cowfish

The “one in, one out” policy I am currently operating on my games shelf (a rule that I will break next week with my purchase of Rock Band 2, although I am justifying that by claiming that Rock Band is not just a game but a lifestyle choice…) was activated a couple of weeks back when I traded in the quite excellent Dead Space for one of the most eagerly awaited games of recent memory, amongst gamers of my vintage at least, Fallout 3. The original was one of the first games I played through to completion, even if it did take me almost a year to get into it enough to actually play it. The second was duly purchased, but I couldn’t get into it and it’s still sitting pretty much unplayed somewhere in my flat. The announcement of the third in the series filled me with worry – the original studio had disbanded, much to the dismay of Fallout fans, and the project was taken on by Bethesda, purveyors of Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion, games that annoyed me enough that I gave up on them faster than Force Unleashed. Suffice it to say, my worries and doubts were all for nought – Fallout 3 is an excellent game.

I got home at about midday after buying the game, made myself some lunch and sat down to have a quick play. For the first hour or so I grumbled a bit about a few annoyances but then all of a sudden it was dark outside, my hands had seized up due to the cold, as the heating had gone off, and I needed to visit the bathroom in a somewhat urgent manner. It was 7:30pm – about 7 hours of play without noticing. Despite its many flaws, which I will enumerate shortly in my usual fashion, it is one of the most immersive and addictive games I have played in years.

The scenario is similar to before: The world is in ruins after a series of cataclysmic nuclear exchanges. However, humanity lives on both in the ruins and in hermetically sealed vaults, filled as the end of the world was chimed. You, in this iteration, are a citizen of Vault 101, known for never having opened its doors since their sealing, but a series of events forces you out into the outside world – the Capital Wasteland, the ruined remains of Washington DC, and from here the adventures begin…

As with the previous iterations there is a main quest, but as you interact with the rich world of the wasteland numerous other side quests appear, varying in difficulty and length, as well as the environment itself throwing at you monsters to kill and locations to explore. The map is large with at least a hundred named locations to find (with a ‘Find 100 locations’  XBox achievementto tempt your inner explorer) and there are hours of entertainment to be found in simply wandering.

Graphically it is quite beautiful, with the Capital Wasteland rendered in glorious detail as day turns to night and shadows move across the land. The centre of the city is complete with the landmark buildings, in the expected states of disrepair, and the out of town wastes are put together in an intelligent manner with hills and the dried up remains of the Potomac providing scenic views as you search for cover to avoid rampaging super mutants. There are towns on decaying freeway bridges, settlements in underground stations, the remains of satellite uplink stations pointing their dead dishes towards the sky, and countryside dotted with the remains of civilisation ready to be explored.

It’s not without its problems, immediately noticeable in the ill-advised third person view. The default view is that of the FPS – over the gun, through the eyes of the hero. However, with a tap of the left shoulder button you zoom through the back of your head and see yourself from above and behind. At this point realism disappears at anything over a slow walk (the slow walk used in the gameplay videos put out as trailers), as with any greater speed the connection of foot and ground is broken and you skate across town and country in a rather immersion breaking fashion. The first person view is not without its problems, with its totally smooth movement feeling especially strange after Isaac Clarke’s loping run in Dead Space. However, as long as you don’t use the third person mode, easier said than done with its annoying button assignment, you can get used to the motion in FPS mode and the game doesn’t suffer too much.

Despite its various FPS trappings, this is at heart an RPG. Taking its lead from the engines behind Morrowind and Oblivion, it combines the first person viewpoint and realtime attacks with a stats based approach to hits and damage. You have the traditional base traits, customisable with your appearance during the “birth and childhood” intro to the game, along with a pile of skills which can be specialised as you level up as you play. On top of those you receive an additional “perk” at each levelling, giving you immediate stat gains and special effects (from animals not attacking you, to experience points clocking up faster, to a mysterious trenchcoated stranger sometimes appearing in a fight and gunning down your opponent with his inexhaustable .44 magnum). Experience points are earned by completing quests, killing enemies and successful skill usage (from picking locks to disarming mines and coercing people) and tick up at a good rate as you progress through the missions.

The key to the combination of FPS and RPG is VATS (acronyms rule!) – The Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System. While you can fire your weapons at will in true FPS fashion, you can also drop into an “action point” governed mode in which you can use up those action points by selecting areas of your target to attack, each with a corresponding percentage likelihood to hit, and queuing up attacks. On clicking the ‘go’ button the action drops into a cinematic camera mode showing the outcome of your attacks, as well as any counter attacks, occasionally (and more frequently as the game goes on) leading to slow motion cataclysmic damage to the various extremities of your target and, sometimes, yourself. Action points tick up slowly when you are outside of VATS, whether you are running around avoiding your enemies or finishing them off. VATS was often quoted as a divisive factor in previews by fans of Bethesda’s games and the original games in this series both, but I reckon it works well in practise, combining the old combat system with the new gaming perspective at the same time as bringing in the now almost obligatory cinematic scenes. It takes some getting used to, with shots in FPS mode often not hitting despite being seemingly on target due to the stats based targeting operating under the covers, and VATS mode sometimes indicating you can hit a target when your weapon is hidden behind cover, but once you are used to it it becomes an integral part of the way you play, especially as later perks make it a continually more powerful tool.

