Fallout 3 Is More Addictive Than Drugs
I’m not a first person shooter kind of game, and although Fallout 3 is largely a role playing game (RPG), there is a lot of first person elements to the game, but yet I have been addicted to the game, so much so I played it until 4am last week when I had an 830 class the next day.
VATS
The best part of the game is undoubtedly the combat. You could shoot like a normal shooter, but if you activate VATS (a targeting system) you can aim at the head, torso, arms, legs and even the weapon of your attacker and attack that limb exclusively. This leads to disabling the limb and if your “killshot” falls on that limb, it will usually explode in a giant mess of blood, gore and flying body parts.
With that in mind, I thought I’d share my best VATS experiences to date:
1) The Raider In The Supermarket
On a sidequest, I was sent to a supermarket to look for food. Of course, it was taken over by raiders and I had to fight my way in. After clearing most of them I was under constant fire by someone crouching on top of one of the supermarket shelves, which gave him a hight advantage and made him very hard to hit.
Deciding to play it sneaky, I crouched and worked my way behind him in an arc, activated VATS and pumped off five shots into his leg. The result? The leg I was firing at exploded, he went tumbling backwards off the shelf, onto a trolley in the aisle and died. Dramatic and gruesome all at once.
2) The Super Mutant Underground
On a main quest, I was walking underground when I met my first Super Mutant (huge Hulk-like creatures). By this time I had the much more powerful hunting rifle so I crouched, activated VATS and shot three times aiming at his head. The third shot took his head off completely and the force of the impact threw his body halfway across the room (the room being an underground train station).
One thing I simultaneously love and hate about Fallout 3, is the absolute massive scope of the game that on one hand gives you a lot of ground to cover, but on the other takes forever to cover as well. Long walks from point to point really bore me. This gripe is made worse with the lack of an in game map (unless you press another button to activate it, which pauses the game) which means you can’t walk and see if you’re going in the right direction in real time, but rather stop every two minutes or so, check the map, re-orientate yourself, and get walking again.
What I do like about Fallout3 is that it’s fairly realistic. It’s a post-apocalyptic world so there’s no reason ammo should be commonplace, and it isn’t. I once ran out of ammo on a particularly long walk to the next “town” and paid the price, getting gored by four two-headed cows with nothing more than a baseball bat to hold them off.
I wish I had screenshots to show you guys, but my laptop is struggling to play the game as it is and it’s hard to capture the exact moment of a head or limb exploding, but I’ll try to do that in the future.
[Image credits: VATS]
I LOVED Fallout 1 and 2 but I get the impression that Fallout 3 is pretty different. I suck at real-time fighting / shooting so I suspect I might find the whole game kinda frustrating.
Then again, I got most of my impression of the game from NMA which is a little (an understatement I think) biased.
@Piper: Trust me the real-time fighting/shooting element isn’t really overwhelming because I’m not a fan of those games either, but I’m hooked! Determining whether your shot hits is by stats (like an RPG game) rather than how fast you fire/aim/etc. =)
[...] me so I switch to VATS and target his weapon and manage to shoot it out of his hands. So remember, ammo’s kinda limited in the Wasteland, so since he can’t shoot at me anymore, I switch to my sledgehammer and go in close for the [...]
you don’t need to walk around everywhere if you don’t want to. i didn’t notice this until a couple of days in but you can click locations on your world map and jump there, if you’re outside and not in combat.
@matthew,
Gee, this is kinda late, but I’ll still reply. You can only fast travel (teleport) to places you have already been, and you must be out of any view of enemies, and be outside, but you’ll still have to travel to the place at least once.
As far as the map goes, the “minimap” in the corner works very well if you ask me, you can look at that while you’re walking and keep track of where your target is. Sure, it’s not as detailed but it gets the job done. You can put a mark on there and then when you turn it’ll tell you where the mark is (North, South, East, West) and you just walk in that direction. Doesn’t really tell you how much farther it’ll be but you shouldn’t get lost by any means, I never have, and all I do is follow that map, no need to bring up the big one.
I’ve never really run into a problem with ammo myself, just watch your surroundings. Search EVERY thing you kill and take the ammo and weapons if you don’t already have that certain weapon, or if you have enough space left to carry it to the next town to either store it or sell it. Also watch for ammo containers…they’re all over the place if you keep your eye open. And just by doing that I’ve never run out of ammo really…maybe in one gun but I always have/had a backup gun on me…usually quite a few to be honest. And most of the time everything I kill has the same weapon that I use on them and I usually pick up the same amount or more ammo than what I used to kill them so it works out perfect.