Fallout 3

[prinnysquad]

I ordered the standard, Get Here After The Horse Has Bolted Edition. VP has bought an Elite which comes bundled with Fallout 3 and Fable 2, so I'm having his Fallout 3 for 25 squids.

[MonkeyJuggleDX]

VP and his 47 360's!!!!

[Spatial]

This game continues to amaze.

I started playing at 8.00 last night, next thing I know it's 1.30 in the morning.

I haven't played something which makes me this twitchy since STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (there's something about dystopian nuclear waste lands that makes me very, very unsettled). Travelling at night makes me skittish (and god help if I'm ambushed by some horrible irradiated freak at night because that ****s me right up) and tromping around through some of the underground caverns where you can't see past your nose (even with the light from your Pip-boy) is going to give me a heart attack soon.

But there are literally hundreds of organically created moment which makes this amazing to play.

Like yesterday I got sent out by Moira to do some research into landmines. She sent me off to a small little village appropriately called `Landmine` with the infamous words "It's ghost town so all you'll have to worry about is the landmines".

Great I think and off I go. Find the town and, unsurprisingly, it looks like nothing more than ruined buildings and a central road straight through - all of it littered with landmines.

->Open Spoiler<-

I start to pick my way through when all of a sudden there's a gun shot - bearing in mind I have the volume on my amp pretty high at this point - and the shot whizzes right past my head. I have no idea where this has come from and the sun's low in the sky so I can't really see. Then there's another and I realise that the car in front of me in the road has been set alight. I try to make a run for it, freaking because I'm in the middle of a minefield and manage to hope over a picket fence at the side of the road just as the car explodes and topples on where I would have been.

Of course my heavy footed escape has tripped off a mine and I have to dart around the side of a building, triggering three more as I go and running hell for leather, thankfully avoiding being crippled by an explosion.

I creep around the side of the house to spot the sniper atop the highest building and seeing as the road's not an option (there are loads of cars and mines on it) I have to creep through the town using buildings for cover and deactivating mines. Talk about tense, my hands were sweating like hell.

I manage to pick my way around and flank the sniper, all the way around and up a hill which gives me a great vantage point of him. I settle in and use VATS to line up my hunting rifle.

Bang!

The shot just misses him and he spins around, firing right at me. Ducking behind a rock I pop up and target him again. In a bit of a panic now I end up targeting his head and torso but must have got another in on his sniper rifle too. The shot to his gun hits smack on, breaking it and forcing him to throw it down and leg it.

He dives out of sight and I swing around the rock, desperate to see where he's gone. He bolts from cover on the ground floor, emerging from some steps only for me to hit him clean with a rifle shot and sending him skidding to the floor - stone cold dead.

All that's left is for me to creep in and ransack his body before finding where he threw his rifle. On my next trip to Megaton, I trade in some bottlecaps and gots me a brand new weapon

What I love is how that scenario could have played out any number of ways. If I hadn't hit the lucky shot and broke his weapon that it could have been a stand off with rifles across the gap. Amazing stuff.

And another favourite this morning was when,

->Open Spoiler<-

deep underground in a train station, I got ambushed by a load of Raiders. I managed to take three of them down and the fourth shouts "I'm getting out of here!" and legs it at full speed.

Not being one for mercy I chased her through the twisting tunnels. She's bloody fast though and every time I catch sight of her she's just rounding another corner.

But I'm not giving up.

The corridors suddenly open out into a large generator room and as I burst through the door she's almost to the other side and rapidly disappearing from sight. Line up a shot with VATS and bang!

A stone cold kill right in the back which kills her outright.

[hush]

i just picked this up today and am looking forward to playing tonight

[prinnysquad]

Spatial - while round VP's on Friday night he went on exactly the same quest.

->Open Spoiler<-

It was nighttime when he came under fire in much the same way as what happened to you. I took over for a bit and managed to sneak through the rubble to the houses on the right of the town. I slept in a bed til it was daylight, to have a better chance of spotting him. Deactivating mines on the way, we sneaked to the building he was on from the right, and climbed the steps. He spotted us and came running down, wielding a melee weapon. Where's his rifle? we thought. We whupped him then went to the very top of the building to find his rifle, abandoned. Picking it up, it was knackered. Unbeknown to us, a lucky shot that VP had fired from around the car during the initial long range tussle had hit his weapon, immobilising it. He used the FPS view, though, not targetting it specifically using the VATS. We'd spent ages carefully avoiding him and his lines of sight, slept until daylight, and flanked him, all without knowing that we had the upper hand all along!

Same event, subtley different approaches and experiences.

[kernow]

You guys really aren't doing a very good job of making me not want to buy this

[Spatial]

Same event, subtley different approaches and experiences.

That's excellent - proof indeed that the scenario can different from person to person

After that I was in need of health and it was getting dark so I moved in to one of the houses to spend the night. It just didn't feel right having to

->Open Spoiler<-

pull the chard skeletons of the ex-residents off the bed and dump them unceremoniously in the bathtub out of the way but there was no way in hell I was sleeping on the bed with them.

And I angled it so if I was awoken at night by any ghosties, then I already had my gun trained on the door. I doubt that would have actually happened but this game is so atmospheric it makes me very paranoid

[Strolls]

I just finished the Survival Guide quest.

