PC News and Game Reviews

Brief preview of Fallout 3 on the Xbox 360 (First 10 Levels)

The christmas rush is here again. Developers around the globe are working round the clock to have
games on store shelves for the holidays.And as always with this time of year we’re spoiled for choice
with dozens of games battling for our cash.One such game is the new offering for Bethesda, makers of ESIV: Oblivion and now Fallout 3.

First off i’d like to clarify, i have never played the original Fallout games. But judging from screenshots that really doesn’t matter as this new title seems to be nothing like its predecessor’s.
Of course we have a similar setting but apart from that gameplay, view and pretty much everything else has been changed for this new outing.

Outline/Gameplay

The game kicks off in typical RPG fashion as you design your character and lay the ground work to mold him into a certain class. I have to say i was really impressed with how Bethesda freshened this experiance up. When you start the game you literally start at your character’s beginings. After ploping out of your mother you are greeted by your father (Liam Neeson). And through him you make choices on sex and apperance. You then get to experiance a gaming first as you take your first baby steps around and discover your skills using a pop-up book. There’s more progression iinside the vault as you move up through childhood, teen years and finally become an adult.

Its then that the game really kicks off as you leave the safety of the vault and enter Capital Wasteland. Once outside you really get the Oblivion feel about the game. Lots of open world to explore and NPC’s to meet. You really have to take alook around your surroundings to find what to do. The story isn’t sppon fed to you. Its all around you, on the radio, in books and notes or just picked up by earwigging on NPC conversations.

Now on to the fun part, the combat. This is where Fallout really sets itself apart from Oblivion. Combat is handled in two ways. As a basic FPS, relieing on your own skills to take down opponents. Alternatively you can use V.A.T.S, this feature basically lets you target specific parts of your enemy with the hit percentage based of distance and your skill with the equipped weapon. Its comes in really handy when the surrounded as you can target multiple opponents to attack. It also works as a kind of overview/command tool, giving you the chance to think about your strategy before attacking.

There is a downside to V.A.T.S though, it relies on AP (Action Points). This means you are limtied to a certain number of shots. The amount per shot depends on the weapon equipped. Once you expend your AP you need to wait from them to replenish. I think this was a smart idea by Bethesda, if you had infinite AP the game would be more like an RPG from FP than an FPS/RPG.

GFX

Graphically Fallout looks gritty and dull, but in a good way. Th art design matches the setting very well and although it wouldn’t rival Crysis it suits the game. Of course the version tested was on the 360 so add some AA on the PC and it will look even better.

What really stood out so far is the graphic ways to kill your enemies. There’s lots of bloody murder with arms, legs, torso’s and heads flying especially when using V.A.T.S. There’s also the Bloody Mess skill which basically devastates your opponent to bits, this has been one of my favourites so far.

As with any RPG there’s not much to say about the GFX apart from they lend themselves well to emersing you into the gameworld.

Conclusion

So far i’m really enjoying the game. Although it is very reminescent of Oblivion it brings enough to the table to keep me involved. I think the best way to describe it is as a lovechild of Oblivion and Stalker. After 8hrs i’ve barely cracked the surface of the main story and i feel there’s a hell of alot more to experiance. Expect a full review soon.

If your in anyway into your console RPG’s, you’ed of realized as i have that up to now the Xbox 360 really hasn’t unleashed many jems in the genre. Sure we had Oblivion but outside that the rest were sub-par at best. Blue Dragon, Enchanted Arms, Eternal Sonata, these games all tried to set the bar for future action RPG’s on the 360 and failed misrably. Our last glimmering hope for 2007 was a big budget title by renowned RPG makers Bioware.

NWN was a must for any fans of the RPG genre, the successor to the superb Baldur’s gate series and long forgotten, eye of the beholder classics. Full 3D view and slick interaction justifiably made it the flagship for next generation RPGs. NWN II was initially staggeringly in its depth of character development, items, monsters and looked very good, performing well with even a small army on screen.

Its fatal flaw, which NWN did not suffer from, was the number of bugs. The game seemed overly complex, with simple cut scenes causing your game to crash and resulting in the campaign having to be re-started. In fact, there was warning on the loading screen telling you to save your game as often as possible. These bugs put a lot of players off what was ultimately a good game, if a little stretched.

