Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
When Interplay, the developer behind the original Fallout, announced that it was having financial troubles and would not be creating a sequel to Fallout 2, disappointment filled the hearts of Fallout fans. Even when Interplay sold the rights to Bethesda Softworks, despite the studio's proven track record, many fans couldn't help but doubt whether or not the developer could match Interplay's efforts. Fortunately, all the doubt was in vain. Bethesda has created a faithful 3D adaptation of the beloved franchise, and fans will appreciate and adore Fallout 3.

Fallout 3 takes place in 2077, around 200 years after a nuclear war that has changed the face of the United States. Set in a ruined Washington, D.C and surrounding area, Fallout 3 offers a frightening glimpse of what a post-nuclear war U.S. might look like. In the nuclear war-fearing years before the war, the U.S. government erected vaults for invited citizens to live in should there be an actual nuclear conflict, so that humanity could survive such a scenario. Indeed, there was such a war, and you are born into one of these vaults, Vault 101. All of your life, you're beaten with the vault's motto: you're born in the vault, you die in the vault -- no one ever comes into or leaves the vault. However, one morning, you awaken to find that your father, who is the vault's doctor, has unexplainably left the vault. As life in Vault 101 falls into chaos, you decide to find your father, leaving the vault and stepping outside into the unknown Capital Wasteland. Once outside, from your actions to your conversations with those who inhabit the land, you're able to do or say almost anything you want, making player freedom an integral theme of Fallout 3.


What's Hot
Fallout 3's story is compelling. There's a sense of mystery about your father and his life before you were born, and as you play the game, you'll unwind the truth about it all. It's difficult not to be engrossed by the premise. You've lived underground, protected from a world that you've only been exposed to via pictures of life before the war. When you first set eyes on the Capital Wasteland, you see a devastated and lifeless landscape of stripped trees and ruined buildings. Knowing nothing about this post-apocalyptic world, you must venture through it to find your father and uncover the truth.

Despite the harsh conditions of life post-war, humanity manages to survive. You'll encounter settlements of survivors, who are struggling to get by in the radiated, dangerous Capital Wasteland. Bethesda fans will feel right at home when it comes to interacting with these characters. Fallout 3 employs a dialogue system that's essentially ripped right out of the Elder Scrolls games. Using it, you'll interact with the game's characters. Nearly every character you encounter can be talked to, and you're free to treat each character however you like. If you want to be nice to people, you can, but if you want to be a downright bastard, there's nothing stopping you. Bethesda provides to you a selection of responses during conversation, and you pick the one that you like best. Depending on what you say, characters will respond to you differently. Rather than the game changing the storyline based on your interactions, you actually make the story depending on how you play. Other than the intro and ending, the story is told entirely through in-game conversations, so these conversations are a fundamental component of Fallout 3.

Your freedom is not limited to just conversations, even though perhaps just how much choice you have is most apparent during them. Many of the characters you encounter will ask for your help in the form of quests. Every quest offers the same kind of freedom the dialogue system does. There are a variety of ways that you can complete them -- that is if you choose to even do them. But I can't imagine anyone playing through Fallout 3 and ignoring them. Although you can stick to just the main quest line, chasing after your father, these sidequests are enjoyable and truly part of the Fallout 3 experience. They're not just tacked on, like sidequests are in many games. Rather, they're every bit a part of the story as the main quest is. You'll learn more about the Capital Wasteland and the characters who live in it through the sidequests. That said, in comparison to Bethesda's recent Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Fallout 3 seems a little more focused on the main quest than it does sidequests. Or perhaps it's just that the main quest's storyline is much stronger than Oblivion's, and thus you're more enticed to focus on it rather than sidequests.

In addition to the dialogue system and quests, the underlying gameplay design of Fallout 3 is strong. The game takes place in first-person and plays like a hybrid of the RPG and first-person shooter genres. Although you'll primarily use guns in combat, Fallout 3 is definitely more of an RPG than it is an FPS. You have an inventory which you fill with items that you collect as you explore the Capital Wasteland, you level up, you customize your character with the game's perks system and you encounter other role-playing elements along the way too. Even the combat is enhanced by an RPG approach to design. You're free to manually aim and fire, just like in, say, Half-Life 2, but using V.A.T.S. (Vault Automated Targeting System), you can play the game more like an RPG. In fact, I actually prefer to play using V.A.T.S. as it's such a well designed, cinematic tool. Using V.A.T.S., you can target different body parts of an enemy, each of which has its own effect when damaged. For instance, shooting the arm with which an enemy is holding its weapon will negatively impact its accuracy or prevent it from firing altogether. Meanwhile, shooting at the body will push an enemy backwards, away from you. Of course, headshots do the most damage and often result in a satisfying explosion of blood. Indeed, V.A.T.S. is gruesome, but it's entertaining because of the over-the-top gore.


