Fallout 3 Poll (the good and the bad. vote!)

[FrakAttack]

1) 5. My first "true love" of this generation.
2) Real time combat/VATS option on the fly. 70+ hours in and still finding new stuff. The good vs. evil choices really affect the outcome of events. Who wouldn't want to build a gun that shoots teddy bears?
3) No random events during fast travel. No crotch shots in VATS. I know it's set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but I'd like to see more color. Not enough whores.
4) Definitely a worthy successor. The naysayers can suck a flamin' Shishkebob.

[Sosage]

Keep my answers short and sweet...

1-5

2- The overall size and depth of the game is massive. It's all very cleverly executed.

3- Some slight bugs in the 360 version (occasional model weirdness, had one crash). Considering how large this project is, I'm surprised more stuff isn't broken. The LE was ridiculously huge (a lunch pale).

4- It's more Fallout than Bioshock was a System Shock spiritual successor...it's only missing an isometric viewpoint.

[Daria]

I can't see how anyone who played the originals could possibly complain that this version's pointlessly bloody.

[shopkins]

This would probably be the best 360 game I've played this year if it weren't for all the glitches I've been having. They're driving me crazy.

I woke up this morning and started playing only to saved some slaves and find something had gone badly, badly wrong and it started crashing every minute or so, sometimes almost immediately after the load. It would freeze and beep. It even crashed the main XBox 360 loading screen once, the only game I've ever seen do that. I tried a thing I saw on the Bethesda forums that's supposed to clear the cache. It crashed a couple more times after that but eventually fixed itself.

Edit: Forgot to add, I did think the problem was my 360, so I played Grand Theft Auto IV for a while to test it and it worked with no problems.

I've gotten stuck a few times on the terrain and had to reload.

It hung on loading a save once and made my Xbox 360 make a frightening grinding noise.

People keep disappearing. Two people have disappeared in Megaton. Nathan was gone when I first got there. He came back, but now Walter is gone in his place. There's no corpse, he just disappeared. Neither of these are quest breaking, but it did make me worried. The trader standing outside the supermarket is gone, too. I don't know if that's a glitch or not, but when I ran into another wandering trader I bought the schematics he was selling even though they left me broke and low on ammo because I wasn't sure if I would ever see him again.

The reason I'm online now was because I had to give up after a very frustrating experience. I walked out of the sewers into Georgetown and started fighting some Talon Mercs. I blew the head off one with a shotgun and then ran behind cover and saved. I got killed and had to reload and when I did I noticed my gun automatically fired. Now my gun wouldn't shoot and when I tried to use VATS it stuck on for about 30 seconds each time, with guys shooting me and me not firing a shot. I reloaded an earlier save but the same thing happened. I did the cache clearing trick again and I could use my weapons, but for some reason that made scrolling through the item menus slow.

This is all in just one day. For that reason I don't know what score to give it. With no glitches at all it would get a five but the glitches introduce an element of nervousness that makes it a little less fun for me.

Otherwise I love it. It's mixes some of the best stuff from Fallout and Oblivion and comes up with a tasty concoction. In fact, the combat in VATS is very much like playing a mage in Oblivion, especially if you play purely VATS to save ammo. You shoot and then backpedal or run until you meter refills and you can shoot again. But it also captures some of the Fallout feel. Mainly it's just less stiff and generic than Oblivion. The characters and their interactions are more lively and the quests are more interesting. The dialogue isn't as good as in the originals but it's better than in the Elder Scrolls series.

Dialogue options are pretty good. The trees aren't as complex and branching as I would like but I've noticed that in a lot of newer games. I've had several opportunities in the system to try for checks in charisma, speech, intelligence, science and even small guns. I'm playing as a goody goody and there have been a lot of goody goody things to do. The evil option seems like it would be less satisfying, in some places it seems like being a jerk to people while you do many of the same things the goody would do or just telling people to fend for themselves instead of helping them. But there are major exceptions, like your options for dealing with the atomic bomb in Megaton. I thought there was an interesting choice, also, when you come upon two groups fighting over a water cache. You can use speech to mediate, which gets them to split it three ways, giving you a share even though they don't like it. Or you can try to claim it for yourself which I guess would lead to a shootout. I think maybe you can choose one of the two sides to support, too.

If you're any bit good at games, don't play on Normal. Normal using VATS is pathetic, the early enemies don't stand a chance. I put it on hard and it's about right. The main thing I noticed is that most enemies become able to sponge up more bullets. You really have to manage your ammo more on hard and sometimes you have to be creative because you can't stand and shoot a Super Mutant Brute with a pistol that barely damages it for an hour.

Oh, and there are smart mutants in this game. I heard two of them have a pretty funny conversation in a police station.

[shopkins]

I guess most of this stuff was just my console getting read to go kablooey. I tried to play Fallout 3 and today and it bricked itself, RROD.

[Trumpman]

Yeah it probably was. I haven't run into ANY of those things that you've mentioned. Not even the characters disappearing from Megaton, although that seems to be a bit more common.

If only Microsoft could make decent consoles.

[shopkins]

Amen to that. I had to replace my original Xbox, too, because I had the bad luck to get stuck with one of the ones with the self-destructing DVD drive. I've come to expect frustration from a Microsoft console, which is too bad because there sure are a lot of good games on them.