It's A Brand New PostApocalyptic Dawn

I am old enough to have played the original game when it first came out in 1997. I was a great fan of the series that followed and, thus, was very eager to get my hands on this latest installment. In a short sentence: Fallout 3  is a dream come true.

It is a cRPG game in which the player can alternate between the First and Third person perspective roaming a world comparable in size with Oblivion. The action has moved from Vault 13 and Southern California to Vault 101 and Washington, D.C. and the story brakes away from the previous bloodlines. However, the atmosphere of the original has been maintained and its scents sharpened: veterans will find it fitting like and old glove - whereas the new gamers are in store for a bag of pleasant surprises.

The graphics are wonderful, the guns detailed and the environments highly interactive. Short of a screenshot, imagine what would HalfLife-2 would look if released today. And similar to HL2, Fallout 3  does not require an...übercomputer to run smoothly. Once you see a NPC move though, you understand where the corners were cut.

Character customization is carried out in great style using the new and improved PIP-BOY at the beginning. You exit the vault and the harsh reality of a world that barely survived annihilation slaps you on the face. Adapt or perish.

The main storyline is there to be followed but Fallout 3 offers the greatest number of alternative choices I have ever encountered in a game! There is always a great number of paths to follow in order to achieve any goal - but every choice comes with a consequences tag. This is common feature of most classic cRPGs but in Fallout 3  I saw it implemented like never before. If nothing else, this sends replayability through the roof.

Side-quests offer little besides distraction and experience points (XP) to be spend on character improvement. XP are gained solely by completing quests, emerging victorious from fights, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals - and they are not limited by the action they were earned. Levelling up is based on 7 basic attributes [Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility & Luck - acronym?;)] that, in turn, affect your (13) specific skills. Since levelling

up is capped at Level-20, the game designers wanted to encourage replaying the game. On the other hand, it also means that your character will never realize its full potential (in case you are wondering why I withheld a star from fun, that's the second half of it).

The game is violent and gory but well within tasteful limits. Not so with the language - but it is tradeoff with realism. In a radioactive world, Sunday-school niceties are bound to go out the window.

What deserves a special mention is V.A.T.S. (:Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) which opens new vistas in cRPG design. It is an ingenious system which lets you pause the game and target specific body parts of your opponents. The success of your attack still depends on your skills but the end effect is cinematic and amazing (remember the movie Swordfish?).

After the nuclear summer of 2008 (with all the LimitedInstallation-defective EA releases), this seems like a postapocalyptic dawn indeed! Bethesda decided to listen to the gaming community and did not cripple this beautiful game with any idiotic DRM scheme. Inputting a serial number and a DVD-check is more than reasonable.

The publishers of Fallout 3  understand that there is a fine balance between "protecting the product" and..."insulting your own customers". And they obviously view respect as the two way street that it is - and for this they deserve our support: buy this game, today.

Voting with our wallets is the only argument the gaming industry cannot afford to ignore. And it is about time to cast some well deserved positive votes.

The Brand New PostApocalyptic Dawn Is Now Complete

I am old enough to have played the original game when it first came out in 1997. I was a great fan of the series that followed and, thus, was very eager to get my hands on this latest installment. In a short sentence: Fallout 3 is a dream come true! And now the dream is complete.

It is a cRPG game in which the player can alternate between the First and Third person perspective roaming a world comparable in size with Oblivion. The action has moved from Vault 13 and Southern California to Vault 101 and Washington, D.C. and the story brakes away from the previous bloodlines. However, the atmosphere of the original has been maintained and its scents sharpened: veterans will find it fitting like and old glove - whereas the new gamers are in store for a bag of pleasant surprises.

The graphics are wonderful, the guns detailed and the environments highly interactive. Short of a screenshot, imagine what would HalfLife 2 would look if released today. And similar to HL2, Fallout 3 does not require an...ubercomputer to run smoothly. Once you see a NPC move though, you understand where the corners were cut.

Character customization is carried out in great style using the new and improved PIP-BOY at the beginning. You exit the vault and the harsh reality of a world that barely survived annihilation slaps you on the face. Adapt or perish.

The main storyline is there to be followed but Fallout 3 offers the greatest number of alternative choices I have ever encountered in a game! There is always a great number of paths to follow in order to achieve any goal - but every choice comes with a consequences tag. This is common feature of most classic cRPGs but in Fallout 3 I saw it implemented like never before. If nothing else, this sends replayability through the roof.

