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Video Game Review: Fallout 3
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Published: November 17, 2008
System: Microsoft Xbox 360
Also available on: Windows PC, Sony PlayStation 3
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Reviewer's rating: ****
ESRB rating: Mature
Game type: RPG
Kind of like: "Doom" with a ton of awesome role-playing
Best feature: Post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C., is a wonderfully terrible place.
Worst feature: It takes a while to get to the real game.
The bottom line: Bethesda Softworks has dropped the bomb with "Fallout 3."
This game is brilliant, an amazing combination of adventure and character interaction that will keep you busy for a long time.
Your character has survived a nuclear holocaust by living in Vault 101, an oppressive underground society that has cut itself off from the world.
The introduction to the game is your escape, and then you find yourself in a ruined Washingon, D.C., looking for your father and answers to your past.
The genius of this game is contained, at the very least, in the different ways you can play. If you like, you can just roam around as in a first-person shooter, fighting raiders, mutants and worse.
However, the wasteland is also filled with characters with whom you can interact. You can spend all sorts of time role-playing if you want to. For example, in one town, an evil man wants you to help him blow the place up. You can help him, tell the sheriff about him to see what happens or even end up killing him.
In combat, you can stay in first-person mode, or you can switch to a cool targeting mode where you select body parts to shoot at and queue your attacks as though the game were "Final Fantasy."
Character advancement is very detailed, with all sorts of skills you can learn that affect every aspect of the game -- even the conversations.
Games are rated on a scale of 0-4 stars.
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