This western-style RPG from Bethesda Game Studios took on one of PC gaming’s biggest franchises. The setting: a frightening, post-apocalyptic landscape that’s the end result of a massive nuclear exchange between the United States and China. Focused in an obliterated Washington, D.C., players are cast as the Wastelander, a character that grew up in the safety of an underground vault only to be launched into the realities of a dystopian landscape where everyone is out for their own self-interest. In terms of size and scope, few games hold a candle to Fallout 3. It was easy to spend hundreds of hours questing and exploring, and the experience got more rewarding the more you played. If anything, Fallout 3 is the digital representation of “bang for your buck.”