Fallout 3

Fallout 3

Fallout 3 is an action role-playing game released by Bethesda Game Studios, and the third major installment in the Fallout series. The game was released in North America, Europe and Australia in October 2008, and in Japan in December 2008 for Microsoft Windows,PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2277, 36 years after the setting of Fallout 2 and 200 years after the nuclear apocalypse that devastated the game's world in a future where international conflicts culminated in a Sino-American war in the second half of the 21st century.

The player character is an inhabitant of Vault 101, a survival shelter designed to protect up to 1,000 humans from the nuclear fallout. When the player character's father disappears under mysterious circumstances, the player is forced to escape from the Vault and journey into the ruins of Washington, D.C. to track him down. Along the way the player is assisted by a number of human survivors and must battle a myriad of enemies that inhabit the area now known as the "Capital Wasteland". The game has an attribute and combat system typical of an action strategy game but also incorporates elements of survival horror games.

Following its release, Fallout 3 received very positive reviews from critics and a number of Game of the Year awards, praising the game's open-ended gameplay and flexible character-leveling system. The NPD Group estimated that Fallout 3 sold over 610,000 units during its initial month of release in October 2008, performing better than Bethesda Softworks' previous game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which sold nearly 500,000 units in its first month. The game has also received post-launch support with Bethesda releasing five downloadable add-ons. The game received controversy upon release, including the use of morphine in the game for Australia, religious and cultural sentiments in India, and sensitivity in Japan due to a mission involving an atomic detonation.

Gameplay:

Attributes

The Pip-Boy 3000, shown displaying the player's current skill ratings.

The game begins with the main character as a newborn, whereupon the player determines the race, the gender, and the general appearance of their character. As a one year-old baby, the infant reads a child's book titled You're SPECIAL, where the player can set the character's starting S.P.E.C.I.A.L. primary attributes: Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. The character gains a set of Skills with base levels determined by these attributes. At age 16, the player takes the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test (G.O.A.T.) to determine the three Skills they wish the character to focus on.^[10]

As the character progresses through the game, experience points are earned that are used to achieve levels of accomplishment. Upon achieving a new level, the player receives a set of skill points that can be assigned to improve any of the Skill percentages. For instance, increasing the lock pick skill grants the player the ability to pick harder locks to unlock doors and supply crates. A Perk is granted at each level, which offers advantages of varying quality and form. Many Perks have a set of prerequisites that must be satisfied, and new Perks are unlocked every two levels.^[10]

An important statistic tracked in the game is karma. Each character has an aggregate amount of karma that can be affected by the decisions and actions made in the game. Positive karmic actions include freeing captives and helping others. Negative karmic actions include killing good characters and stealing. Beyond acting as flavor for the game's events, karma can have tangible effects to the player, primarily affecting the game's ending. Other effects include altered dialogue with non-player characters (NPCs), or unique reactions from other characters. Actions vary in the level of karma change they cause; thus, pickpocketing produces less negative karma than the killing of a good character. However, the player's relationships with the game's factions are distinct, so any two groups or settlements may view the player in contrasting ways, depending on the player's conduct. Some Perks require specific karma levels.^[11]

[edit]Health and weapons

Health is separated into two types: general and limb. General health is the primary damage bar, and the player will die if it is depleted. Limb health is specific to each portion of the body, namely the arms, legs, head, and torso. Non-human enemies will sometimes have additional appendages. When a limb's health bar is depleted, that limb is rendered "crippled" and induces a negative status effect, such as blurred vision from a crippled head or reduced movement speed from a crippled leg. Health is diminished when damage is taken from being attacked, falling from great distances, and/or accidental self injury. General health can be replenished by sleeping, using medical equipment (stimpaks), eating food, or drinking water. Limbs can be healed directly by injecting them with stimpaks, by sleeping, or by being healed by a doctor.^[12]

Along with the health, there are 20 bobbleheads that can be found throughout the game that will give the player bonuses to attributes and skills. Each bobblehead is an iconic Vault-Tec Boy figurine with a different pose. Three of them have to be found in different time periods in the gameplay; otherwise they will be lost.^[13]

There are secondary health factors that can affect performance. Chief among these is radiation poisoning: most food is irradiated to a small degree, and parts of the world have varying levels of background radiation. As the player is exposed to radiation, it builds up, causing negative effects and eventually death if left untreated. Radiation sickness must be healed by special medicine or doctors. The player can become addicted to drugs and alcohol, and then go through withdrawal symptoms if denied those substances. Both afflictions can blur the player's vision for a few seconds and have a negative effect on SPECIAL attributes until the problem is corrected.^[14]

Items can become degraded and become less effective. Firearms do less damage and may jam during reloading, and apparel becomes gradually less protective.^[15] This will eventually result in the item breaking altogether. Items can be repaired for a price from special vendors, or, when the player has two of the same item (or a comparable item), one can be repaired using salvage parts from the other. Players have the option to create their own weaponry using various scavenged items found in the wasteland. These items can only be created at workbenches, and only if the player possesses the necessary schematics or Perk. These weapons usually possess significant advantages over other weapons of their type. Each schematic has three copies that can be found. Each copy improves the condition (or number) of items produced at the workbench. A higher repair skill will result in a better starting condition for the related weapon. Weapon schematics can be found lying in certain locations, bought from vendors, or received as quest rewards.

System Requirements:

Minimum	Recommended
Windows[29]
Operating system	Windows XP or Windows Vista
CPU	Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or AMD equivalent	Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD equivalent
Memory	1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista)	2 GB RAM
Hard drive space	7 GB free hard disk space
Graphics hardware	NVIDIA GeForce 6800 256 MB or ATi Radeon X850 Pro 256 MB	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 512 MB or ATi Radeon HD 3850 512 MB
Network	Online play requires log-in to Game for Windows - Live