I played through megaton.

I must say, I'm not terribly distraught about how fallout 3 turned out. As a friend of mine put it, "Why spend 30 minutes bitching about dog shit you find in your yard when you fully expected it to be there."

This travesty of a reskinned oblivion might have been a little easier to swallow had oblivion itself not been such a flaming piece of crap.

The AI (of course, it's a bethesda game) is utterly terrible, and the puppet show "towns" only seem to be a vehicle intended to kick you in the face over and over with the knowledge that life in the wasteland is a fucking errand boy's paradise of "oblivion" quests. You know, those type of quests that are so poorly written that you neither know nor care why someone would be trying to send a letter to their parents who live a five fucking minutes "overburdened" stroll from where the letter was written. Or, you could help someone write a book by going to check out the supposedly 200 year old wal*mart, which, as well as every other little "hey, we remember the 50's so we're going to put fucking 50's bullshit EVERYWHERE throughout the wasteland" has decayed only enough for you to notice that it's decayed, but not enough for you to miss how fucking clever todd howard was when he noticed people noticing the 50's and decided to mention it. You know, like in the original Fallout, where there were 90% legible billboards everywhere with a bright, shiny picture of CAPTAIN PROTON that has it's lower left corner looking a little crumpled.

Besides the fact that the wasteland is a insulting puppet show of random encounters from STALKER filled with signs and portents that bethesda really wanted to be let into the "we talked to someone about what fallout was about and tried our best to fit in" club, the skills have been dumbed down to a bioshock level of crudesence. That's right, Crudesence. Medical, which replaces first aid and doctor has thus far yielded absolutely zero role playing application. Nor has repair (only used for fixing/creating weapons) or science (only used for hacking terminals). But wait! If you have Explosives (now combined with throwing, because throwing a football and using a land mine are the same skill when you're designing games for xbox fans) you can do the quest regarding the bomb in megaton!

Hey! Now we're talking! Forget the unkillable npcs that are already littered throughout the game (Andy the fucking robot?) and the fact that exactly like oblivion, the weapons certain people are holding are level scaled out of the game if you manage to shoot them the three times it takes to kill them (I'm talking about you, sheriff of megaton, you tutorial npc piece of garbage who's dialog options let me inquire about things it is literally impossible for me to have heard about yet). Forget all those "features", you can use your explosives skill on the bomb! Now we're talking!



Oh, so you've clicked on the bomb, gotten the ridiculously belief- suspension shattering popup WAARGK! ERROR! WARRRGK! ERROR! MYSTICAL INTERFACE SPEAKING TO YOU ERROR! YOU, PLAYER CHARACTER! YES YOU! YES I'M TALKING TO YOU! YOU MUST HAVE EXACTLY 25 SKILL POINTS IN EXPLOSIVE TO QUOTE UNQUOTE INTERACT WITH THE BOMB. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING.

At this point I just sat with my head in my hands going "Wow, so you people didn't play fallout, did you? You just didn't actually play the game, huh? You saw the game. You heard about why people loved it... or more to the point, what game magazine reviewers have written about why people loved Fallout, because you refused to listen to what the fans of the series were saying. We loved the game because of many reasons, so many that many fans might even choke up a little and be unable to describe exactly where those feelings came from. But one thing that's really, really damned easy to mention is the immersion. The fact that when you tried to do anything, the game addresses your character in the dialog box as "You." "You attempt to pick the lock on the door, but fail." It's this indication that like in real life, your character can attempt and fail things without having some red goddamn hologram pop up and say ACCESS DENIED. THIS DOOR REQUIRES 100 LOCK PICK SKILL. YOU CAN TELL. IT'S CLEAR FROM THIS RED GODDAMN HOLOGRAM."

Where the hell did you go so far wrong that you decided that between wrist radios that function after 200 years, but look about like they just came out of a goddamn plastic molding factory (like everything on the oblivion engine) and teddy bears being fired from a spring decapitating raiders that you'd prefer to Set A Course for Shitville, heading 102.285, Warp 8 rather than play the original games and see what made them special?

You can take the 50's feeling into the wasteland, plaster our beloved icons all over the place, do up your own really "endearingly clever" (in your own opinion) recreations of the original art and plaster it on immortal billboards and install process slides, but if you miss the fact that being railroaded through a clearly fable-esque childhood tutorial that only exists because you "fine folks" got a chortle out of thinking up the "You're SPECIAL" book, and needed, by any means necessary and excuse to include it in the game, despite the damage it did to the entire credibility of survival in the wasteland experience, especially in sight of the fact that the entire introduction sequence is clearly a teary eyed "heheheheheeheheh!111" on the part of bethsoft, managing to work their little garbage "we do this every time" elder scrolls prison sequence into the game, you are and to put it lightly "responsible for a terrible game." Oh, it's a metaphorical prison though. Nobody will notice that like in our ACCLAIMED SERIES FOR XBOX AND XBOX360 THE ELDER SCROLLS we've forced the character to start in a prison where he can create his character, do a tutorial, then escape, do a combat tutorial and then receive the insulting "Are you sure this is what you want the character that you are playing in this video entertainment game Fallout 3 by Bethesda Softworks Copyright 2008 Bethesda Softworks to be like? Feel free, despite the fact that you're already responsible for several things that have happened and have probably killed something and been injured already to click NO on this dialog and recreate your character starting with appearance. Copyright 2008 Bethesda Softworks" dialog before exiting into the wide, wide, wide, smaller than the last game we made on this engine, society and world of the wasteland.

Well.

I seem to have unfortunately spent the 30 minutes complaining that I mentioned I was going to try to avoid doing, and I really haven't even scratched the surface of the things which stood out to me as blatantly shiesty about the game. I guess if you want to pick up where I left off, just take a look at the things that sucked about oblivion, sucked about morrowind and have always sucked about Bethesda games and tack those on the list, tear that page off, start a new page and include the fact that fallout 3 plays exactly as poorly as every other carnival ride 60 bucks at the door xbox360 game, then take the entire list and bury it, as no matter how many times people say this exact same thing over and over again, nobody will read it because it's not economically viable to make games that arn't garbage.

Or at least, that's the way things appear. Prove me wrong next time guys. Prove me wrong.

-popscythe