The add-on pack is just that, new levels, monsters, classes, items and effects. It’s the usual price for a non-independent game and is designed to allow you to import your NWN II character. Curiously, there is a welcome note in the manual in which the producer basically says that they released NWN II too early and that Mask was how the game should have looked and played.

As you’re playing a character that was able to complete NWN II (you have to create one otherwise), game play is more complex from the offset then a standard RPG. You need to know the game to play it, as your using a powerful character. But immediately you can tell that the developers have worked hard on the engine, its seamless and bug free. The loading time between maps is reduced and levels are kept to a reasonable size to ensure your PC isn’t unnecessary taxed. If NWN II had looked and played like this then it would have made a much bigger impact.

The main campaign is tough, well paced and just the right length (about 10 hours). Character development to “epic levels” is possible, allowing your character to become a juggernaut of destruction. There are dozens of new feats and spells (you do need to play with the manual open to figure out what they do) which allows new ways to win battles and solve problems.

The game only falls down in its plot devices. Most games in the Baldur-NWN series have complex plots with the protagonist central to the story. Mask goes to far though, and has a horrid feature called the “spirit meter”. Not to give the plot away too much, it basically dictates how long you can spend on any map, how often you can rest, whom you can kill etc. It seems like the game creators wanted to limit your ability to regain spells or health by resting, so to make the game more challenging. It’s worked into the plot and very hard to get away from. Predictably, there is a cheat out there that doesn’t disrupt the game at all but drastically improves the game play. Its just a bad idea that could haunt the developer for some time.

This aside, the dialogue is also very heavy and you have to be careful what you say since your party members can get annoyed and leave. There are even dialogue sequences whereby you have no choice at the end but to kill the bad guy you’re talking with, therefore making the conversation totally irrelevant.

Otherwise the game plays well and looks good. I would have to recommend it to anyone who enjoyed NWN II and wants to see the game to its full potential. I would also welcome further add-on modules (the scope is unlimited with an engine like this) but no more spirit meters please.

The thief series was excellent. It game birth to the FPS, the First Person Sneaker?

The first game was excellent and can still hold its own against today’s dynamically lit, high dynamic range master pieces……with as much story as you could fit on a grain of salt!!! Thief created a world you enjoyed exploring, unlike the dark corridors of Doom 3 (flashlight, gun, flashlight, gun and so on….). You got a real feel for who Garrett was…and revelled in his cut throat antics.

The second serving was equally excellent. The graphics got a few bells and whistles added….but more importantly the plot developed in classic Thief style! So with the third instalment I looked forward to more o the same high class.

Was I disappointed…..yes. The first warning signs were the title “Thief: Deadly Shadows”. That title reads like this to me: “Thief: Console friendly”. And alas it was a horrible perversion of what was excellence. The 3rd person aspect of the game did not lend anything at all to the gameplay. In fact I believe it did the opposite. In 3rd person mode I could see around corners by panning the camera…..obviously a huge advantage for the would-be thief!!!!! So basically the Thief series was “dumbed down” for the drooling console masses……and I did not like it!!!! However it must be said…..from all the games in the series “the cradle” level is still the best/scariest I have ever come across. Of course playing it in 3rd person detracts from the fear of peering around dark corners…..but it was still a masterstroke of level design.

So where is Thief gone now (Thief 4?)……Ion Storm are long gone now….so is that the end of this epic? Its kind of sad that the game that created a genre has not had many rivals in the field…and that that game is also dying out!

Well after many the tough quest I think I have completed the main quest in Oblivion. My reward however may as well been a half rabid mongrel dog with no hind legs……

After saving the world…I was rewarded with “Dragon Armour”. Chancellor Ocato promised me the armour of kings (or emperors) for my heroic deeds. It took 2 long weeks to fashion. I rushed to the Imperial Armoury. There was a lot of confusion regarding this quest as the text speaks of an “Imperial Compoundâ€? (never heard of that before!!??!!). Anyhoo the armour is the in armoury in the Imperial Prison (Imperial Compound!!!??!! wtf)

I eagerly approached the armour as it glistened on the table before my eyes. As I donned each piece of armour I watched my defence plummet to an all-new low. I looked the shite, but the armour is terrible. I would have been happier with the mongrel dog above….thank you Oblivion for a lousy reward!!!!

Well I’ve a few more quests to go…….