I finally finished the Fallout 3 DLC's the other day. I had finished the game itself quite a while back, but waiting on the DLC's until they were all 50% off, which saved me a cool $20. I also didn't finish the game before the expansions hit, and somehow, on my achievement screen, it always showed 1100/1200 gamerscore. This confused me because I only had Operation Anchorage at the time, so I should have been 1100/1100. This bug annoyed me and is probably a result MS, not Bethesda.
Looking back on the game, having completed the main story and then the expansions at a much later date, I have a few final thoughts.
The Good: There's hardly anything like Fallout in terms of deep, sandbox-style gameplay. Even Grand Theft Auto doesn't reach this level of sandboxing. How many times have you made your own plans on how to steal items from a shop, or kill the inhabitants of an entire town, only to reload your last save and do it again, but in a completely different way? The Fallout series is known for having many paths to one goal: stealth, computer hacking, brute force, persuasion, and more. Fallout 3 did not only keep this formula from earlier games, but by bringing the franchise to this generation in glorious form, it built and expanded the formula.
Also, the stories in the game were memorable, exciting, and revolved around an eccentric cast of characters. The stories in 3 of the 5 expansions were great, which brings me to...
The Bad: Operation Anchorage and Mothership Zeta. What in the world was Bethesda thinking with this junk? Beginning and ending the expansions with such terrible content is rediculous. Op. Anchorage was a simulation, incredibly easy, and was quite forgettable.
Mothership Zeta even worse. It had almost no story at all. You're abducted on a ship and you are trying to escape. That's the whole story. The characters were written without any depth at all. It had nothing to do with the struggle of the Wastelanders and didn't build on the HUGE story that had been building up to the point of the last expansion.
My suggestion: Aliens are in past Fallout games, and it would have been great to see their presence upset the Wastelanders' lives and require you to save them. That way, you could save people you cared about, and the story would have been driven forward with good writing and character development. It would have been relevant, interesting, exciting, awesome.
The Ugly: Fallout 3 is one of the buggiest games I have ever played in my entire life. My first playthrough, my game froze every time I tried to enter the Lincoln Museum. I tried installing the game to my Xbox HDD. Didn't work. I tried skipping it and coming back to it later. That didn't work. I restarted my game and when I went there again, no problems.
In The Pitt, I was on the roof of the factory and I fell through the world. It loaded my last game save and it did it again, over and over. I could even shoot my gun and see the lack of dust from my bullets and knew exactly where it bugged. I had to exit the whole game and come back in, and then it worked.
On top of those problems are all the completely random game freezes.
Overall, I love this game and its expansions. It's a game that you hate to see end because it is so enjoyable. It truly stands by itself as a unique experience... at least until New Vegas comes out!
What were some of your thoughts or favorite moments from the game? Add them in the comments section!
2 comments:
I completely agree with all your comments about the good the bad and the ugly of the game. For me, the good outweighs the ugly by a megaton.
My favorite part of the game was basically my entire first play-through until I became all-powerful. The feeling of hopelessness when exploring the wasteland when you are a weak character is just amazing. When the game was still unfamiliar, I remember being skeptical of walking over the next hill because I was worried about what type of enemy would be there. This type of cautious gameplay forced me to take the game slow and savor it.
The sense of being small in a huge world, being weak in a strong world...being helpless in a world where radiation is in water and you may have to drink that water for some emergency health...that is what made the game for me.
I remember that feeling of being weak. There were times I'd avoid a group of raiders because they would be dangerous! It certainly made you be more cautious and be more tactical anytime you wanted to fight someone.
When I first fought Super Mutants, I'd lay down mines, try very hard to get Sneak Attack Criticals, and use cover all the time. And fighting Deathclaws? That's scary.
The game makes you feel like a Wastelander because you have to be a true scavenger to survive. I remember walking into the MegaMart my first time. I searched every corner for weapons, ammo, food. For the longest time, I donned the armor of my Raider foes.
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