Fallout 3

Many years ago, when I first got a 360 (ok, so it was my little brother's 360, whatever) the first game I bought to play on the new system was The Elders Scrolls IV: Oblivion. At this point I had never played an rpg before, let alone one of these fancy first-person open ended affairs, and I loved it. It was basically the only game I played at my house during the summer between sophomore and junior year. It didn't play like a Final Fantasy- the whole point of the game was to forge your own path- come back to the main storyline when you wanted, but 90% of the game was found in the engaging sidequests and heavy level of customization. I joined guilds, made all sorts of friends and enemies, explored tons of huge random dungeons for loot, and then after I finished off the main campaign I went back for more. Why so much talk about Oblivion in what's clearly a Fallout 3 post? Because I got basically the exact same feeling here. This makes sense, Bethesda made Fallout 3 right after Oblivion. I've never played a previous Fallout game and don't really plan to- none of it really appeals to me, but this one appears to be completely different- emphasis on single player, playable on a console, FPS, and the like. Anyway Fallout 3 trades away a vibrant fantasy setting for post-apocalyptic Washington D.C., and obviously has a much higher emphasis on gunplay than Oblivion. Didn't matter for me, I still focused almost entirely on building up my melee skill to the point where I was clubbing some of the most powerful enemies in the game down in a few casual whacks. One of the game's most famous gimmicks is VATS, a system which allows you to periodically freeze time in the midst of combat, zoom in on different limbs of the enemy your fighting and manually pick which one you want to shoot off. Unfortunately since I was a melee weapons expert I rarely used this tactic, but when I did I found it to be great fun, if a little inefficient. The game should also be lauded for its unique introduction- the gameplay is taught over the course of your character's lifetime- first you control him as a baby and customize your starting skillset, then as a kid you learn some combat with a BB gun, then finally as an adult you make a daring escape from the vault you've been locked up in your whole life out to the wasteland that is Washington D.C. From here I thought the story took a sorta generic turn- go find your Dad, something about purifying water to save civilization, although the final battle in which you follow a giant robot spewing anti-Communist propaganda was a great finale. Overall it would have been nice to spend more time on the game- Oblivion wouldn't have been half as fun as it was if I only focused on the main storyline, but that's just how logging is. Fallout 3 is done, and like Jay Z I'm on to the next one.