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.

I’ve been playing or better say grinding away at WoW in my spare time for last year or so. I had played it for months then lost interest (surprised?) but have since taken it up again. Due to the siesta in gaming with it I’m not an uber high level 70 like most of the gamers that populate the servers but I feel I know some of the finer points in the game. My post is about the crafting that I find a bit frustrating at times in the game. And so I would like Blizzard to take a long hard look at the crafting system.

The game more or less runs on the loot given by monsters, crafters need some of it, adventurers need it for completing quests, and the entrepreneurs on the server can make a tidy living selling the stuff on the Auction house (The Ebay of WoW).

Some loot is extremely good and is used by the lucky finder, be it armour or weapons. Now we take a look at the blacksmith for example who makes this stuff. They cannot churn out good weapons and armour to keep up with the loot that is dropped by slain monsters, so essentially they are crafting only to bring up their skill. Hence grinding.

So for the first 50 lvls of your character’s crafting life you won’t make a living, you might sell a few items to the low levellers that are following you but no way is it good enough. Also the amount of materials and their scarcity is another thing. Just to find the Iron ore for example to make a certain sword is a few hours gaming in itself. Then when you compile all the materials you get one point towards you blacksmithing skill. How disappointing.

I have been told by other gamers (after much ranting on the general chat channels) that at the higher levels, blacksmithing is remarkable and it’s a sought after profession. This is something to aim for. But during your career as a crafter you should have some foothold in society and some outlet for your skills – not just crafting junk to get 1 point every few hours. This is why I think Blizzard should overhaul their crafting system. I can only speak for the blacksmithing profession which is one of the core skills because it can lead to weapons and armour. Also, I find most characters on the game are the “gatherer” professions. Skinners, Miners etc. These provide the Auction house with an array of materials that crafters can purchase or go out and gather themselves (Blacksmith / Miner - for example)

So right away there is a large discrepancy between gatherers and crafters. Crafters being in the minority, in my opinion, thanks to the game being heavy with good loot. I’m not saying get rid of the good loot. But new plans for weapons and armour could be introduced allowing the crafter to inject new designs of weaponry in the world and make their living seem less of a hardship.

In Star Wars Galaxies, the once loved MMORPG has since fallen from grace and now dies writhing in ashes, had a remarkable crafting system. From setting up mining devices to gather ore and materials the crafter could log off safe in the knowledge that there would be a pile of juicy ingredients ready for the next day of crafting. The crafters in SWG made items that the other characters actually NEEDED. Speeder bikes, houses, weapons, armour you name it. There was loot from monsters but that loot was used to make more intricate items which again a crafter was needed for. So crafting was a whole other profession and it was after all an actual character class.
In WoW though, in my opinion, crafters are an after thought. The game is all about going on quests finding lucky loot, and being a better adventurer because of it, then doing it all again to find better loot. Crafters are and always were second class citizens in WoW. Please correct me if I’m wrong! Maybe I’m missing the whole point.

Look at Runescape, a visually appalling but free on-your-browser-mmorpg. The crafting system in that game is massive. You can be anything from a Potter to Smithy, Chef to Farmer. And as a crafter you can make all those implements that the above professions need for their production. Example : Potters make pie dishes so Chef’s can bake pies in them.

The Crafting in WoW needs to be more prevalent, brought to the foreground of the game. If Blizzard intertwined the quest/loot heavy game that works so well for them with a crafting system that attracts the more strategic players you would have an unstoppable game.

Obviously they have a WoW juggernaut of sorts already and don’t need a crafting based game. But even after I quit SWG and runescape I still like to wander back in and craft up something!!

I’ll leave you with a fond memory from SWG. My character gave up the adventuring for crafting. I chose Architect as my profession and began building dwellings and civic structures for the many towns in the servers, it ended up I built my own town and invited guild members and newcomers alike to move in. This was amazing to me, I made use of the game without questing, but crafting.

Having “battled” through a Travian sever I am well aware of just how competitive it can get as the game draws to a close (The End Game). I saw cheating on a grand scale. Players with multiple accounts. The GF Meta alliance even went as far as to hack into a forum and obtain a username and password. They then used this password to login in to our World Wonder account, sending all our troops home and hitting it with a coordinated attack……I know I know…..sub-human scum.

Luckily for us the admins intervened, and the cheating GF swine’s did not succeed. I might point out that GF (Gamma Force) did win the server. However it was not through force of strength or conviction….it’s because they are called “Gamma Force” and obviously has super gamma mega powers…..Gamma Force…I mean really?…..spotty teenage gits

The introduction of “Gold” in Travian in my opinion has the potential to spoil the balance of the game. From what I can tell, the end game may fast become a question of who is willing to spend more money to win!!!! Basically the system of gold works as follows. You purchase Gold with money from the Travian game developers.

You can then spend your gold to do the following:

• Extend you Travian Plus account
• Gain a 25% bonus to resource production
• Gain a 25% bonus to Attack or Defense
• Trade with the NPC merchant
• Complete construction orders and Research quickly

Now from what I can see this introduces a new dynamic to the end game. This dynamic being the “spend a feckin fortune” factor that could see you getting huge bonus’ to everything. This does not sit well in my head as players are not really being rewarded for their actions…they are being rewarded for the frequency of their pay-pal transactions. It’s not a nice thing to see a good idea rush headlong into becoming something silly. I just hope the communities who have already embraced the Plus account do not turn to paying through the nose to get a tactical edge by spending “Gold” to beat the band!

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I’m getting a disturbing number of visitors to this blog looking for cheats for Travian. For those of you who don’t know who travian is read all about it here and sign up!

I’m currently playing on Server 1 and have been doing so for many….many months. The great thing about travian (in my opinion) is the fact you can log in and spend a few minutes looking after your villages, without the need to constantly check back and micromanage your villages. As you progress and grow larger you will inevitably spend more time managing your villages, planning and instigating attacks and raids…….and of course defending your own from harm! There seems to be an initial period when you join a server where you can become raiding fodder for larger players…..and many players loose interest at this stage. The solution is to get into an alliance that can protect you, and repay them when you grow stronger due to their support.

At the moment we are in what the masses refer to as “The End Game”. Basically the developers of travian wrap up the server by releasing several “Wonder Villages”. It’s the goal of each alliance to seize a wonder city and build a wonder of the world to level 100. First to 100 wins….simple! Or so you would think! On my server there was a major “incident”, which serves to highlight the horrible lengths some people will go to in order to win (well not really win….cheat).

A collection of players managed to hack the travian account of our wonder village. They then sent all our defending troops home and had arranged attacks to arrive just as the troops left. It was ruthlessly executed but ultimately lead to them being banned from the server once the admin(s) realized what they had done. I must take my hat off too them for their resourcefulness and planning, but their skills could probably be better utilized by Mosad or the CIA.

I never understood cheating in computer games, as this is completely different from cheating in school exams! If you don’t finish a game it’s not like you don’t gain entrance to college. Games are designed to be immersive exciting experiences, and when you cheat the fun just completely evaporates. The sense of challenge and danger are no more….because you are now a cheating swine……who will die alone in a giant pair of incontinence pants