpful it can be, it’s worth a slight slowing of gameplay.
Just a Little Irritating
There’s a lot of opportunities for big epic boss battles. Unfortunately they’re usually ignored. They still do have some pretty epic moments. It could’ve had bigger, better battles in the game. Game play was still challenging and fun but still there have to be some battles that give you a higher feeling of accomplishment while you’re playing.
While there is the quick travel, it can only work with places you discovered. Otherwise all travel is done on foot. The size of the world can be a bit of a strain on some people’s patience since it’s largely the same broken down, dying landscape with very few variations. Something like a car might be occasionally useful, since it would allow you to travel quicker than your average travel time while admiring the artistry of the landscape.
The difficulty for game can be unforgiving. With radiation and addictions kicking in, most things that haven’t killed you eventually will. This can lead to some pretty cheap deaths that will make you go through a mission or part of a mission that you thought you were done with multiple times. Then again, unlike Far Cry 2, saves and autosaves are closer making this issue a bit easier to deal with things. Then again, if you hit an autosave point while dying or near death, that can lead to problems anyway.
The endings, by far, are the worst things about the game. While it is marginally affected by your actions there’s about four endings that aren’t even that different from each other. They amount to saying either you’re a good virtuous people, a good person missing some virtues, a prick who happens to be necessary or just a flat out prick who doesn’t care who he steals from or kills. They really don’t show the overarching results of the good or evil that you did during the game. With Fallout and Fallout 2 they followed up with results of your actions. The endings are just kinda dull.
Prosperity or desolation?
The game is a great and worth the money. Sure, it does have its rough spots. However, this is a shining example of what a “next-gen” RPG and FPS should be. If you do get it from your standard retail store, the main game will set you back about $50-60.
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