Bethesda makes big games. It's kinda their thing. They are most famous for working on the Elder Scrolls series and making the recent "Oblivion" which would be the fourth title in that franchise. In 2008 they released a game, slightly similar in game style, called "Fallout 3." The first 2 games in the Fallout series were released in the late 90's by a different developer, and thus it should be noted that Fallout 3 has some pretty drastic departures from those two originals.
I am, by no means, a diverse gamer. Well, at least when it comes to specific platforms. You see, I like to picture myself as the type of gamer that will try anything, from the bloody Madworld, to the cute Harvest Moon Tree of Tranquility, to the sexually questionable Japanese sim date game, Duel Love. My only rule? It has just got to be on a Nintendo console. As many of you know, I recently purchased a PS3, and you can find reviews for a number of games on said console here on this very blog! This purchase is, for better or worse, opening up to many new different titles that I may have never tried previously. Fallout 3 is one of those titles. As the game takes place in a massive, and I mean MASSIVE open world, the Wii and its small memory and power capabilities, simply can not handle it. A game of such magnitude that allows such freedom has always interested me since I watched my brother play through Oblivion on his XBox 360. I simply couldn't bring myself to touch one of those 360 controllers... With the purchase of my Ps3, I was finally able to play such a large game. And thus, my 90+ hours with Fallout began.
Fallout 3 takes place in post nuclear war Washing D.C. which now sports the name, "The Capital Wasteland." The player assumes the role of a "Vault Dweller." Vaults were installed in mountain sides and underground by "Vault-Tec" to house residents from the nuclear fallout. They were built to withstand whatever bombs may be dropped so as to preserve humanity. Your character lives in Vault 101, in after an hour or so of game play, escapes into the Wasteland in search of his father. From the moment you step foot outside, you have total freedom to do whatever you would like. The game presents to you a plethora of "quests" that, upon completion, reward you with experience, weapons, armor, etc. These quests, however, can be completed at your own pace, and are even discovered at your own pace. Chances are, while playing Fallout, you will most likely over look an NPC or even kill someone that is vital in giving you a quest. That is the point of the game though. Total freedom, and everyones experience is different.
Following that trend, the game boasts a "karma" system that "rewards" players for doing good or bad things. For example, pick the lock to a friends safe and you will earn yourself negative karma. Save a captive from a Super Mutant, one of the games many enemies, and earm yourself some good karma. Your karma determines what kind of quest and companions you will be able to pick up as the game goes on, as well as interactions with certain NPC's.
The story ( a set of quests that make up a "main story") is average at best. Simple story telling at its finest. Than again, in a game like Fallout, most players are not seeking a beautifully crafted novel, but more of an experience. That experience is definitely delivered, with hundreds of characters to meet along the main quests and side quests, many with fun and humorous personalities. Anyone meet that robot that thought he was one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence? He was fantastic. The downside to all these characters though, is 
that Bethesda took the liberty in hiring roughly 20 voice actors to play the entire cast. Whats worse is these voice actors did not even attempt to alter their voices between characters. You can be talking to the mayor of one town, turn around, and talk to a random citizen, and they sound exactly the same! This really pulls a player of the game, and lessens the experience tremendously. I understand that hiring more actors would be far to expensive for a game of this size, but the actors could have put some effort into altering their voices. On that note, Bethesda could have altered the voices in post production, by simply changing pitch and volume. Anything would have been better than what they did.
Not only were the voices bad, but, on par with all other Bethesda games, the character models were awful. There is nothing more to say on that matter. Everyone was friggin ugly, and they moved like dolls, or clay models, or something...
As mentioned earlier, Fallout 3's main attraction is the exploration value, and thus it supports a huge map to explore. This is where the game shines. The environment is beautiful (for being a war ravaged wasteland) and everything is, for the most part, rendered quite spectacularly when you consider the scale of it all. Not only this, but when making a world as large as this, I would imagine making it feel "real" and "natural" would be quite difficult, but Fallout pulls it off. The texture of the land, the rocks, the trees, everything, is placed in such a way, that the world becomes very believable and immersive. making encounters with the wastelands many creatures and villains such as raiders feel real, and sometimes scary. The game really pulls you into its world, and it is hard to leave! Kudos here Bethesda.
The game also supports 5 downloadable add ons, each giving the chance to play about 5 more hours or more of game play. I ended up downloading all 5 of these and can thus add them on to this review! The DLC was a neat idea, and could have even worked well if they were more polished. Point Lookout allows the player to explore a decently large segment of Maryland which resembles a swamp. It is a very creepy add on with a lot of scares and lots of exploring. Mothership Zeta allows the player to be captured by an alien spaceship, and pits him/her against a horde of aliens as they try to escape and return to the Wasteland. This add on is quite humorous and is a deliberate and huge departure from the normal game play. The final battle of this DLC, well, I wont ruin it, but let me tell you, it was probably one of my favorite gaming moments this year. Hilarious. The Pitt was one of my favorites. The player travels to the remains of Pittsburgh to free some slaves. There is a lot of exploring in this add on as well, which is probably my main reason for liking it so much. Operation Anchorage was odd. The player uses a simulation machine to emulate the events that took place in Alaska leading up to the war that would eventually devastate the world. This DLC is much more mission based than the others, with little to no room for exploration. Lastly, Broken Steel is the biggest change in the DLC packs. Instead giving the player more to do in a new location, it's primary purpose is to raise the level cap from 20 to 30, allowing for more perks to be chosen, and adds new enemies and a few new quests.
