I posted a new thread because I was told not to post in general chat (which really was an accident, I apologize). I realize there are 2 other recent Fallout 3 threads but I don't think they fit what I want to post perfectly. Furthermore, I don't to necropost an old thread then get flamed. So please just take my thread for what it is and don't flame for whatever kind of wrong post you deem this to be. Thank You. I am interested in purchasing fallout 3. Can someone give me a rundown of how the gameplay works? If theres anything you could compare it to it would really help. Also, is there any online gameplay options? I know theres no multiplayer, but is there co-op or something?
It one of my favorite game. There really isnt any thing to compare it to. But the game has over a +100 hours if you do everything on it. And tons of re-playability. There is no online what so ever. Unless you count DLC. Good luck!
No online. No co-op. All single player. It's hard to relate the gameplay to anything else. You can use a clunky first person aim to kill enemies with guns and melee weapons, but VATS is where it truly sets it apart from other games. You can spend action points to go into VATS. This will stop time and allow you to choose a certain body part to aim at. It also has some percentage next to the body part name. I assume it's your chance to hit the target, but I could be wrong. Once you accept your shots you get to watch your character shoot them in a cool cinematic that is played in slow motion. Here is a video that will give you a feel of what VATS is like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmFN7XhKtuM
I will say this with absolute honesty. Fallout 3 is an okay RPG and an okay shooter. But somehow, it is very good, not awesome but very good. If you want to buy it and the only thing that interests you is the shooting, I'll tell you right now to just turn around. The shooting is not like Halo or CoD. where in those games it's easy to aim, fire and shoot, Fallout 3 has some problems. The hit boxes are pretty bad and the aiming can be annoying. There is also the fact that Fallout 3 is heavily dictated by artificial numbers. If I'm sneaking around, it's not because I'm good. Its because my Sneak skill says I'm good. My Shotgun blew off that Mutants head, not because I aimed carefully but because my Small guns skill and the weapons condition said it would be so. Missions are mostly,"Go there, kill this guy, find this item, and save the damsel." Really, the replay value for the missions is non-exhistant. This is because the only difference between the Good ending and the Bad ending is that the Bad ending is usually shorter mission and involves killing a person. In an RPG aspect, it's boring. You're choices are this every mission. The good choice and the Evil choice. There are no variants. There is no slightly good, no slightly bad and no neutral. If you've played Oblivion, it has the same problems as Oblivion. The animations are the worst you'll ever see and the game loves to use Invisible walls to stop you from walking over a rubble pile and the enemies level up with you. VATs is the worst system ever implemented into a shooter as it instantly breaks the imersion and puts the difficulty level all the way down as it gives you 100% damage resistance when in firing mode and it's accuracy is pathetic. For example, if I take a sniper, aim at a person standing still and take the shot, I will hit and kill the person. Lets try the same with VATS. Depending on the range, it will say that I will have a 5% chance of hitting the person. The VATS destroys the game. I'm creeping around a corner and I see a Deathclaw charging at me. This should scare you but it doesn't because you have VATS. You use VATS and then that Deathclaw becomes a puppy. You're roaming around the wastelands and you just keep tapping the VATS button to be sure that there are no raiders around. And now, since you probably think I absolutly hate the game. I don't. The one redeeming featue of the game is that you'll see some interesting things, explore a lot of places and you'll laugh at how ridiculous some things are. Or, it might be completely **** depending on how you feel about near-complete freedom. TL;DR, Don't get it for being a shooter. Don't get it for the RPG aspect. Just get it for the experiance and the world.
Fallout 3's developers worked hard on every detail and feature in the game. The are many weapons, tons of areas to explore, tons of equipment, and tons of choices. Fallout feels like a world on it's own. If you kill something in first hour you played the game, you will still see it's corpse in the same place any time. It is set in Washington DC, 200 years after nuclear war, and people are struggling to survive after leaving the giant bomb shelters called vaults. Everything is radiated, including food and water. There are mutant bears, bugs, scorpions, 2 headed cows, ect. There is a eerie sense to every building, like you can imagine people living there 200 years ago. You make your own character based on skills. If making a theif then you will want to invest in stealth and picklocking and will want to be evil because you will constantly be doing bad things sneaking up to people stealing from them or killing them. If you want to be a scientist type of person then you will want to use the repair, science, and energy weapon skill. With the repair skill you can keep things in top condition (They decay with use) and disarm traps. With science you can hack computers and use it's functions to help you like opening a door that you cant pick or turning the turrets against your enemies. Really, it's hard to type everything Fallout 3 has to offer, because there is alot. Theres alot of indepth guides here: Fallout Wiki - The Vault Solution - don't use it.
Well, no ****. I don't use it. I feel they could have spent the time and money they spent on VATS for something more worth while.
Thanks Telrad for your text wall response, I appreciate your honesty. That was really the one thing I was worried about: is it a good shooter? I like games like Halo and COD4. I was really turned off by Turok where I thought the concept was great but the shooting was terrible, so I was afraid with getting Fallout with the whole VATS thing. Likewise, I thought the exploration and environment of Far Cry 2 was reallly cool, and it was a decent shooter, but the repetitive missions (somewhat the same for GTA4) made it become boring over time. Yeah, so once again thanks for you honesty, this was the kind of response I was looking for, not just "Yes get it, it rules!" or "No, this game is terrible it sucks!". I don't think this is really for me at the moment.