Fallout 3 was a half-assed game. (CONTAINS UNHID SPOILERS)
Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 10:22 pm
I'm not sure why most critics gave rave reviews about it.
I've now played through the game twice, and all the time I spent playing that game, I want back at the end of my life.
On the technical side of things, everything is there for a great game:
*The engine used for the game is excellent (it's basically an updated Elder Scrolls IV engine)
*The gibbing, though unrealistic, is entertainingly fantastic
*There is nothing wrong with the physics engine in the game - i.e, I did not encounter bodies/objects clipping through each other at some point in the game, unless those objects were holstered weapons going through the bodies of another while not in combat
However, I think Bethesda have really done a half-assed job on Fallout 3. It could've been so much better.
I'm not some biased 12 year old who's like "OMG FALLOUT 3 the SUX000RZ!!!1111one11!1", so I'll give my reasons.
N.B: These are just my opinions and don't necessarily make what I say true, so don't flame me if you don't agree (though in my years on this board, no-ones ever really been like that).
One: Fallout 3 is Oblivion with guns and even less variety.
For those of you who've played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion thoroughly, I'm sure you'd remember that you'd start with a piss-weak character, but all the skills like Athetics, Strength, Agility etc were easily upgradeable with skill points every time you levelled up, and you only got to select a certain amount of skills at the start of the game right after you built your character and witnessed the death of King Septim.
Oblivion had a plethora of weapons, and allowed you to bestow magical powers on them with the help of the Sigil Stones you find in the several plains of Oblivion. Most of the later weapons were very decent indeed even without upgrades. And the great thing about them was that they seemed to last forever. Though when they did finally break, it only takes a few levels of upgrading the correct according skill to be able to repair them, with or without magic.
At the start of Fallout 3 you start off as a piss-weak character, but skill points such as Strength and Agility aren't upgradeable, yet in liu of this you get to add to the seemingly non-stop list of character skills such as Speech, the ability to do more damage with small, big, or energy weapons, lockpicking etc, less than half of these skills of which you never actually find yourself using or taking effect.
The arsenal of Fallout 3 was both very limited and uninspired. Weapons consist of around 2 types of pistols, shotguns, SMGs, assault rifles and only one type of each big weapon such as a rocket launcher, a minigun and a short-range mini-nuke launcher dubbed "The Fat Man". As for the energy weapons, all of them are next to completely useless in terms of damage, and I found that ammo for them is in rather short supply in comparison to "real" guns.
Weapons in Fallout 3 have the durability of a Taiwanese-manufactured imitation Spider-Man figurine. You find yourself constantly having to pay shitloads of bottle caps to repair them after, say, every 3 gun battles because your character, even after upgrading his/her accuracy all this time, still can't hit a fat man in a pie shop. By the time you can actually repair these fragile pieces of crap yourself, you find yourself having done half the side-quests and at the very last bit of the game, about to punch in the code for Project Purity.
The armor you recieved in Oblivion with magical powers actually did something noticeable to your character, because whenever you took the armor off, you found yourself extremely vulnerable to anything and everything. There were several types of armor and garments, and not one of them looked identical and each did something different, or did something the same, but with a much increased effect on one of your skills or abilities.
Fallout 3, however, had very little items of armor or garments, and apart from the defense upgrades on them, did jack shit to your actual abilities such as strength and agility. They claim to have done so, but the change was very minor; borderline unnoticeable.
Two: There is seriously not "80 solid hours of gameplay" in Fallout 3.
Though Bethesda and reviewers claim this, there is really not 80 hours of gameplay in here.
Well, technically it can be 80 solid hours... only if you decide to walk everywhere instead of fast-travelling. But really, how much fun is that? 20 hours of actual quests and 60 hours of walking from one fucking place to another across a baron wasteland that looks exactly the same, mile after mile? Can you honestly be bothered? I want a show of people who have played Fallout 3 who used fast-travel everywhere. But who didn't? Hell, I did it shamelessly. Purely because, once again, I do not want to hold down the W key for hours on end while I watch my character runs ever-so-slowly from one side of the huge, huge map to the other.
Three: All four endings were anti-climactic, thus making the game even worse.
In fear of giving away more spoilers to the people who haven't played Fallout 3 all the way through or even at all, I'm just going to leave the people who have played it to ponder. All four are half-assed, unoriginal and predictable.