My biggest problems with these DLC's is the fact that they simple are not done. They glitch, freeze, drop frame rate, and more constantly. From what I can tell, this problem occurs on XBox and PS3, as well as PC, though the latter experiances much less problems than the former two. A small bit of technical issues is to be expected, but some of these add ons were rendered almost unplayable at times. Very very frusterating.
This leads me to my main gripe with Fallout 3 as a whole. It is not only the DLC (though it was hit the worst) but the entire game that is buggy. The game freezes fairly regularly, forcing you to reset your system or reload a save. Either way, you can lose hours of game progress this way, and it is enough to make a player give up on the game all together. Other issues involve 
completing quests. Sometimes, if the player does something the game did not quite predict of understand, a quest can be rendered non-completable, despite the fact that you still did, in fact, complete the quest. This is also very annoying, especially when you are trying to 100% the game. If you ignore the fact that rebooting your console every couple hours is extremley annoying, the biggest problem with these glitches is that, you never know what is a glitch and what isn't. For example, when playing a polished game such as, say, Resident Evil 4, when something "messes up" or you die and can not figure out why, you can assume that it was your fault, and not the games. With this knowledge, you can continue playing the game and try again, usually succeeding this second time, or maybe a few tries after that. In Fallout this is not the case. When it appears the game is messing up, or you keep failing in a certain area, or you cannot complete a quest, you cant just assume that you messed up as a player and continue searching for the right answer. Instead, you find yourself wondering if the game robbed you. If the game DID rob you, it would be a shame to waste hours looking for a solution in game that does not exist. Because of this, you look up a guide online (an act that I absolutely despise, yet found myself doing on multiple occasions during this game) to see if you or the game messed up. What is even worse is when you find out that it was not in fact the game that messed up, but you, and now you spoiled a portion of the mission by looking the solution up online. Understand that these glitches are MUCH more than just annoyances, they make players question the game, and thus un-immerse themselves from the experience. This lessens the entire experience of the game immensely and essentially does not allow the player to play the game the way it was intended.
I also did not like that upon completing the main quest, the game ends, and you can NOT continue exploring. In an open ended game such as this, the player should be allowed to play indefinitely. Granted, with the Broken Steel add on, the player CAN continue, however, one should not have to pay an additional 10 dollars just to continue playing a game, it feels kinda shady to me.
This is one of the longest reviews I have written, and to be honest, I have only said about half of what I really want to say. For example, I have not even mentioned the very neat cinematic combat style presented, called V.A.T.S. In fact, I may edit and add onto this review as time goes
on. Though honestly, I am so ready to be rid of Fallout that I kind of just want to post this, and never return again! Fallout 3 presents the idea of a type of game that would be incredible fun. However, this game, to put it simply, is just not complete. It feels as if it was released before it should have been. It would not be crazy to assume that Bethesda got tired of working on such a massive product and essentially said, "Screw it, release what we got." The product is a game that showcases game play that makes the player feel empowered and excited. It gives a feeling of unlimited game play and fun. That feeling is watered down, though, by the constant crashes and bugs the game is littered with. If a little more time was put into this game, it could have potentially been one of my all time favorites. I love the exploration, the freedom, everything really, about this game. It is so sad that a video game with such amazing qualities is dragged down not by its game play, like most things are, but by issues with the software itself. A huge shame really. A massive shame. Regardless, the type of game that was presented with Fallout appealed to me so much, that I continued to play through countless system reboots and reloads. I gritted my teeth and pushed through the bugs, resetting when I needed too. I can think of no other game on the planet (honestly) that I would have done this for, especially for the 90+ hours that I did it with this game.
Regardless, I did earn all the trophies possible in Fallout 3 and its expansions, and thus completed all the main quests, main side quests, and many of the unmarked quests. I also discovered most of the areas in the game, and found many of the Wastelands hidden treasures. I have not 100% completed the game, as that would be very difficult, and almost inmpossible. However, I have played through it very thoroughly, and feel confident reviewing it and giving it a score. And with that score, I wash my hands of this, my favorite, least favorite game of all time.
My final words are for those that dislike the score below. I would like to mention that I have a lot of respect for the developers of this game, as it was a massive project that must have taken countless hours to complete. However, no matter how impressive a games idea is, no matter how large it is, if a game is not polished, it should not be released. Just because we can think up such an amazing game, does not mean that we should release it to the public if in all honesty, we cannot deliver on our intent. None the less, I still gave the game a relatively high score (in my opinion) simply because of how impressive the games magnitude is. Like it or hate it, the score stands. A game should never be as faulty as this one was.
Fallout 3: 4.5/10
Extra note: I love the ideas behind this game so much, and some of the humor and various ideas were so ingenious. If they were to fix all the countless bugs with the game, a dream that will never be met, this game could merit as high as a 9, if not a 10. A real shame really. Odd though, despite giving it a "below average" score, I still look back fondly of my time spent in that Wasteland. I still had fun. What a strange game...
