Fallout 3 Melee Run

A little while ago, I decided to beat Fallout 3 only using the Unarmed skill in combat. I managed to do that almost exclusively, although there were a couple times I used grenades on people on high unreachable ledges.


(At the end of the game, I did a little posing with the Fat Man, a portable nuke launcher, one of the more endearing items in the game.)

One thing I noticed during the run is that I tended to get hurt only on the optional sidequests. After that, I largely stuck to the central story. I managed to win the game at only level 11. If I do another challenge run, I'm going to see how low level you can be at the end of the game. You can skip a great deal of even the central quests, and you can get an ally to fight for you in the first major city of the game.

I'm not sure, but I think the only real source of XP would be the rewards for completing quests critical to progressing the story. It's impossible to avoid that, so that'd be the minimum XP progress. Since I would have an ally, the already easy battles should be no trouble at all.

----------------
Now playing: The Cast Of Sweet Cuppin Cakes - Sweet Cuppin' Cakes Theme Song
via FoxyTunes

Fallout 3's interface compared to World Of Goo

First, a couple things about World Of Goo. World of Goo is a fantastic game that took anti-DRM people seriously, and included no DRM whatsoever. This was a perfect test of people who said they wouldn't have stolen Spore if it hadn't had DRM, that their theft was a symbolic act. It turns out that there are lots of people willing to steal World of Goo, since they ended up having a 90% piracy rate. That is to say, only 1 in 10 copies of World of Goo was purchased. This may have something to do with why the company that makes World of Goo has recently declared bankruptcy.

World of Goo does something truly impressive from a metagame standpoint, it's a fully featured game that only requires a single button. On the PC, you can play the entire game with Mouse1. I don't know of any other good game that can make that claim. (There's at least one bad one.)

I brought up this single button interface to compare to Fallout 3's less intuitive interface. Suppose you're in a menu checking your inventory, what button do you press to leave that menu? Depending on which menu you're in, you could press Tab, X, or A. To leave the Esc. menu, only hitting Esc. again will work. To make it perfectly clear, To simply exit a menu in Fallout 3, you have to hit one of four different buttons. This is terrible design. This still doesn't make the game bad, but it's another sign of how the game needed a few more rounds of polish.

----------------
Now playing: Simply Syndicated - The Right Stuff
via FoxyTunes

Fallout 3 Review

As part of my ongoing Fallout 3 commentary, here's a review.

Fallout 3 is a good game, but only for people in the right mindset.

If you're looking for instant FPS action, in the mode of Halo or Call of Duty, this is the wrong game. This game is about Roleplaying. You can win much of the game without shooting, although shooting is often the easiest way to get through a situation. There are lots of options with dialogue and choices that effect the game world. In fact, a completionist would have a difficult time with this game, since it offers so many options, many of which are decisions that cannot be reversed, that it could take dozens of replays to get all the possible major quest differences.

Exploration can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your attitude. There are so many places scattered on the map, you can explore without a goal for hours. If you like the feeling of being alone with your dog as you walk across a wasteland, only hearing distant noises, then it will work. If you just wish games would just get you to the next city or fight, then this may drive you insane.

Visually, it's a great improvement above predecessors like Oblivion. Bethesda's terrain has improved enormously since Morrowind. Where aritificial barriers to the horizon were everywhere, now we can stand on a high point and see beautiful scenery, if you have the processing power for it.

There's good writing and humour. Although many of your dialogue options have little to no effect, it's still nice to be able to cuss out the people who irritate you. For a game with this level of language and violence, (heads explode regularly, and if you get the Bloody Mess Perk, [which I don't recommend] entire bodies exploding into disgustingly explicit gibs becomes the default death) the sexuality is extremely tame. There's a woman who is apparently a prostitute, assuming prostitutes sleep in a bed while you sleep in the same bed. There's another prostitute that "services" NPC's, and that's it. The ethical code that doesn't mind brutal murder and cannibalism but cannot accept consensual sex is a strange product of our times.

For the rating proper, I turn to the Ron Perlman system, of course.

The narrator is Ron Perlman. He only speaks at the beginning and end of the game, and he does a fine job, despite the stupidness of the ending.

2/5 Ron Perlmans

Fallout 3

I've decided to do a series of posts about Fallout 3. First I've decided to issue a series of pictures I took.

The first few are of my apartment. I couldn't have it cleaned, so forgive the dingy-ness.




My table, with my Minigun and the Mechanist's costume.












My shelves, with my collection of Nuka-Cola Quantums, (some of them are multiple bottles in one "item")

The costumes on the left are the Ant Agonizer and a radiation suit.









My end table, with a few mementoes of my adventures. If you can tell what the two tubes are, then you deserve a prize.








My bedstand, with my Abe Lincoln action figure, and a pile of Benjamins.





The Lincoln Memorial, stark in the cloudy evening.

The Washington Monument, still standing, but just barely.