Fallout 3

Before its release, Bethesda showed so little of Fallout 3 that the media's collective mind, along with forum hype, turned a low-key title into a supposedly generational-leap in video games. Part fanfare for the Fallout franchise and part Oblivion mod, Fallout 3 is bound to disappoint anyone expecting a game unlike anything they've ever seen. It will disappoint anyone looking for a Call of Duty action pace in an open-world. Fallout 3 is a disappointment in the same way the Xbox360 initially was. It doesn't blow away the highest expectations imaginable, but that's the public's fault. What we have here is a refinement of Oblivion that changes settings and makes the journey feel less broken.

Oblivion was a huge world that I didn't want to be a part of. In this sense, Fallout 3 is no different except it's for entirely different reasons this time -- the right ones, at that. The wasteland feels real in a way that is hard to handle, the threats feel enormous, and the scope is daunting. Every complaint I had about Oblivion has been answered here. The graphics are finally able to display the world's scope properly on the 360 (no more gross pop-up trees), the main quest is actually decent (no 9 cloned dungeons), and the fighting system is fun and works. Fallout 3 doesn't quite meet my dream of sandbox game with Call of Duty/Half-Life production-level set pieces, but it's fair to say that the most throwaway of the game's missions would be the equal of Oblivion's best.

I honestly don't care for open-world games. I appreciate the effort put into creating a massive world, but I rather have a smaller, more convincing one. Fallout 3 is the first game in this pseudo-genre to open my eyes to the possibilities; for the first time, I felt the consequence of an action I chose 10 hours ago. There is usually so much "dead space" in these games that ironically diminish whatever efforts the game designers had to make you feel a part of the world -- a problem which Fallout 3 solves: the radio disc jockey comments on your latest conquest, townsfolk will talk amongst each other about up-to-date events, and the world is filled with unique characters and their own problems. You'll find yourself happen upon major events that the game willingly allows you to miss, where a lesser game would guide you to it -- a result of a designer's grudge against letting hours of his life go unnoticed by any player of the game.

I could rate GTA4 5-stars based on the world, but it always comes down to: is it fun? Fallout 3 is fun. It's not Bioshock, Half-Life, or Call of Duty. What it is, is the ultimate open-world dungeon crawler of its time. You go through stock, uninspired environments -- say that it is a product of the world, but that doesn't excuse unoriginality and recycled areas -- and take on random quests to see the final conclusion and what loot may come of it. You become evil to see the horrific consequences, you do good for the moral reward, and you walk between because the inner-moral conflict resides on a completely palpable level. Fallout 3 fails to immerse in the way a triple AAA shooter will, fails to reward in the way a more traditional RPG might, but it offers a world of possibilities and things to see. With so many possible things that Bethesda could of forgot or just got wrong, you have to appreciate it when a per-chance moment in Fallout 3 resonates on the same level a major set piece in another game might.