Here we have a review of Fallout 3 from CrymzenAssassin who is going to be writing reviews for Wolf’s Gaming  Blog and raiding our fridge.

Bethesda, the company that gave us the ‘oh so epic Oblivion’ acquired the rights to the classic Fallout series on April 9th 2007,not that long after on October 31st 2008 they released every Fallout fans wet dream, Fallout 3.

 Fallout 3 is a post-apocalyptic RPG set in Washington D.C otherwise known as “The Capital wasteland”. You play as “The Lone Wanderer” or 101 as your friendly neighborhood DJ Three Dog calls you. after living your entire life in an underground fallout shelter known as Vault 101 you are forced to escape to find your father and find out why he decided to up and leave the safety of the vault.

 starting up this game you are confronted with an opening cut scene showing you the damage of the capital wasteland, a few minutes later its time to make your character. I was quite disappointed with how lacking the character customisation is. It does have something for everyone, weather your an avid enthusiastic face maker or just some who wants to jump into the game but the face really is the only thing you can customise when it comes to your characters looks. you choose your sex first then your race(and no I’m not talking troll, goblin etc..) then next up is the face.

 For the face you will have a total of 10 presets to choose from or you can go all out and fully customise the way your character looks by morphing the facial structure and features then one pull of the right trigger and its on to the hair, same deal again really you have some presets for hair style and facial hair style and some hair color presets or you can make up your own funky color with a collection of sliders but that’s where the customisation ends for your characters looks.

 One thing you will immediately notice from customising your character is the graphics of the character models. they look very impressive, they are very well made and alot of time and effort has been put in to creating them. You can tell by how well defined some of the facial presets look. The impressive graphics don’t stop there, you’l have plenty of moments in fallout 3 where you will just be happy sitting back and staring off into the distance as the sun goes down. the environments they have created and how amazing they look really sets the mood for your adventure, weather your inside or outside there’s always something nice to look at.

 after crafting your god or goddess of the wastes its time to take control and start playing. you will start off as a baby in a room with your father James(voiced by the legendary qui-gon neeson). this is where you will be introduced to the S.P.E.C.I.A.L skills. these are your dominant skills that will govern pretty much everything to do with your character throughout the game. each skill rules over some of the other sub skills that youl be learning through your adventure.

 each skill of special starts off at 5 but at the start of the game you also have an additional 5 points to distribute between the 7 skills(Strength,Perception,Endurance,Charisma,Intelligence,Agility and Luck) but it wont stop there.as you progress through the game you will have opportunities to improve these skills wich will also improve your sub skills. you can improve them in many ways including through weapon and armor bonuses and through perks.

 after that its time to progress and grow up a little. each stage of your development will teach something new up untill its time to put all that together and start the real adventure. the first stage you will receive your PipBoy 3000, this little device is your go to guide for just about everything within the capital wasteland. its something that impressed me quite a bit as you don’t have to hold down or press different buttons to access your essentials. just one tap of B and it brings up everything you need.

 From the Pipboy you can keep track of your current skills and perks, how much experience you need for your next level, you can organize ,equip and hotkey your weapons, armor and health items from here you can also access your ammo and misc items. The pipboy also has a quest log, a local and world map and a selection of radio stations to choose from. it really is a handy little device that gives you everything you’ll possible need with the touch of a button.

 there are four stages of growing up and through those four stages you will learn everything you need to know. from basic controls to more advanced things. the controls are really simple and stay pretty much the same as most games. its a common control set. right trigger fires,left zooms in, A interacts with people and the environment and, X reloads,Y jumps, left stick crouches. RB switches between first person and third person views and holding it allows you to move the camera freely. The controls are very smooth but can be unresponsive at times. not so much with the essential functions such as shooting and moving but jumping can be unresponsive times.

 it seems to me that if you are too close to something in the environment then your character simply will not jump no matter how many times you press the button. this can be pretty annoying if your trying to take a short cut through the wastes that requires you to traverse some rocky scenery. Other than jumping i really don’t have any complaints about the control scheme or its response.

 the overall feel of fallouts epic world is made perfectly clear from the moment you set foot outside the vault for the first time. your immediately greeted with vast and seemingly never ending backdrops and it looks beautiful, before i played fallout 3 i never thought ultimate world destruction could look so stunning. There is so much attention to detail in this game, everything seems to have its own personality and you will sometimes find your self thinking “I wonder how that got there” and more often than not you will find little back stories to things that shouldn’t even matter. through audio tapes or written notes.

