Fallout 3

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 29th October 2008
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Issues

Unfortunately, it isn’t all smooth sailing for Fallout 3 and though the game as a whole is appealing, accessible and enjoyable there are a few places which are notably unpolished and uncomfortable for the PC platform.

The most noticeable is the interface, which feels very console-ish and unwieldy on the PC. Bethesda has increased the number of voice actors, but you still only have three dialogue options visible at once for no reason. It makes dialogue quickly become irritating as you endlessly scroll through options.

Using the PIP-boy is a bit of a hassle as well a lot of the time. On a console, it makes sense to have one central system to manage your stats, data and items since you have only so many buttons. On a PC though, it’s just annoying forcing the player to cycle through tabs and filters.

The very scale of the interface is annoying too, with the shop screen being particularly uninformative. Rather than make full use of the screen space, all information is maddeningly abbreviated so that it takes a good long while before you can really read info at a glance and recognise what ammo is good for what gun and what damage it’ll do.

Failout 3 Fallout 3 - Faults

Oh, and don’t even get us started on the world and local maps, which prove to be incredibly difficult to navigate precisely with.

The real problem though is that it’s very clear that there’s an excellent PC game here, but a lot of it is unfortunately hidden underneath an interface that makes too many concessions to the console world. With the Oblivion version of the BT mod, Fallout 3 would come on in leaps and bounds, so it’s just a shame that Bethesda chose the Xbox 360 as the lead platform for the game.

Still, despite these flaws the game does retain a lot of its enjoyability and it’s a testament to the versatility of the Oblivion engine that sniping is so much fun in both real-time and VATS mode.

In fact, all of the gunplay in Fallout 3 is good. Unlike in Oblivion, where you really only had three weapons (melee, ranged or magic), Fallout 3 gives you a wide range of tools to wreak havoc with. You’ve got grenades, mines, big guns, small guns, energy weapons, fists and melee – all of which behave differently and have different effects. It's just a shame that sneaking is still very difficult and essentially useless for most missions.

Failout 3 Fallout 3 - Faults

Finding other solutions to problems is one of the main joys of Fallout 3 and Bethesda has done its best to make each different route interesting and lengthy, so there are rarely any shortcuts to be found in the game play of Fallout 3 – something we definitely appreciate.

Picking locks, for example, is completed with a new minigame which is bit more realistic than the one in Oblivion, so taking a stealth approach isn’t something you can do without preparation. Bobby pins are a limited resource and you won’t even be able to try and tackle some locks unless you have a suitably high Lockpicking skill.

The same is true of hacking too, which relies on the Science skill and uses a mastermind-like minigame where you have to guess the password from a few different choices. True, it isn’t massively close to the original Fallout, but it’s still a very good thing and it’s good to see that Bethesda has at least opened the gameplay up from how it was in Oblivion so that there are now consequences to your actions.

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