by David Galvin

Created on: November 11, 2010   Last Updated: July 08, 2011

For such a classic series, one would think Fallout would have had a happier history. The first took the RPG scene by storm in 1997, and the second continued its legacy. After that, Black Isle decided to get serious with the third game, giving both the engine and the SPECIAL rule set an upgrade to deliver a hopefully even more solid game. And then, Interplay, their publisher, canned the project, fired everyone in the studio, and took the franchise themselves. After producing a couple of flops, such as Fallout Tactics and Brother of Steel, Interplay began its steady decline, and the Fallout franchise began to fade away, existing only in the memories of its devoted fanbase. That is, until Bethesda, hot off their success with the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, purchased the rights to make the sequel (and then eventually the IP itself). After finally being released to the world in 2008, did Fallout 3 ultimately live up to its predecessors?

Well…yes and no.

Before and after release, Fallout 3 was derided as being “Oblivion with guns,” and that isn’t far from the truth. It indeed plays far more like Oblivion than the previous Fallout games. But taken on its own merits, that’s not an entirely bad thing. Oblivion, while possessing a lot of faults, was still a solid game in its own right (you can read more about it in my review here). Like Oblivion, it’s played primarily from a first-person perspective, rather than the old 3/4 view that was used in Fallout 1 and 2. Combat is also fully real time, rather than turn-based, and melee fighting is pretty much left untouched (you can make some quick attacks with basic button presses or mouse clicks, or hold down for a more powerful attack, and actively block whenever you like). The biggest difference lies in the addition of guns, which make the whole thing feel like a wide-open FPS.

However, there is a throwback to Fallout’s old combat system in the implementation of VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System). This allows you to pause the action briefly and target specific parts of an enemy, while allowing the game to calculate the chance of success using its own processes and your character’s statistics (and then displays the shots going off in cinematic bullet time). This can help add a blend of strategy to the mix, especially since crippling a foe’s appendage has all sorts of effects; cripple their legs and they move slower, cripple their arms, they drop their weapon and

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