Fallout 3

IntergalacticSpacePenguin wrote:While I am looking forward to this, I do have some concerns. The VATS based combat has an annoying camera and the realtime combat is entirely reliant on the same stats used in the turn based combat. Shooting several times square at an enemies chest, only to miss most times due to a low firearms skill, will be irritating to many of those who think it will play just like a fps.

Despite that pessimism, this could end up someting special on the PC with a good modding community behind it.

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:I saw a couple of previews of this (not knowing anything about the game), and it looked really bland to me, environments looked a bit repetitive and the game looked a touch formulaic. Now i'm aware what a big title it is supposed to be i will keep an eye on reviews / feedback, but it's certainly not a "must buy" for me at the moment.

Dante wrote:

kazanova_Frankenstein wrote:I saw a couple of previews of this (not knowing anything about the game), and it looked really bland to me, environments looked a bit repetitive and the game looked a touch formulaic. Now i'm aware what a big title it is supposed to be i will keep an eye on reviews / feedback, but it's certainly not a "must buy" for me at the moment.

Apparantly, it's because they don't wanna show much past the opening part of the game, hence why it looks the same - A lot of the world is being kept out of show as to not give too much away

Without doubt, the best part of Games Convention so far was the hour I spent playing Fallout 3. I sat down with the PC version of the game for a few minutes and then spent the rest of my time exploring the burnt cinders of DC on 360. Nothing exudes confidence in a game like letting the press jump straight into the experience without a hand to guide them or direct the action. Clearly Bethesda thinks they have a winner.

In open world titles I'm not the type of person to tackle the main quest straight off. Instead I wander off the path and explore the nooks and crannies of the world before I deal with larger problems. After exiting the vault in Fallout I ignored the nearest town and instead headed toward a Raider enclave to bust some skulls and collect some loot. If you'd like to read about the main quest we've previously spent plenty of time in Megaton and you can read our impressions here.

My travels took me to Springdale Elementary School, a dilapidated but standing structure filled with enemies. It was here that I got my feet wet with the Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System (VATS) system for the first time, and thoroughly enjoyed the results.

As soon as a player leaves the vault he's very quickly treated to a level-up where points are allotted towards skills and perks. Since I had a limited time with the game I decided to put all of my assets towards small guns and medicine. I was already in possession of a pistol and my early encounter with a Raider indicated that I'd need the most out of my stimpacks. I was also able to choose one perk, and went with Gun Nut, which also boosted my small guns and repair skills by 5.

Upon entering the school I was struck by just how many objects there are to pick up, search, or carry around pointlessly. As an obsessive collector in other RPGs I had to stop myself from loading up on burnt books, bottles, and other trash that would surely not come in handy down the road.

Early in combat I toyed with gunplay outside of the VATS system. Fallout allows players to jump to a third-person perspective that makes melee combat much easier, but for aiming with a pistol or rifle the first-person view is key. There is also a left trigger zoom on the Xbox 360 version that allows for more specific aiming. Considering the depth of your character's skills, armor, and weapon set, Fallout 3 plays like an incredibly familiar first-person shooter if you choose that approach. However, the targeting system is what makes the game shine. It allows the user to freeze the action and queue specifically targeted attacks.

Take my first encounter using VATS, for example. Having infiltrated the top floor of Springdale Elementary, I managed to obtain grenades and a good amount of ammo for my pistol. After entering one of the particularly dark halls I was confronted by a Raider with a growling dog at his side. Having hot-keyed my grenades to the D-pad I tapped the up button to equip them and then hit the right bumper to freeze the action. I targeted the dog and jumped back into the action. My accuracy was not perfect and the blast only injured the dog, but his owner was transformed into a sticky red vapor in a very stylish slow motion sequence.

As the dog charged forward and leapt for my throat I activated VATS once again and queued up a melee attack with my fists. I connected with the animal in mid-air and watched as I pounded his in his head for the kill. Having specific targeting options for melee attacks isn't just useful but it's a great deal of fun to watch if you can handle the gore.

After cleansing the school I wandered off towards Big Town. The struggling community consisted of dilapidated houses that were fortified with barbed wire and sandbags to form a sort of wall. The remaining citizens could be found milling about inside, with one sorry-looking guard standing at the only entrance, a makeshift suspension bridge.

