I have been looking forward to playing Fallout 3, not least because it’s made by Bethesda - the makers of Oblivion, which I rated very highly. In many areas, Fallout 3 is more than I expected, but it also has its shortcomings.
To start, I’m going to try and work out a name for the genre. Fallout 3 is both a Role Playing Game, and a Shooter. Not a First Person Shooter, a First and Third Person Shooter. So maybe a F/TPRPGS? If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. After all, this game format is quite rare.
The first thing you tend to notice about Fallout 3 is how it relates to Oblivion, at least, you do if you’ve played Oblivion. Some of the character voices are familiar, the initial control format, in fact, even the cheat codes are mostly the same. I typed in a complicated cheat to get gold in Oblivion, and surprisingly it’s exactly the same in F3!
This “borrowing” of Oblivion’s game system does, thankfully, include the great graphics we’re used to. The landscapes are all very pretty in a sort of post-nuclear way, and if you can run high quality, it looks a bit sharper than Oblivion, which I always felt was a problem.
Of course, Fallout 3 and Oblivion are completely separate games. Fallout 3 has a completely different combat system. Not only are guns around, there is a system called V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targetting System). This allows the player to pause time and select different parts of an enemy’s body based on percentage chances to hit. Attacks can be queued up, but it costs Action Points (AP). This is very useful, as can be imagined, and is convenient for finding who’s shooting you – look in a direction, activate VATS and it’ll find the enemy straight away. Of course, you can still fight without it, but it makes life harder.
There is one vital problem with Fallout 3 that doesn’t apply to Oblivion, something I’d like to mention. There isn’t enough ammo. I was forever scrounging around looking for ammo, until I thought I had plenty. Then, when I got into a fight, my assault rifle lasted for about two enemies, and I had to rely on a sawn off shotgun to take out a couple more, leaving me with my pathetic laser pistol. Considering almost all enemies have some ranged attack or other, this tends to leave you a little unprotected – you can’t just run after a Super Mutant wielding a minigun, while you have “Spiked Knuckles” equipped.
What I was interested to see was a crippling system. You can maintain fire on a specific limb of an opponent to render it useless to them. Sadly, this appears to have very little affect. Sure, if you shoot their weapon it knocks it out of their hands…. for a few seconds. Shooting their legs makes them limp, but it doesn’t slow them enough to make much difference. And something I found amusing – you can cripple a normal human’s head and it’ll loll around slightly, but won’t affect their aim much.
Fallout 3 is at heart a fun game, and it has some interesting ideas (such as the Rock-It Launcher, which fires miscellaneous junk). Sadly it is flawed by the lack of ammo and the overpowering of enemies. I liked this game, but it’s not as good as it could be. However, it still makes a good bridge between FPS and RPG, so it will be popular.
Oh, and the playing of 1940s music was very classy.
Nometet.com says: 
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+Lot like Oblivion
+Improved graphics from Oblivion
+Pretty post-nuclear landscapes
+Guns
-Not enough ammo
-Enemies overpowered
-Bit of a slog in places
PC Version reviewed.
