by Sean Elgood

Created on: January 30, 2009

If you're looking for a basic overview of Fallout 3, don't bother looking here, try here instead. What my article shall instead focus on is a much larger question: why should you even bother looking at this game?

In a gaming world bursting at the seams, what make Fallout 3 worth buying over other titles? Well, after playing this game, and continuing to do so, I can honestly tell you that why Fallout 3 rises above the rest is because it literally reinvents the idea of open-ended game-play. To be perfect clear, Fallout does have a defined beginning and end. However, it's HOW you connect the two that makes this game so much fun to play.

The storyline is fairly basic. The year is 2077 and America has been decimated by nuclear with with China. You are a child born in a Vault, an underground base designed to protect human life from the wasteland aboveground. But on your eighteenth birthday your father abruptly flees the vault, and you follow after him. Technically you're supposed to find him, but do you HAVE to? Not a chance.

Right from the outset, you're besieged with choices. How your character appears is entirely up to you. Other games have offered such character customization, but never to such an extent provided by Fallout. Man or women, black or white or Asian or anything in between, your hair style and color, if you're tall or short or fat or skinny, your character is YOUR character. The sheer volume of choices is staggering. For instance, I spend nearly twenty minutes trying to decide which hair style my character should have.

Even what clothes you wear is up to you. Heavy battle armor all the way down to pjamas are available for your character to wear, if you decide to even wear clothes in the first place. I wouldn't recommend it, but if you have the insatiable need to roam the wastes in nothing but your boxers, go right ahead.

But it's not just your character's appearance that you can choose. Fallout has a wonderful Karma system which dictates how people respond to you based on your choices. Admittedly, other games have done this before; but once again Fallout raises the bar to staggering heights. The game is designed NOT to have a bias towards either good or bad, each have their own perks and disadvantages. If you're good, some people will sing praise and shower you with gifts, other might decide they've had enough of your do-gooding and decide to use your head as a paperweight. If you're bad, some people will greet you with loaded guns and screams of terror,

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