I visited the medic station and, upon inspecting an ailing patient, I was given the option to heal or kill him. Seeing as my medic skills were too low to be of any use I chose to "put him out of his misery" by opening an artery. My karma was penalized and the game called me a bastard. Oh, well. Moving on.

Outside the doctor's quarters I ran into a man named Flash who was eager to brag about the amazing gun he was carrying. He also informed me that Big Town is constantly raided by Slavers and Super Mutants and that the former had just taken a few people hostage in German Town. I picked up the quest Big Trouble in Big Town when I offered to help out with the hostage crisis and had German Town added to my map.

Heading toward the waypoint I accessed my Pip Boy to get an overhead view of the terrain and see how long the walk would take. I only had to kill a few Raiders under a glowing moon before arriving at the German Town police station where I really got to put VATS to the test.

In my previous encounter I had dispatched of my enemies quickly without running out of the necessary action points required to queue up more attacks. The Super Mutants guarding the police station were a completely different story. I was able to land a few shots with my new rifle before one of the mutants barreled toward me to lay on some damaging blows. I had to change my grenade hot key to stimpacks and took to running away instead of charging forward. Unfortunately it was here that my time with the game ended, though I could've easily spent the rest of the afternoon entranced by Bethesda's latest.

So far the only apparent differences between the two games, besides the controls are that the PC version is slightly superior in the graphics department. Both versions were running well and suffered from none of the hang-ups that usually bog down unfinished games. You can be sure we'll have more on this game in coming months.

Although we've seen Fallout 3 quite a few times in recent months, the development team is still remarkably open when it comes to letting us see more. They don't shy away from letting us explore the open-world game in any way we like, which is why we glean even more information every time we sit down to play it. With the news that the full game will ship on October 28, we went to see the game in its almost-final state to find out more.

If you haven't read our previous coverage of the game, then make sure you head over to our previews section to get a bit of a background on its story. Our demo started with us once again exiting the bunker that our character had called home for his entire life, only this time we headed in a completely new direction and tried adding different skills.

On the advice of the Bethesda spokesperson watching over our soldier, we headed down to a small house to the left of the bunker and opened the door. Inside was a woman who was an ex-prostitute, and who was now unfortunately addicted to drugs. She asked if we were here to collect some money on behalf of her pimp, and given that we'd upgraded our persuasion skill at the beginning of the demo, we decided to say yes. She handed over some credits, and to continue on our dark side, we inquired about whether she was still working as a "lady of the night." She declined and said that part of her life was over. (It had seemingly been replaced with her addiction to hard drugs.) Just to see what happened next, we shot at her, and though she put up a brief fight, we eventually managed to kill her, although we lost some karma as a result. Actually, the above makes us sound pretty cruel, but who knows--maybe Leipzig's just beginning to take its toll.

We encountered some new enemies after leaving the house: huge insects such as the bloatfly, as well as new armoured human characters called raiders. We used the VATS system (see previous coverage) to take out most of the enemies that we came across, and then played around with stealing more of the things that were left behind. One of the raiders was wearing a hockey mask for protection, and we were able to remove it from the dead body and wear it ourselves. You can press the left bumper to switch to a third-person view, and you can then use the right analog stick to tilt around your character to check out the view from the front.

After making it through the Meresti Trainyard and its abandoned train wrecks, we came across the outskirts of a small settlement. The problem was that it was protected, and we were immediately shot at by a sniper upon entering. We spun around and tried to use the VATS system to hone in on the sniper, but we couldn't see them, and they'd soon incapacitated us via our arms and legs. When we reloaded the game, we decided to head back and check out the school that was not too far from the starting bunker. The building had been torn apart, but a number of books and chalkboards remained complete, with writing from children and teachers. Underneath the school, a small dungeon with a number of raiders awaited, and we were able to pick up a sawed-off shotgun as a reward for heading inside.

We love that we keep finding so much to explore in Fallout 3, but each visit to its postapocalyptic landscape is never long enough. Luckily the full game is out on October 28, so we only have a little longer than two months to wait to start exploring every nook and cranny.

consolegaming wrote:I have got a feeling that the setting wont be as immersive as oblvions mainly because stuff like riding on a horse and the whole medievil theme was just so interesting and fallout 3 in comparison will be too futuristic.

I hope that the land has loads of densely packed cities and various forms of transport, i have tried to stay away from news as i want to go into this cold turkey. In many ways oblivion was such an experience for me because i did not know much about it until around the ps3 release and i was astonished at the imagination and sheer scale and detail of the game!