“Nostalgia Goggles”: A Fallout Fan’s Review of Fallout 3

From there I delved further into the sewer, coming across the abandoned management facilities, complete with hidden caches and locked doors. Finally satisfied with the fact that I had taken back my pride by killing every last living thing in a massive sewer, I returned to Megaton, sold a bunch of stuff for plenty of caps (Fallout 3’s currency) and other things I was in need of, then promptly returned to the sewer and began picking my way through the remains and picking up things that I missed (or couldn’t carry without going over my carry limit) the first time.

From there, it all begins to blur into one long chain of awesomeness.

I grew to accept the difficulty of first-person and third-person perspectives, and use both hand-in-hand. When I need to get a good look at my surroundings and scope out a battle plan, it’s time to go into third-person, zoom as far out as possible, and look at my surroundings. When it’s time to go quick and sneaky, I go into first-person, crouch, turn off running, and then equip a sniper rifle and activate V.A.T.S. My reward for executing this relatively simple and fast chain of events? A super-slow-motion critical hit where the guy I’m shooting at falls over in surprise, complete with beautiful rag doll physics.

And for those wondering, holy hell this game is pretty to look at.

My investment in a new video card proved well worth it, as I was able to run Fallout 3 on “high” in the “detail settings” menu. From the start, this game is mesmerizingly wonderful to look at: not only is the graphical quality right up there with the best gaming has to offer, it’s also an incredibly detailed game. Instead of a bland room in a house filled with other bland rooms that also look alike, it’s the small tweaks that make Fallout 3 so wonderful graphically. Here’s an example: I explored a small abandoned town, complete with small abandoned houses.

All three houses had a general layout: a downstairs with a living room, a bathroom, and a kitchen, then an upstairs with separate rooms for sleeping. In one house I encountered a kitchen mostly intact, in another the refrigerator was toppled over, and in yet another the refrigerator was blown apart. In one house I found a pair of bunk beds, in another I found a single bed. In the master bedroom of one house I saw the charred skeletons of (I presumed) the husband and wife lying on the bed in the “spoons” position. And in another house, I encountered no skeletons but a couple of roaches, with the master bedroom having a hidden safe in it that I was able to crack and scavenge from.

And of course, the graphical quality means some of the best rag doll physics ever, in addition to precise limb dismemberment. If you shoot a sniper in his gun-holding arm while he’s on a tall building and his health is low enough, the arm that’s holding his rifle will be blown apart by your shot, and then the sniper will scream, clutch his now-stumpy appendage, stagger back, and fall from the high building he was perched on.

Shoot someone at close range in the face with a shotgun, and you bet your ass their head will explode and shower you in brain matter.

This game earns every bit of its “mature” rating with wonderfully gory, cinematic death animations. And it’s not just limited to humans either: being chased by feral dogs? Shoot a leg and nail a critical, and it’ll come flying off. In one super-sweet moment, I was being attacked by those damn mole rats again, except this time I had equipped the power fist, a weapon that normally kills mole rats in only two blows. I bided my time, and waited until one of them leaped at me. I then activated V.A.T.S., targeted the one making the jumping attack, and was treated to a beautiful slow-mo cinematic of my power fist decapitating the mole rat in mid-air.

And that’s when you kept me, Fallout 3.

Continued on page 4.

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