The missions are at the core of what makes the game, with the main story line driving you along and side missions popping up as welcome distractions from the rising intensity of the plot. It’s not the most surprising of plots, treading the path of many a post-apocalyptic story and mining the last two games quite extensively, but it rumbles along gaining speed and dragging you along with it. It does helpfully let you out from time to time to explore the world and work on the other missions dotted around and this is the main strength of the game. The large map hides towns, villages and caravans as well as Vaults and military bases, all full of booty, as well as bad guys, monsters and allies. Sometimes you’ll crest a hill only to see the wasteland stretching away into the distance, with ruined towers and buildings all around, sometimes you’ll turn a corner into a town and see a scripted set piece setting up a mission playing out in front of you, sometimes you’ll just find a bunch of skeletons and debris that hint at what was happening before the apocalypse. Not all of the missions are excellent, with a couple of annoying fetch and carry ones thrown in for good measure, but when they are good they are really good. From the surreal high point of Tranquility Lane (a rather good chunk of science fiction) to the tedious low point of The Waters of Life (a boring, overly extended fetch and carry mission), they keep you eager to finish (and get the loot and achievement attached to the succesful completion of each) and seek out the next one.

They are not without their problems though, with my completing at least one mission before having properly starting it (I accidentally found the mission completion location and finished it without being assigned it) and the flexibility in the number ways of finishing missions, with most offering at least one way to finish both with and without the murder of innocents, does sometimes lead to you accidentally finishing a mission in a different way to the one you were aiming to by accidentally performing a mission finishing action (be it paying someone off or taking their head off with a shotgun).

I’ve now played through the main storyline and there is one further problem – due to the ability to wander around and level up at your own speed, as well as dipping into the story when you feel like it, I’d hit the level cap by the time I’d hit the end of the game. Tooled up with the best armour and weapons in the game the cataclysmic final mission was a bit of a stroll, taking minimal effort or tactical thought. On top of that, when the final mission is completed (in, as usual, one of a variety of fashions) the game simply ends. You get the traditional cut scene (stuck together from a variety of different potential pieces, based on the choices you made during the game) and some credits and are then dropped back to the title screen ready to start again. Luckily I had a save game not too far back from the end and have now returned to the wastelands to explore and finish the rest of the game, but the abrupt end (especially after the lack of challenge) did grate somewhat.

The mission system along with my issues with the graphics are just minor annoyances. The game is also rather buggy on my XBox (with reports suggesting that it’s the same on PC and PS3 as well), with numerous occurrences of monsters and people being stuck in walls and rocks, and it also suffers occasionally from horrendous slow down, sometimes lasting for several juddering minutes, although that has yet to interrupt a battle. There are numerous random graphical glitches, but they hit their peak for me when I was exploring the wasteland and saw the effect in the video below:

Displaying region bounding boxes and slowing down massively is not fun. Luckily I had a large super mutant following me around as a body guard and he gunned down the radscorpions that decided to try and eat me just as this hit, but it does seem that the game might have benefited from a bit more QA (as is so often the case). The PC has a first patch out already and I’ve heard tales of both and XBox and PS3 one going through the various approval processes at the moment.

Also, the controls are occasionally inconsistent, with X sometimes being a confirm button and sometimes being a cancel button, the shoulder buttons paging in some inventory views but not others and a general confusion of function on occasion. The interface is sometimes clunky, with no immediate cancel button in dialogue, and occasional unexpected losses of control of your character for “especially important” plot points but not for others. However, you don’t hit the graphical glitches all that often and the others fade to being a background niggle, as the rest of the game delivers the experience in such a manner that a few mere annoyances barely chip away at it.

With the game now “over” it’s quite scary that I am continuing to play as much as I am. I’ve been advising easily addicted acquaintances to avoid buying the game for now, having seen its dangerous effects on my sleeping patterns (Leading to my standing statement of “There is no sleep, only Fallout” when people ask me why I am looking tired). I suspectthat my sustained playing sessions have heavily contributed to my current inability to walk (maybe due to a slipped disc or bad posture induced sciatica – wikipedia is not a friend to hypochondria), and I’ve seen several cow-orkers dragged into its tempting maw. It’s a good game mechanic made into a great game by the story and missions, but pulled back from the brink by a few QA issues and some dodgy interface decisions. However, when I close my eyes all I see is the ruin of the Washington Monument lit by the ignition flame of a rocket leaping from the arms of a gnarled super mutant. I think that means I’m addicted.

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