Fallout 3 was quite possibly the hugest disappointment of a game that had recieved so much hype.
I've now played through the game twice, and all the time I spent playing that game, I want back at the end of my life.
On the technical side of things, everything is there for a great game:
*The engine used for the game is excellent (it's basically an updated Elder Scrolls IV engine)
*The gibbing, though unrealistic, is entertainingly fantastic
*There is nothing wrong with the physics engine in the game - i.e, I did not encounter bodies/objects clipping through each other at some point in the game, unless those objects were holstered weapons going through the bodies of another while not in combat
However, I think Bethesda have really done a half-assed job on Fallout 3. It could've been so much better.
I'm not some biased 12 year old who's like "OMG FALLOUT 3 the SUX000RZ!!!1111one11!1", so I'll give my reasons.
N.B: These are just my opinions and don't necessarily make what I say true, so don't flame me if you don't agree (though in my years on this board, no-ones ever really been like that).
One: Fallout 3 is Oblivion with guns and even less variety.
For those of you who've played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion thoroughly, I'm sure you'd remember that you'd start with a piss-weak character, but all the skills like Athetics, Strength, Agility etc were easily upgradeable with skill points every time you levelled up, and you only got to select a certain amount of skills at the start of the game right after you built your character and witnessed the death of King Septim.
Oblivion had a plethora of weapons, and allowed you to bestow magical powers on them with the help of the Sigil Stones you find in the several plains of Oblivion. Most of the later weapons were very decent indeed even without upgrades. And the great thing about them was that they seemed to last forever. Though when they did finally break, it only takes a few levels of upgrading the correct according skill to be able to repair them, with or without magic.
At the start of Fallout 3 you start off as a piss-weak character, but skill points such as Strength and Agility aren't upgradeable, yet in liu of this you get to add to the seemingly non-stop list of character skills such as Speech, the ability to do more damage with small, big, or energy weapons, lockpicking etc, less than half of these skills of which you never actually find yourself using or taking effect.
The arsenal of Fallout 3 was both very limited and uninspired. Weapons consist of around 2 types of pistols, shotguns, SMGs, assault rifles and only one type of each big weapon such as a rocket launcher, a minigun and a short-range mini-nuke launcher dubbed "The Fat Man". As for the energy weapons, all of them are next to completely useless in terms of damage, and I found that ammo for them is in rather short supply in comparison to "real" guns.
Weapons in Fallout 3 have the durability of a Taiwanese-manufactured imitation Spider-Man figurine. You find yourself constantly having to pay shitloads of bottle caps to repair them after, say, every 3 gun battles because your character, even after upgrading his/her accuracy all this time, still can't hit a fat man in a pie shop. By the time you can actually repair these fragile pieces of crap yourself, you find yourself having done half the side-quests and at the very last bit of the game, about to punch in the code for Project Purity.
The armor you recieved in Oblivion with magical powers actually did something noticeable to your character, because whenever you took the armor off, you found yourself extremely vulnerable to anything and everything. There were several types of armor and garments, and not one of them looked identical and each did something different, or did something the same, but with a much increased effect on one of your skills or abilities.
Fallout 3, however, had very little items of armor or garments, and apart from the defense upgrades on them, did jack shit to your actual abilities such as strength and agility. They claim to have done so, but the change was very minor; borderline unnoticeable.
Two: There is seriously not "80 solid hours of gameplay" in Fallout 3.
Though Bethesda and reviewers claim this, there is really not 80 hours of gameplay in here.
Well, technically it can be 80 solid hours... only if you decide to walk everywhere instead of fast-travelling. But really, how much fun is that? 20 hours of actual quests and 60 hours of walking from one fucking place to another across a baron wasteland that looks exactly the same, mile after mile? Can you honestly be bothered? I want a show of people who have played Fallout 3 who used fast-travel everywhere. But who didn't? Hell, I did it shamelessly. Purely because, once again, I do not want to hold down the W key for hours on end while I watch my character runs ever-so-slowly from one side of the huge, huge map to the other.
Three: All four endings were anti-climactic, thus making the game even worse.
In fear of giving away more spoilers to the people who haven't played Fallout 3 all the way through or even at all, I'm just going to leave the people who have played it to ponder. All four are half-assed, unoriginal and predictable.
Fallout 3 was quite possibly the hugest disappointment of a game that had recieved so much hype.