It's not all doom and gloom
The first look at the brown-splattered, murky post-apocalyptic wasteland of Washington DC isn’t particularly exciting. On your first jaunt, on the way to the town of Megaton as you pass abandoned shopping trolleys and step over bits of concrete from the remnants of buildings, the game world feels empty and lifeless, seemingly nothing more than a vast area with little in it aside from the destruction left by a nuclear war.It isn’t until you reach the town of Megaton and get the chance to explore the area’s inns, weapon dealers and general stores and then embark on your first mission across the wastelands that you begin to get sucked in by its storyline and it becomes apparent that the sparseness and gloominess that embodies the entire game is deliberately part of the Fallout 3 atmosphere, something that ultimately helps to create a feeling of danger, trepidation and fear of the unknown each time you step out into the Wastelands.
For the most part, Fallout 3 follows standard RPG practices. You level up via EXP and can improve in certain skills along the way. There’s plenty of character interaction, where you need to make dialogue choices that will affect your character’s standing in the game. There are also plenty of missions, ranging from simple fetch quests to securing some hostages from Supermutants in the Germantown police station. There’s also plenty of choice in terms of following a good or bad path, which ultimately affects your karma, for example, by choosing whether to diffuse a bomb or blow it up to kill the whole community.
There’s also ample opportunity to grab loot along the way, from the likes of an abandoned supermarket or an open-air cinema, where you’ll find ammo, medical supplies and parts that can used to construct your own weapons. Like Oblivion, all loot has its own weight and value and can be valuable trading commodities allowing you to pick up some the more expensive and impressive weapons on offer. It's this array of cool weapons and the combat itself that ultimately makes Fallout 3 distinctive from other RPGS.
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