Tessera's Fallout 3 REVIEW (public version)

NOTE: this is a copy of my Fallout 3 review. The actual thread for this review is in the members-only section of this board.
_________________________________________________ ___________________

Now that I've had a few days to actually play Fallout 3...
here are my first serious impressions of this game:

Dumbed-Down Rip-Off

This is not a Fallout game, folks. There are just too many glaring omissions from the original series. The sexual content is nearly absent. You can't kill kids (in fact, the other NPC's in F3 will attack you if you try). The drug use has been so severely toned down that it's actually not even a roleplaying element anymore... it's just a gimmick. In general, the only "mature" content is that you get to hear the word "fuck" a few times during certain NPC dialogues. As for the nature of those dialogues, Fallout 3 is even more insipid and uninspired than Oblivion was.

Nothing But Gore

This is related to the above. There's no mature content at all... not by my standards, anyway. We have a bunch of hookers who won't fuck you, for example. They won't even get naked. I'm not sure what it is that we're paying them for, but it sure as hell isn't sex. There's also a big chandelier that's shaped like a man mounting a woman -- missionary style. Incredibly, he isn't actually touching her, however. Sex without physical contact..? What a concept. There are also a few nude mannequins strewn about in the same building... but none of them have any anatomical details whatsoever. They look even less attractive than the mannequins found inside of Eshme's Boutique (if you are familiar with that mod for Oblivion).

So then... why is this game rated "M" for players 17+..? So far as I can tell, it's merely a gimmick to sell more copies, by titillating Bethesda's prospective customers with a rating that this game does NOT deserve and has NOT earned. All we have is gore and the word "fuck." Oh yeah... I think I also saw the word "asshole" on one of the static props. Whoopie... I'm sure that the 12-year-old kiddie konsole crowd got a good giggle from that word when they saw it.

Lame Storyline

I'm not very far into it, but I'm still waiting for this game to stop boring me and start pulling me in. But it isn't. I was 20 times more immersed into Fallout 2 during its opening tutorial, than I am after playing Fallout 3 for six hours straight. This game is simply shallow and unnecessarily sanitized. It's downright BORING. It's a game written for casual gamers and undiscerning teenagers, who don't care if the material is dull and poorly fleshed out. Speaking of which...

Horrible Character Models

I can not and will not forgive Bethesda for following up on a visually gorgeous (and groundbreaking) game like Oblivion with this... this... amateurishly constructed MESS. The meshes are unbelievably sloppy and incomplete. Just take a close look at the faces of your female characters, for example. See her eyes..? Are they at equal heights with one another..? No..? Well guess what..? That's because her head mesh was a rush job, and any use of the sliders during character creation throws her eyes out of alignment. Permanently. And do you see that freakish "jigsaw" seam just above her hips on each side (take her armor off first)..? That's another indication of sloppy model building and misaligned texturing. Furthermore, those skin textures look like they were prepared by a bunch of kindergarteners using fingerpaints. No attempt was made to color match their seams. No attempt was made to balance and blend the shadings across the body of the texture. It's as if they took a pinkish-tan background and then simply overlaid a transparency covered with moles, freckles and blemishes. Voila... instant human skin, huh..? And do you know why her arms seem rather unnaturally muscular for a girl..? It's because the female body mesh is the same as the male body mesh. All they did for the girls was widen their hips slightly and then hastily added a pair of unfinished tits. IT'S ACTUALLY A MAN WITH TITS, PEOPLE. GIMME A FUCKING BREAK..!!!

