Review: Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition
Posted by Kevin "K-Tuck" Tucker on November 2nd, 2009
Bethesda Game Studio’s Fallout 3 was one of the most ambitious game releases of last year. After winning numerous Game of the Year awards from online and printed publications, the Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition was created to offer players the very best of what the game had to offer. Unfortunately, what draws gamers towards this version of the game also happens to be the part that ruins the overall package – the previously-downloadable expansions packed onto the disc are almost wholly unplayable, and serve to mar what was originally an enjoyable experience.
Fallout 3 Game of the Year Edition, like the original version of the game, puts players into the shoes of an unnamed Lone Wanderer setting out from his or her home within Vault 101. The focus of the main storyline is to find the Wanderer’s father James after he up and leaves the vault, seen as somewhat of an unthinkable and despicable action. The quest to reunite with his father takes the protagonist through the main hot spots of the Wasteland within Fallout 3, and introduces several key players and the branching points of the many side quests.
Much like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, another Bethesda-developed RPG, the sidequests are the main draw to the game. Players are given dozens of various quests that can appeal to the player’s Karma role (Good, Neutral, or Evil) or the need to find loot and weapons. Optional missions range from the minutia of generic fetch quests to something as grand in scope as detonating a nuclear bomb that has been laying dormant in the town of Megaton for years. Each quest brings about the option to earn experience, money, gain weapons, find new locations, and to reveal more about what happened to the world before and after the nuclear war destroyed the land and most of its inhabitants.
Seeing as how the missions not directly related to the plot made up the bulk of the title, it was easy to see how downloadable expansions could benefit the game. The core experience for Fallout 3 was about 30 quests strong, and the campaign to complete them all could take anywhere from 20 to 40 hours. Thus, each additional mission could potentially add hours to the experience.
The first to be released by Bethesda was Operation: Anchorage. This expansion has players put themselves into a computer simulation detailing the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from Chinese dictation. Operation: Anchorage only provides a single string of missions, and forces players to play Fallout 3 more like an action game, complete with squad members and stations to replenish health and ammunition.
Second was The Pitt, enticing players to travel to the remnants of Pittsburgh in the hopes of curing the locale of the plague and powerful Slavers that occupy the area. The Pitt offers new or different weapons, clothing, armor, and enemies.
The third release was Broken Steel, which may or may not change the player’s end-game actions. Because Broken Steel acts as a continuation of the main storyline, the finite ending to the story is altered, and the level cap is increased from 20 to 30. This expansion details the hunt for the Enclave soldiers remaining in the Wasteland by the Brotherhood of Steel, as well as the aftermath of the ending of the game.
Point Lookout was the fourth release. Point Lookout is an entirely new area players can travel to via boat, complete with over 25 new locations to discover. The initial quest given is to find a woman’s daughter who had traveled to Point Lookout and never returned, but players ultimately find themselves caught in a battle between two psychopaths, one of whom who has been controlling and directing a brainwashed cult.
Lastly, Mothership Zeta has the player character be abducted by aliens and fight for his or her freedom from the aliens as well as the craft itself. Mothership Zeta, like Operation: Anchorage before it, is largely combat-focused. Since it does not take place in a simulation, Zeta offers players the chance to get away with some rare alien weaponry.
While players on the Xbox 360 and PC were able to grab the Fallout 3 DLC as soon as it became available, players with Sony’s PS3 have had to wait a long while to give them a run (a long enough wait to warrant trading in the original version of the game and buying the new Game of the Year Edition, instead of dropping $9.99 on each of the five expansions in the same month that the GOTY was released). This is why its such a shame that the new version of the game is nigh-unplayable, particularly in the new areas added by the expansions.
Charging through Anchorage, Alaska was at first extremely entertaining. The player is essentially contending with hordes of Chinese soldiers in a frozen, war-torn area. While the game only froze once or twice within this location, I would estimate that at least 75% of the time I spent in Operation: Anchorage had me playing the game at less than 10 frames per second. It was nearly impossible to manage. Much like in the rest of the game, the first thing a player thinks to do when encountering a foe is to bring up the V.A.T.S. combat system. In Operation: Anchorage and Mothership Zeta, V.A.T.S. seems to be the main source of the problem. Switching between targeted areas on one enemy took upwards of 25 seconds (I counted), and sometimes the game would freeze before I could even fire off a round.
The Pitt and Point Lookout suffered a different problem. While there was not very much noticeable lag, the game would lock up during random events. V.A.T.S. again was the main offender here, freezing the game as soon as the lock-on was performed. The game also froze during quick travel, when entering buildings, and when initiating a conversation with an NPC.
Playing these newer parts of the game obviously becomes frustrating when the time spent in-game is shorter than the time spent rebooting the PS3, restarting the game, and reloading the save. I felt an obligation to complete these parts, both because I am reviewing the game and because I found Fallout 3 to be an amazing, immersive experience, but I honestly doubt that players new to the game would be willing to put up with this kind of behavior from a recent release or from a game that has been out for over a year.
The worst part about these issues, even worse than losing patience or losing the will to play any game including Fallout 3, is that these expansions actually have a lot of promise. I pushed straight through Operation: Anchorage because I could see that it was showing me how Fallout could be more action-packed. I was very much enjoying fighting the ridiculously overpowered Feral Reavers, and was reminded of some of the more trippy elements of Oblivion during the Tribal quests of Point Lookout. I wanted to see how the aliens would be represented, how they would fight, and how their weapons would handle. All of these expansions could have delivered on the core Fallout 3 experience while nearly totally deviating from the subjects or bases of the standard missions. How they actually turned out is about as bleak and depressing as the Wasteland itself.
Fallout 3 itself is an amazing title, and even in this version, the majority of the basic Wasteland missions are without hitch (or with only as few problems as the vanilla version of the title had). Since the new DLC is the whole draw to the The Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, this should have been an amazing package. However, even though the expansions show promise figuratively and literally, they don’t really let you experience it in the immersive nature that this title requires. Pushing through lag, scraping all of the fun that can be gathered without losing patience, and being punted out of a game is painful and embarrassing, and shows that Bethesda doesn’t have as much commitment as Fallout 3 has promise.
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| Doin It RIGHT:
- Fun combat - Immersive world. - Excellent graphics and sound. - Interesting new missions and storylines. |
Doin It RONG:
- Terrible lag. - Constant freezing issues. |
 FINAL SCORE: 5 / 10
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