->Open Spoiler<-

After i got my stingy reward, i blew her head off and then finished the bodyguard off before he drew his gun. I then robbed her copse for a decent 1200 caps, then her entire store and took everything valuable that i sold to her in the first place. The bitch deserved to die! ^_^

When you do that,

->Open Spoiler<-

are you able to steal the Hospital & Laboratory accessories for your house? I'm actually not sure what use these are - when I found myself addicted to Buffout I found it was 1250 bottletops for the lab, but only 50 for the medic to cure me. So you'd have to get addicted 25 times to make it cost-effective!

Having said that, if you can make good explosives with it, then it might be worthwhile - I was ignoring the lunchbox mine until I realised how much damage it does. The lunchbox mine can take out a super-mutant, which normally takes 2 or 3 frag-grenades. Now I'm left wondering where it was I saw all those lunchboxes I previously ignored!!

Another cool thing in Megaton is

->Open Spoiler<-

the armory. On my second visit to Megaton, I bumped into the sheriff again and he asked me if I'd managed to defuse the bomb. One of the options was "no, but this other guy asked me to blow up the town", so he tells me to come with him to the bar to sort this out. When we get there there's a conversation and the baddie agrees to be led to jail, only to pull a gun as soon as the sheriff turns his back. I was ready to engage him and did so after he'd fired only 1 shot, but unfortunately the sheriff was already dead. So I ransack the sheriff's pockets and find a key to the armory only to discover it is guarded by a floating-octopi robot, which introduces itself to me & then proceeds to blast me with its lazer. Fleeing outside the building I find it pursues me & that when I return fire it turns the whole town is against me and Megaton is full of enemies. Needless to say I didn't last much longer and after I returned to my last save I forsook the opportunity to inform the sheriff of the ne'erdowell in his midst!

Stroller.

[Strolls]

...
Like yesterday I got sent out by Moira to do some research into landmines. She sent me off to a small little village appropriately called `Landmine` with the infamous words "It's ghost town so all you'll have to worry about is the landmines".
...

->Open Spoiler<-

I manage to pick my way around and flank the sniper, all the way around and up a hill which gives me a great vantage point of him. I settle in and use VATS to line up my hunting rifle.

When I managed to

->Open Spoiler<-

kill him, he fell off a ledge and I was amazed to see his body leap up in the air several times before being thrown clear of the compound. It took me a moment to realise that this wasn't a bug - he had kept hitting landmines and got blown up skywards! I never managed to find either his body or the rifle, which is a shame, because apparently this is a particularly good sniper rifle. All the rifles I have found so far give very poor damage and I have always been better off going for headshots with the 10mm handgun or automatic.

This game certainly appears to have a lot of scope for replayability.

->Open Spoiler<-

Apparently I was too slow in rescuing Red from the supermutants (Bigtown Quest), and they shot her as I was a room or two from her cell. I googled this afterwards thinking "is that it? `go back and tell the town she's dead?' what a lame quest!" and apparently there's a lot more you can do back at Bigtown if you rescue her in time.

Stroller.

[Strolls]

List of Fallout 3 bugs

A few people have mentioned bugs, so here's a list of bugs from fallout.wikia.com.

To me, few of these - outside a couple in the initial vault training levels, which can easily be replayed - seem to be deal breakers. Typical is "it is possible to get `stuck' between rocks with no way of escaping (jumping, crouching, etc.) User can fast travel to escape".

I've noticed pauses when PS3 notifications come through, but since I have few friends this hasn't really bothered me.

[Myth]

I just did the Minefield mission too, loved it.

->Open Spoiler<-

The way I tackled it was by coming up the road and breaking into the first house which I used to sleep in and recover my health.

Then as I came out of the house I could hear gunshots and looking around the only place which worried me was if there was someone up on that high tower as my best ranged weapon was a hunting rifle which really isn't all the powerful and had hardly any damage so I didn't want to risk alerting anyone.

I worked my way around the next house and saw the sniper looking the other way so I slowly worked my way up the tower disarming the mines as I went. As I reached the floor he was on I got out my baseball bat, snuck up behind him and used vats to hit him over the head 3 times which killed him there and then.

Loving this game so much at the moment.

[vanpeebles]

This game continues to amaze.

I started playing at 8.00 last night, next thing I know it's 1.30 in the morning.

Haha I was on till early 1am ish and looked at my friends list and only you were on also on Fall Out 3. I love this game, I've had some right adventures. I've just been picking points on the map and making my way to them on foot. Superb stuff.

[Btang84]

Oblivion was a game I could never get into, and part of that is probably due to the fantasy world setting. Fallout 3 always tempted me with its Olbivion with guns theme. However, I don't think even I could have imagined how much this has drawn me in and how great the game plays.

It's definitely not a title that will impress your friends, it's the type of game I tend to enjoy in isolation, absorbing the atmosphere of the Wasteland and humming along to the music. I would actually draw comparisons to Deus Ex and Metroid Prime in that respect.

[SuperBeatBoy]

If this is your first foray in the fallout series. Its worth checking out the previous games, they're still brilliant games. Any pc can run them. If i remember correctly you don't even need dosbox or what not, they install just fine.

[Btang84]

Will do mate.

My mate is a big fan of the previous games and whilst he is playing Fallout 3, he does keep banging on about how all the ideas where from the old games and there is nothing new in this. I wonder why he even bothers....

Apart from that, I will attempt to invest some time in playing one of the games.