A sequel to Fallout and Fallout 2 Fallout 3 brings the series to modern systems. Released by Bethesda Softworks Fallout 3 plays like a shooter with role playing elements or a role playing game with shooter elements depending on your perspective and how you play the game. Fallout 3 takes place in a post apocalyptic future (is there any other kind?) where the cold war of the 1950's turned hot into a nuclear world war and eventually apocalypse.

Lucky for you though your parents were one of the few that were selected for the Vault-Tec vault program that sends them into vault deep underground that will be sealed for 2000 years thus keeping them safe from the hell that was happening on the surface. Fallout 3 starts rather uniquely and abruptly with your experiencing your own birth in first person which serves as the way to determine what you character looks like.

Your childhood determines your characters characteristics and introduces you to the basic mechanics of the game. By this time you are almost full immersed into the game up until you are about to leave Vault 101 until the game pops up a menu if you are happy with your character or not and if you would like to relive your childhood to change anything but after that you step into the blistering wasteland.

Pros:

The Wasteland

In true Bethesda fashion you are given a huge map of Washington D.C. With lots to explore and explore you shall through broken buildings, desert wastelands, and towns of scrap constructed by the last remaining survivors.

Presentation

As you would expect everything in the world of Fallout 3 looks very nice the lighting is done very well and the in game sunsets are beautiful.

Cons:

Difficulty

Bethesda never seems to get this right as demonstrated with Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion in which when your character levels up the world up around is the same level rendering the leveling system nearly useless and it can make the game harder than it should be if you leveled up wrong. Well in Fallout 3 your the only one that levels up but this time you become too powerful too early in the game so by level ten you are nearly unstoppable. There is also a level cap by level twenty which does not seem to exist in any other Bethesda game.

No Bosses

If I remember correctly there were bosses in previous Fallout games not many of them but there were there. Fallout 3 only has a final boss who isn't to hard to beat in fact he probably won't be a challenge at all by the time you meet him. There might be other bosses but they are not obvious due to the difficulty of the game.

Broken Story

In the first half of the game the story makes sense until you start to reach the end and then the story falls apart before you. Bring one of your party members named Fawkes with you at the end of the game and you will see an example of writers writing themselves into a corner. The ending of the game is very disappointing, no two hundred possible endings like the developers promised only about five possible endings.

Overall I would rate Fallout 3 for the Playstation 3 a six out of ten it's a good game but it fails to live up to the rest of the series.

Learn more about this author, Don Emery.
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