Side-quests offer little besides distraction and experience points (XP) to be spend on character improvement. XP are gained solely by completing quests, emerging victorious from fights, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals - and they are not limited by the action they were earned. Leveling up is based on 7 basic attributes [Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility & Luck - acronym?;)] that, in turn, affect your (13) specific skills. Leveling up used to be capped at Level-20 (increased to 30 by installing the DLCs), as the game designers wanted to encourage replaying the game. However, with this increase, now your character can realize its full potential. Replaying the game is still a joy though.

The game is violent and gory but well within tasteful limits. Not so with the language - but it is trade off with realism. In a radioactive world, Sunday-school niceties are bound to go out the window.

What deserves a special mention is V.A.T.S. (:Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) which opens new vistas in cRPG design. It is an ingenious system which lets you pause the game and target specific body parts of your opponents. The success of your attack still depends on your skills but the end effect is cinematic and amazing (remember Swordfish?).

This GOTY edition includes all 5 DLCs released so far: Operation: Anchorage, The Pitt, Broken Steel, Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta. Compared to the basic Fallout 3  applying the above improves the experience immensely! As mentioned above, since one used to reach the Level 20 cap long before the endgame, increasing this by 10 levels will give you a brand new ballgame.

Augmented weapons, new territories, novel foes and unexpected story branching - all for the price of the original game. I own the original game and coveted after these DLCs in the past months, waiting for a complete edition such as this GOTY one. When it became available I jumped at the opportunity to get them all. And did not regret it for a moment.

After the nuclear summer of 2008 (with all the Limited-Installation/defective EA releases), this seems like a post-apocalyptic dawn indeed! Bethesda decided to listen to the gaming community and did not cripple this beautiful game with any idiotic DRM scheme. Inputting a serial number and a DVD-check is more than reasonable.

The publishers of Fallout 3 understand that there is a fine balance between "protecting the product" and..."insulting your own customers". And they obviously view respect as the two way street that it is - and for this they deserve our support: buy this game, today.

Voting with our wallets is the only argument the gaming industry cannot afford to ignore. And it is about time to cast some well deserved positive votes.

Murphy's Law On Radioactive Tovariches

This is not a game to pick up to have mindless fun. Because everything that can go wrong eventually will. Unfortunately not just in the game.

Metro 2033 is set in a postapocalyptic Russian cityscape where only the lucky(?) commuters in the famous Moscow underground survived the nuclear blasts - and are now tormented by the cruel conditions they have to face. The underground tunnels belong to surviving humans ranging to both ends of the moral spectrum and various mutant creatures, all trying to make the most of their life.

And life is harsh. Ammunition is so scarce it is used as currency. So you have to be very careful with your aim. Having to make every shot count may sound fun but the next time you get caught with an almost empty weapon between nasty mutants and bloodthirsty enemies you may long for a more generous game design.

The weapons are not many but they are well designed. Both the pre-war and the improvised ones offer more or less realistic mechanics and satisfying results.

Light and shadows play an important role and stealth is something you will be thinking quite a lot - especially if you are low on ammunition. The graphics of the environments are detailed and beautiful whereas the movements seem fluid and natural. The game designers aimed in increasing the immersion factor wherever they could (there is no HUD besides your cross-hairs, you have to hit T to take a look at your watch - very important when venturing into the irradiated cities); however, pop-up messages and stuttering take a big bite out of that.

Metro 2033 will inevitably be compared to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. I found S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to be more of an RPG (hence its open sandbox nature) whereas METRO 2033 is more of a shooter with a predestined path to follow.

The PC I run this maxed out is a 2 years old system (WinXP SP3, P7 920 on MSI Eclipse with 3GB of RAM and an ASUS nVIDIA GTX480) and the game showed a proneness to stuttering, especially when enemies swarmed. I guess a future patch could take care of that but I would had preferred to receive a finished game and not one rough around its edges.

The retail version of Metro 2033 comes with Red Faction: Guerrilla as a bonus. It is not a bad game and, contrary to Metro, it offers more fun than immersion.

Finally, even he retail version of the game will require to be tied to a STEAM account. Yes that means ownership of your game will be stolen back and you will be allowed to play with it but not actually keep it. Whether this is acceptable to you or not you can now make an informed decision.

Tread with caution.