Fallout 3

The Good
01 - Fallout 3 offers a vast, post-apocalyptic world to explore with various locations and environments affected by nuclear warfare. 02 - The game provides numerous quests and side missions that impact the storyline and overall gaming experience. 03 - Players can choose their own path in this open-world environment, either focusing on main storylines or exploring secondary tasks. 04 - Character development is a key feature with players able to customize skills and abilities based on their preferences and gameplay style. 05 - The game offers countless hours of entertainment due to its immersive world, diverse quests, and the ability to replay multiple times with different choices.

The Bad
01 - Some players may find the game's interface and controls to be outdated or less user-friendly compared to more modern titles. 02 - The graphics, while impressive for its time, can appear dated when compared to more recent open-world games. 03 - Certain aspects of the storyline and quest design might not appeal to everyone, leading some players to feel disconnected from the game's narrative. 04 - The vastness of the world may overwhelm or confuse newcomers to the series, making it difficult for them to navigate through the game. 05 - Technical issues such as bugs and glitches can sometimes detract from the overall gaming experience.

The Bottom Line
Fallout 3 is a post-apocalyptic, open-world role-playing game set in a vast and detailed world. Players can explore various locations, complete quests, and develop their character through skill customization. The game offers an immersive experience with diverse storylines and countless hours of entertainment. However, some players may find the controls outdated or graphics less impressive compared to more recent titles.

The Good
It improves on Oblivion in some ways. The environments are more interesting and varied (but most feel more artificial than Morrowind). The faces look normal again (still miles away from e.g. Mass Effect or Crysis). Level scaling seems to be mostly absent. The PIPBoy interface is well done. Physics is improved, and by improved I mean that cups are now bolted to tables and so on.

The Bad
Fallout 3 is really an action-adventure title and not a RPG. The stats are mostly meaningless.

The set pieces vary from decent to abysmal and do not from a coherent whole. The nature of presentation in previous Fallout games left a lot to the imagination and you could fill the details yourself and pretend it made sense. In F3 everything is available in very graphic detail and it does not come together well.

Radiant AI is still crap. The results are either hilarious or frustrating, depending on your mood.

There's some swearing, prostitution, and tons of gore, but it doesn't feel like it's part of the world, but rather it that it was just tacked on to make the game edgy and mature. This is a rather dubious addition to a game which mostly feels like a Disney production.

They tried hard to include "Fallout features" like being able to put explosives onto people but apparently it didn't occur to them that some were a design flaw in the first place and while it was cute in a 2D isometric RPG game in 1998 it's kind of stupid in a modern fully 3D first-person game.

The Bottom Line
It's Oblivion with guns. It's very far from an ideal "Fallout 3", but depending on what you are expecting it might still be enjoyable. Playing it I can't help but feel that the target audience for Fallout 3 is ten years younger than for the previous Fallout games.

The Good
It's cool to see some of the stuff you know and loved from the earlier games but now in 3D.

It's cool to see the post-apocalyptic versions of real-world locations in the Washington DC area.

The shooting gameplay is arguably more fun than the hack, slash and magic of The Elder Scrolls games.

The Bad
The bleak environment isn't as nice to roam around in as Bethesda's previous games Oblivion and Morrowind were.

The game has a level cap which is ridiculously low if you want to explore the world beyond the main quest. There are mods that can help bypass this limit.

The Bottom Line
Fallout 3 does an admirable job of bringing the world of Fallout to a 1st person action game. But it's not without its shortcomings.