Last but not least, Fallout 3 is immersive, which is thanks to its stunning visuals and fantastic audio quality. Perhaps not everyone who plays it will appreciate the desolateness of the Capital Wasteland, but there's something artistic and beautiful, at least in a tragic sort of way, about it. Exploring the ruins of a 1950s-style and decorated Washington, D.C. is a spellbinding, riveting experience. Stumbling upon famous landmarks, such as the deteriorated Washington Monument sitting across from the barely-standing Capital Building, and seeing how it all fares 200 years after a devastating nuclear war is a gripping visual moment. You can't help but appreciate the realness of the scenario and how frightening it is. Of course, the atmosphere wouldn't be what it is without its moody, ambient noise, whether it be the sound of gunfire, explosions, a radio station or stark silence. The production values are an award-worthy achievement.

What's Not
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion had its infamous problem: when you leveled up, so did all of the enemies in the game, and therefore, Oblivion became more difficult the higher level you were, rather than the other way around. Thankfully, Fallout 3 has escaped this problem, but it has been replaced by a new problem, unfortunately. In Oblivion, your skills, such as lock picking, increased as you used them. But in Fallout 3, you assign points to each skill as you level, which just doesn't work as well. As a result of this design, it's impossible to be a Jack of all trades -- that is, proficient in all areas. This is not so much a problem where combat is concerned, as it makes sense to force you to focus on one kind of combat. However, when it comes to secondary skills, such as lock picking or science, it's problematic. If you don't put enough points into a skill, you'll eventually find that you often can't use that skill later in the game. Because there's a relatively low level cap -- 20 -- you have to be cautious and think ahead as you dispense points. Otherwise, you could find yourself in a situation, even half-way through the game, in which you can't do what you want. For example, if you evenly invest in both lock picking and science and have level 50 in both skills, when you encounter a level 50 lock or computer terminal, you won't be able to interact with either. The deeper you get into the game, the higher level your skills will have to be to interact with these objects, so this can be an issue depending on how you play. Some might argue that this isn't a flaw in design, as you can avoid the problem by focusing on specific skills. That may be true, but the design does make Fallout 3 less enjoyable than it could have been.

Early in Fallout 3, ammunition is incredibly scarce. As you progress, the problem alleviates itself some, but during the first few hours of the adventure, the lack of ammo feels like a genuine problem. If you choose to do sidequests that do not reward you with ammo, you'll find that you're very low on ammo. Because the game's currency, bottlecaps, are also in fairly short supply in the beginning, you can easily find yourself in a situation in which you don't have enough ammo and don't have enough bottlecaps to purchase ammo. As a result of this, I found myself straying away from sidequests and exploring until later in the game because I didn't want to risk running out of ammo. There's no doubt that this is an intentional design choice on Bethesda's part, as the lack of ammo lends to the tense atmosphere. But it discourages exploration, which seems to go against what Bethesda games are all about.


When Bethesda announced that it was creating a Fallout game, I expected that its final product would basically be Elder Scrolls with a post-apocalyptic theme. In more ways than not, this is the case with Fallout 3. However, there are some key differences between Fallout 3 and the Elder Scrolls series, and while I am not necessarily taking issue with any of them, I think it's worth noting them. As a result of the theme, there are both fewer NPCs to interact with and fewer towns to visit as well. The game is more focused on the main quest than townplay and sidequesting, since there are less of both things. Again, this is not so much a complaint as it is an observation or a warning to those who expect the Elder Scrolls formula to translate without change to post-apocalyptia. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Fallout 3 sometimes feels too similar to Oblivion in the sense that mechanics, such as the dialogue system, haven't advanced much.

Final Word
Fallout 3 is an incredibly well done 3D adaptation of Interplay's cherished series. It is not a flawless title by any means, but it is a remarkable one. Bethesda's marriage of the RPG and FPS genres is a triumphant success, and it makes Fallout 3 a unique experience despite its similarities to Bethesda's past releases. Further, this open-ended adventure through a post-apocalyptic wasteland is simply captivating. You'll easily get sucked into the Capital Wasteland, and you'll want to explore every last bit of it before you put the controller down.

This is one of the best games of this generation, and a must-have for anyone with the slightest bit of interest in the post-apocalyptic genre.