Fallout 3 review.

This was originally written in May 2009.

I came into college for the exam yesterday and sat down outside and Max Compton said he was selling some PS3 games to Gamestation that afternoon, so I took me a look in his bag of wonders and purchased myself some Fallout 3 for a not bad price.

I've got to say I'm thoroughly enjoying the game, the limited ammo and easily breakable weapons make it feel like a struggle for survival, the auto-aiming puts less pressure on your shooter skills (this is primarily an RPG), and the setting is pretty damn scary, especially when you're underground.

Sneaking through abandoned subway stations hoping that mutants don't jump out at you, carefully deciding which weapons to drop and which to keep, scavenging for medical supplies, it's all rather stressful actually but it's very fun.

The storyline of course is that you escape from Vault 101, which has been locked for 200 years since the nuclear war. You're just outside of washington D.C, and it's a WASTELAND. Mutants everywhere and rough little towns built out of wreakage. Washington D.C itself is completely ruined, and it's a practical warzone, so you've got to be on your guard.

The auto-aiming system allows you to press R2 when enemies are near, you can then choose an enemy and select a part of the body to aim for, you can see a percentage on each part, showing how likely you are to hit it. For each bullet you line up in this mode you lose some AP, and once it's run out you have to get shootin' manually, it regenerates slowly though, which is nice.

Everything you eat or inject into yourself and everywhere you go will influence the amount of radiation you have inside you. I'm pretty sure that if it gets too high that you begin mutating, so it's best to keep it as low as possible.

Much like Oblivion, you can take missions from people and do them at your own pace, you can also instantly travel to places you've been which is convenient. In comparison to Oblivion, I prefer the theme of this game and I prefer guns over swords, because you can hit without getting hurt with a gun. Of course I guess you could just use spells in oblivion, but it still didn't have auto-aim, which I'm finding very handy, because the actual use of FPS aiming in the game kinda sucks and is hard to use.

Also you get to choose all the attributes for your character, much like in Oblivion, and every time you level you can distribute more points. In fact, I'd say this whole game is very similar to Anarchy Online. On Anarchy I used to go through abandoned subways avoiding mutants, and the world was pretty damn bleak. The leveling system is also similar.

The PS3 version of Fallout 3 lacks the DLC that the PC and 360 versions got, but I don't think I'll get through what's there in a hurry anyway, so I'm not too fussed. Trophies FTW.