Welcome to the wasteland.

Fallout 3 is a post-apocalyptic open world game that exists in the aftermath of Washington D.C. the year is 2277. The player takes control and creates the character of a Vault Dweller. A inhabitant of a underground vault shelter called Vault 101. Hundreds of Vaults were built before the Great War to protect humans against the nuclear fallout and enemies.

Your characters story is progressed through age as you enter the world from your mother, giving birth and you go through various milestones with your father (voiced by the awesome Liam Neeson). Your path sets you out to find and retrace your father’s steps and locate him as he is embroiled in a military and science project called Project purity. Making sure this projects falls to the right people and dosen’t fall in the hands of the corrupt ‘The Enclave’.

From the first cutscene you start to build your character, you pick the look, name and gender. After this is done you start to create S.P.E.C.I.A.L points. This is a unique style of character customisation which I don’t think I’ve seen ever before Fallout. Each letter represents a perk, each ability then will strengthen your character and also open more dialogue and side missions through interaction with NPC’s.

Within the S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats you can improve other ability’s by receiving points to use to get better at lock picking, repairing weapons, repairing armour, hacking terminals and so on.

Once you escape the Vault, you are totally free to do what ever you want. The map is so huge, every single town, city or even cave will have special loot, weapons or even much needed ammo. Carrying loot is a big feature as if your savvy you can then sell these valuables to other vendors or you can keep the junk. Some quests will even have you searching for certain parts for characters.

Collectibles are scattered around these places. Bobble heads are the main ones and these improve your SPECIAL stats, scattered throughout are also magazines and these can update an ability each time you find one.

Mission are quite deep and well scripted. You can change the path of each story just by conversation. Having better Charisma stats and ability’s you can also then unlock more dialogue and hidden quests. You are also faced with some decisions or moral dilemma wether to kill, save or turn the tables on characters through persuasion.

This game will have you clocking many hours with the sheer amount to do. You may find yourself wanting to upgrade your character find a playing style and background story to them. You may find yourself getting lost in the capital wasteland discovering everything you can. You may also find yourself as a bad guy, loot, steal and assassinate everyone in your path.

Summary

This is definitely the first of its kind, a really unique way to play. It’s all a matter of the players choice. It can be overwhelming at the start but you soon discover how much you can do in a game. Throughout the years they have added many game add ons including more maps and quests. Point lookout is a brilliant story and also huge map to discover.

Graphics, for its time is definitely a head of its time, but due to the concept and gameplay it’s much easy to overlook. You can pick up a copy for an extremely good price and spend 100s of hours. The added bonus is that once completed unless you purchase add ons you can replay, choose a different path and discover quests that weren’t possible in the previous play through.

Projekt Gamez Review score = 9.6