Fallout 3

what did you think of the stories, both main and some of the side questy stuff?

I've been getting comments about my 6.5 rating. I feel game ratings are way bloated, this this is my rating cutting off the bloat, including bloat, I'd put it at more of and 8? I'm less sure. Anyway, as a reference, metacritic gives Ninja Blade a 68, where I'd give it a 26.

I just started playing again, since a bunch of my friends JUST bought the game, and I'm going to have to agree with a lot of the dungeon maps being fairly repetitive but if you're looking to play a FPS-mode and you aren't, you just need to make the right type of character. Yeah, the aiming is shaky, but my character has no problem running and gunning through the wasteland tottin' his Terrible Shotgun. Its just a preference of play-style and something I've realized is depending how you set your character up from the beginning will dictate how you'll play throughout the game. (i.e. FPS-based, VATS-based, speech-based, etc.) You have to remember also, Fallout is based on a 2D turn-based RPG, I think it's lovely to see how they incorporated the percent-to-hit system.

I love the game, I'd give it a better score than a 6.5. I think Fallout 3 explores a lot of different aspects of an open-world game I would love to see in others. There's just so much depth to the game, its the closest thing to living out everyone's fantasy of gunning down the most horrid malformations of a post-apocalyptic Washington-DC while soaking up all that nostalgia from the Fallout series.

All of your points are valid ones, but for me, this game was all about exploration. The world was huge and I loved crawling across it finding new missions and enemy strongholds.

For the most part I have to agree. The combat wasn't near perfect, and some of the environments(like the metro stations) look alot alike. The one thing that has made me play this game 2 times through is the story. I actually cared about some of the characters I met, and when I blew up Megaton I felt a little guilty. I like it when games can suck you into their world.

I like the exteriors fine, but so much time is spent dungeon crawling the interiors, which I found very repetative. You keep seeing the same teddy bear, and the same car etc. In Oblivion you would see really generic things repeated, likes dishes, blankets, etc. Since it is so much more specific it becomes more obvious how often the things are used. I liked the supermarket, it felt like a supermarket. The school didn't feel much like a school to me, there are desks, there are letters on the wall, but I don't remember a cafeteria or a gym, just a maze really. The aiming bug isn't the only one they really should have fixed either. It is still so buggy. Since this is their second time arround with this engine they should have had some resources to fix some of that up.

I'm critical of games anyway, so this is by no means awful, but a 6.5 from me means that it is pretty good (not GOTY), but still has major flaws. I need to leave scoring room for great games you know ;).

See, that's what I loved about it. A nuke went off, should there have been a jungle?

Right, so I realized after I got it, that it can't really be played as a shooter, like they said it could. So yeah, I stuck mostly to VATS. I didn't like the VATS combat either though. I didn't really find any kind of strategy. Basicly you shoot at chest or head (depending on %), unless they have a rocket launcher, then shoot the weapon. Backpedal shooting with poor FPS controls untill your VATS recharges, then repeat. Combat isn't great in Oblivion, but I don't think it played as big a role in that game. In FA, there is just so much of the same thing over and over. The height of my strategy was: place a mine, lure an enemy across it.

I loved Oblivion, and liked Mass Effect a lot (that's an RPG, right?), Oblivion's combat took a back seat, and the controls were solid in Mass Effect. Even having frequent combat in a straightup RPG is fine (like a FF game) as long as there is depth to the combat, actual descisions to make.

And anyway, that is only part of the reason for my grade, better combat would have saved it, but so would more environment variety.