 at first things can seem a little empty but its not long before you start seeing the world and the people in it going about their business .there’s alot to do in fallout 3 plenty of side quests that are just as engrossing and reward filled as the main quest line. the main quest line will bring in alot of experience to level you up but fortunately they wont get you all the way up to the level cap witch is surprisingly low. Even though the level cap is only 20 there’s still alot you can do with the skills and perks system. its extremely deep and every skill and perk will effect multiple things.

 but its not just leveling up that can increase your sub skills like lock picking, sneaking, big guns etc..you can find skill books that will increase these skills and there’s also a perk that increases the amount of points you get from a skill book so combining the 2 will really help your character in the harsh environment. fallout 3 makes it clear to you pretty early on what skills are absolutely essential to your progress and survival.

 key skills would be Lock picking,Repair,Science,Explosices and Medicine. these skills will greatly help you in your journey and Bethesda make sure you know about it. Science skill will govern your ability to hack computer terminals. if you have the required skill to hack that certain terminal a mini game will ensue where you must figure out the password of the consol by eliminating the wrong ones. Lock picking also works in the form of a mini game where you must Rota both the bobby pin and the chamber in order to unlock whatever it is your trying to unlock.

 It is a shame that disarming explosives and repairing your weapons and armor doesn’t have some kind of mini game but it does help improve the pace of the action. if your in a firefight and your weapon is run down so you stop to repair it the last thing you want is to have to go through a mini game before you can carry on the combat. repairing an item is simple. if you have 2 hand guns then you can use one of them handguns to repair the other with the touch of a button. works really well and very simple.

 Fallout 3’s combat is very impressive.FPS and action RPG fans will feel right at home while playing this game as it caters to both parties extremely well. while FPS fans can be happy in there own element of shooting anything that moves RPG fans have the added element of strategically choosing what weapon is right for a specific enemy and while FPS fans are probably think yeah just pull the trigger untill the thing in front of you dies they will soon learn that taking on a behemouth with a 10mm pistol was a very bad idea.

 the thing that impresses me most about the combat is the V.A.T.S system. its very inventive. this system allows you to pause time and select targets to attack. but you don’t just select a target you can select individual body parts to shoot at. the vats system is highly complimented by having the ability to actually dismember your enemies. You can shoot off arms and legs and cut the heads off it really give you that feel that you’ve just completely destroyed your enemy.

 Fallout 3 has a huge variety of weapons that suit both ranged and melee combat and if that’s not enough you can craft your very own custom weapons to give your character that personal armory you’ve been dreaming of. you will find alot of standard weapons through the game such as standard pistols standard sniper rifles and assault rifles but you will aslo stumble across special versions of those weapons that have better stats and even a couple that have elemental damage like the zhuo rog chinese pistol that not only delivers slightley better damage but also makes your enemies burst into flames.

 so from what you’ve been reading I’m guessing you like the sound of it so far but as with any game it does have its faults. Yes the scenery and expansive world looks and feels amazing, the interactions with NPC’s are very well thought out and the quests, weapons and leveling system as well as combat work very well but this game has bugs. Some bugs can be game breaking and some can be dismissed and ignored.

 some of the most noticeable but minor bugs are mainly to do with your interaction with certain things .sometimes you’ll press A to activate a switch or to try and hack a computer or open a door. you’ll hear a noise but nothing happens, in most cases this is an extremely rare occurrence but you may run into some areas where it happens alot. other bugs will include getting trapped between 2 objects and not being able to move, constantly firing at an enemy to see his health just wont go down. Fallout 3 is a game with plenty of bugs and glitches but the most game breaking would be the constant freezing of the game which is usually activated by severe frame rate slowdown.

 The bugs in Fallout 3 are frustrating and there’s alot more than the ones listed above but Bethesda have been good with this kind of thing and have patched alot of them making your game play experience that much smoother and enjoyable but even the might Bethesda cant seem to get rid of the more pressing and frustrating bugs within the game but the patches do seem to have made them happen less often.

 Good Points:

Interesting story.

Beautifull graphics.

Huge open world.

Brilliant combat.

Deep leveling system.

Good variety of weapons and armor.

Star studed and perfectly exsecuted voice acting

with ron pearlman,liam neeson and malcome mcdowell.

The world is immersive and gripping.

The NPC’s are very interesting.

Bad Points:

Minor and gamebreaking bugs and glitches.

Lack of character customisation.

Sometimes controls are unresponsive.

Overall ill give this game a 9/10 its a very deep and gripping game thats i great fun for FPS and RPG fans alike.its easy to pick up and play and highley adictive but does suffer from irritating bugs and a lack of personal touch for your characters look.