Gameworld Is Uninspired

I know it's a post-apocalyptic world. But I've already seen LOD (level of detail) texture replacements which do wonders for making the default landscape look many times more realistic. Well, it took those modders all of 2 days to produce those new LOD mods. Am I to believe that the mighty Bethesda Slopworks couldn't accomplish the same LOD textures in TWO YEARS of development..? Bullshit... they simply didn't give a damn and therefore, they rushed this fucker straight out the door in a real big hurry. Everything is drab, poorly painted and overly simplistic. Just compare the LOD in Fallout 3 to the default LOD seen in ANY area of Oblivion. It's almost impossible to believe that both games were produced by the same company. It's even harder to believe that Fallout 3 is the NEWER of the two games. It's shameful and opportunistic, frankly... but I have no doubt that Bethesda has deliberately left the PC version looking like shit, simply so that it wouldn't steer people away from purchasing the console versions of the same game. They don't want one market to chew into the sales volume of the other. And before you say "What difference would it make, since they make money from both versions," let me remind you that Bethesda isn't the only company making money from this title. They also have deals with Microsoft and Sony, for the console versions of F3. Get the picture..?

Modder Unfriendly

No construction set... let's start there. And it has nothing to do with how recently the game was released, because Oblivion and Morrowind both had a CS available within hours of when they first hit the store shelves. Bethslop simply has no intention of making this game easy to modify. It is THAT clear to me at this point. Whether they eventually cave in and stop withholding (yes, I said "withholding") their Fallout 3 CS doesn't matter to me anymore. The simple fact that they are pulling this chickenshit maneuver in the first place is making my stomach turn.

Bottom Line

Bethesda has primarily been selling this game on two unique strengths:

(1) It's supposedly a legacy of the Fallout franchise created by Leonard Boyarsky, Tim Cain, Jason Anderson and others at the old Interplay studio. Bethesda wants you to believe that their new game is the logical successor and sequel to those classic and mature PC games from a decade ago.

(2) It's being released by the same company who brought us the visually spectacular TES4: Oblivion game two years ago. Hell... the most gorgeous character that I have ever created in my entire life ("Raven") belongs to that gameworld. So naturally, everybody couldn't wait to see how the same company would amaze us yet again with Fallout 3.

Just one problem: neither of those two selling points have turned out to be factual. This game is NOT a true successor to the Fallout series, nor is it visually impressive. It is simply another shameless rip-off... an attempt to cash in quick on not one, but TWO built-in audiences at the same time.

We've been Softworked. Pure and simple.

I appreciate the fact that Steeal bought this game for me as a gift. He wanted me to give it a fair shake, and I have done so. I'm sorry that my review isn't at all what he had hoped for... so I'll make good by sending him a game of his choice on Steam as a gift -- the same as he did for me. Fair is fair and I owe him one.

But I don't owe anybody a fake review and although it distresses me, I am compelled to say that Fallout 3 is an absolute piece of mediocre teenaged bullshit in every way imaginable. It's an insult to my intelligence, it's an insult to the Fallout legacy and it's an insult to our wallets. I won't be purchasing any more games from Bethesda Softworks in the future, thanks to my experiences with this abysmal rip-off.

I know a lot of you are thinking that I'm just a malcontent, who enjoys finding fault with every single PC game that comes my way. That is simply not true. What I am is a guy who has at least some degree of sophistication and I refuse to accept mediocrity as the norm. None of us should... not for 60 bucks a pop. A shitty movie costs 7 bucks in the theater. A typical DVD of that very same shitty movie often sells for little more than 20 bucks, tops. A shitty game shouldn't cost any more than that... let alone three times as much. Good games, yes... but shitty games, no. I'd happily pay 100 dollars for a copy of VTMB, if that was the only way I could get a new copy of that brilliant and beautiful RPG. But this game..? Jeezis... it'll probably be in the bargain bin a few weeks after Christmas. It's absolutely awful.

Final word: the only thing that will save this game from obscurity is a SHITLOAD of player-made mods. And we had better start producing them soon, too... because I have the feeling that the rest of the gaming community is quickly going to come to the same conclusions as my own. As soon as the novelty wears off (which takes all of two weeks, usually), they'll start screaming about how rotten this game is. I'm betting on it.

VERDICT: on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm giving Fallout 3 a score of "4" and that's being generous.

- Tessera -
11-07-2008