Vault Dwellers Fallout 3 Review

I agreed with some of the things he said, but I still felt that Fallout 3 was worthy of being a Fallout game. The things that might detract from it being true Fallout would be the lack of an ability to get through the game with your Charisma skill, the heavy modernization of it all, the sucky ending, and the ease of access to energy weapons.

Sure, it has its problems, but we'd be lying if we said Fallout 1 & 2 didn't. I'm playing through Fallout 1 right now, and it agonizes me every time I go through Junktown and listen to people talk about Gizmo's vicegrip even though Ian killed both him and his bodyguard with a deadly machine gun burst. Or in Fallout 2, where the ending ALWAYS guilted me for the destruction of the Deathclaw tribe.

I disagreed with his view on the world being too 'amusement park'ish, as well. Fallout 1 has a 'city of the dead', a military base full of super-soldiers, a crazed cult that displays videos of their leader giving a sermon, and a secret underground tech lab. Fallout 2 had a Kung-Fu Battle scene, a bunch of people living on a boat (I was really hoping that Rivet City was going to be the same boat after I heard about it at the end of the "Them!" quest. But it wasn't), a crashed space shuttle with a crazed cult living INSIDE OF IT, a vault full of semi-intelligent super-beasts, a gambling town full of mobsters, and a city of albinos who live underground. I don't think it's too much for Fallout 3 to have a town built around an atom bomb, a little village of kids (though I really wanted to kill those fucks), and a town where two superhero wannabes battle eachother.

Things I truly hated though included what they did to Harold (maybe I wouldn't have minded, if the voice actor hadn't been fail. It's not just that it's not Harold. The guy put no effort into capturing his personality. It wasn't Harold, it was a grizzled tree with a southern accent), the lack of child-killing ability (I guess a patch will come out for that eventually, but Christ if not having the option wasn't annoying), and the Karma system (it truly is broken).

 

"I represent certain... interests"

No matter how many times I read this sentence, I still feel it's the most fucking retarded line of 2008.

 

Use of that phrase is merely an indicator of hack writing, which is what Fallout 3 has been accussed of by lots of people already.

I haven't played it yet, but from what I've seen and read I have reason to agree. Which is a damn shame because half of the reason to play FO1 and FO2 was because of the storyline and writing.

 

It looks more like a glorified free source fan-fic project. The problem is, from what I've heard, those fans of the series who like it, absolutely love it, and those fans who don't like it, absolutely hate it. But I'm comfortable with that. This is probably the most hyped up game I'll be heading into with the most neutral expectations. So if I play it and it blows me away, it's a nice surprize. But if it sucks ass, it's OK because I was kind of expecting it to and didn't get my hopes up.

 

Hey look! Your stance on gaming is my stance on women. :lol: Anyway, I intend to wait until the modding community has a chance to lay hands heavily into this, and chew the shit outta it with mods, before I begin to touch it. I'm wait 'til it's down in the $20-30 range before I"ll consider buying it.

 

Hey, the Fatman and the experimental MIRv makes it all worth it.

Just find that annoying character, go into VATS and then lay back and relax, while you are watching that mininuke go straight for the face.


Or find the town, launch 8 mini nukes up in the air at the same time with the experimental MIRv, and watch as you are laying down a carpet of bombs.
Works best with TGM activated

 

Or just shoot him twice in the head with VATS, it'll fall off.

Besides, the Fatman is far more annoying than any of the crappy characters...only the exploding cars are worse.

 

How can you say so?

It shoots mininukes, what is not to like with it?

 

Uh, mini nukes... :/

 

Can you blow up buildings? I think non-plot important building should be destructable.

 

No, you can not...and if you could, I doubt that the mini-nuke could do the job (seeing as the full-sized versions couldn't even knock over regular houses or even weaken them enough to completely fall over in 200 years).

 

Those were houses and buildings at specified distances from ground zero. It's true that they weren't completely wrecked, but even a small nuclear device either right next to or better yet, inside of a house would utterly evaporate it.
The buildings in Fallout 3 were probably left indestructible because there either wasn't enough time or it would've seemed superfluous along with the gibs of your enemies.

 

You mean vaporize it. They weren't already puddles of liquid waiting to change to a gaseous state of matter before the bomb detonates.

 

No...if you look carefully you can find ground zeros all over the place (which makes sense, really, since D.C. would almost certainly be hit several times over), many in spitting distance of houses in pretty amazing states of repair for ANY 200 year old building.

It's clear to me that Bethesda either simply has no idea how powerful a nuclear weapon actually is, or that they just didn't care (though I expect, actually, that it's a little of both).

 

I have trouble figuring out how a mini-nuke works. A split atom is still a split atom, no matter how small your device is. Yet, people seem to be able to change the sizes of their explosions ALL THE TIME on TV and in video games. What's up with that?

 

It's in the script.

 

Quoted for truth. The bomb that obliterated the White House caused very little actual damage. Even the fucking cellar is intact! In reality, such a blast as a nuclear one would pressurize earth down at least several hundred meters.

 

Ground zero isn't called as such for nuthin'.

 

True, but IRC a nuclear explosion is a chain reaction of more than one atom splitting. Otherwise, we could all smother nuclear warheads in our pockets ever time we hopped a plane somewhere. I don't know what the concentration is or what isotope of Uranium, Plutonium, or Hydrogen (Deuterium possibly) is used. Most likely it's several thousand to several million. So I think it is possible to regulate/manipulate the size of the blast. But what do I know, I wasn't part of the Manhattan Project or anything.