PC Game Fun Time

On Thanksgiving, I arrived at my parents’ home a bit earlier than the rest of the family, so I had quite a bit of free time. I used most of it — four hours worth — to read Cormac McCarthy’s excellent post-apocalyptic novel The Road straight through in one go. It narrates a couple of months in the life of a father and son who have survived an unspecified apocalypse, but every description in the book — from bright flashes on the horizon during the incident, to the dusty, sunless world, to the skyscrapers in city centers whose metal frames were melted and then solidified back into torturedshapes — left me believing that this Armageddon was of the decidedly nuclear variety.

Naturally, on the day after Thanksgiving, I started playing Fallout 3, which is (as if you didn’t know by now) set in a post-nuclear-apocalyptic future. I must say, reading The Road was a great thematic introduction to the environment in Fallout 3, even so much as dealing with the some of the same tropes of cannibalism, scarce resources, and morality in a survivalist world that no longer has a place for it. Walking along decrepit ancient highways in the barren Capital Wasteland, with its gloomy skies and shattered landscapes, and picking through the wreckage of a former civilization, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was walking the same road as the main characters in the novel.

I will give The Road more points for being realistic, because just one decade after the apocalypse pretty much everything scavengeable is gone and the only food remaining is the occasional canned good or fellow human. Fallout 3, despite taking place two centuries further out from the apocalypse, is still full of pre-apocalypse goods, such as the bizarrely ubiquitous Nuka-Cola vending machines that still contain product. Oh, and there’s the mutants. But I’ll let this slide — The Road’s intent is to be a good novel, while Fallout 3’s intent is to be a fun game. Some concessions to gameplay are necessary and acceptable.

I’ve only reached level 5 so far (after quite a bit of time put into the game), but my overall impression is very positive. I pretty much agree with Grokmoo’s take on the game, and could potentially see myself playing it as much as he has. The game is superbly put together, and thanks to auto-travel, there’s never a boring moment (I’m looking at you, Far Cry 2). It’s also not too easy — I’ve had to make use of quick load on quite a few occasions — which is something I appreciate because most of the games I’ve played recently I’ve been able to steamroll through without much of a challenge at all.

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Good news for all the Fallout lovers out there!  Bethesda Softworks has announced their intention to release a Fallout 3 modding kit / editor, appropriately named the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K) in December.  Also mentioned in the press release are three pieces of downloadable content scheduled for the next few months.

While I am personally not too excited about downloadable content, the news of a proper modding kit on the horizon has me very happy indeed.  Given the game’s very strong sales numbers, it seems almost certain that we will be seeing some excellent work from the modding community.

It occurs to me reading about this that there may be a somewhat hidden agenda behind the delay in the release of the mod tools for Fallout 3.  While it is fairly common for modding kits to lag behind the releases of their respective games, Bethesda has traditionally been pretty on the ball in terms of getting modding support out there early.  Could there be a political motivation behind the delay?

Simply put, having widespread modding support is now a potential liability for game publishers.  There are all sorts of possibilities for offensive material to be added to a game like Fallout 3.  Even if the shipped product did not contain the content, it is not hard to imagine a mainstream media outlet getting hold of a Fallout 3 child killing mod and creating a “Hot Coffee” style incident.  By December (Fallout 3 was released on October 28), Bethesda is probably betting that the attention will have reached a low enough level for a relatively safe release of the modding kit.

If this reasoning did play a factor in Bethesda’s decision to delay the modding kit, one can hardly blame them.  The last thing any game developer or publisher needs is a potentially very expensive lawsuit.  In any event, I look forward to seeing some high quality custom content for Fallout 3.

It has been a while since I posted my “final” review of Fallout 3 indicating my disappointment with the game’s ending.  In that time, I have started a new character and brought him up currently about level 10.

I wish I could find enough ammo to use this gun more often.

Let me just start by saying the second playthrough has been better than the first.  It turns out that on my first time playing, I barely scratched the surface of all the weird and awesome sidequests available.  Since I had scarcely explored the northern half of the map on my first time through, I promptly headed off North on my second attempt.  Almost immediately, I encountered several brilliantly crafted (and also totally bizarre) sidequests.

I won’t spoil the surprise for those of you who are still planning on putting some time into the game.  Suffice it to say, however, that Fallout 3 is a huge game, and sticking even roughly to the main quest throughout will cause you to miss all but a tiny fraction of it.

My second play experience has also proven quite a bit harder than my first.  Instead of pumping tons of points into small guns and turning myself into a sniper rifle wielding head exploding machine, I have been mostly focusing on big guns and energy weapons.  Unfortunately, at this stage of the game I have found almost no energy weapons, and big gun ammo has been scarce.  So, I have been forced to rely on my assault rifle a fair amount.

This has also led me to making some use of explosives and the game’s homemade weapons system.  While it is not particularly robust (there are only a relatively small number of predefined schematics to be found in the game world) it is still a lot of fun.  The homemade bottlecap mines, for example, are incredibly effective, almost ridiculously so.  While your mileage may vary depending on how you distribute your skill points, for me they do about 5 times as much damage as the standard frag mines.

The weapon crafting system seems like an area that should be ripe for modding.  Unfortunately, mum is still the word from Bethesda on the release of an editor like we had for Oblivion.  While smaller mods have sprung up anyway, without a dedicated toolset the chances of a large, successful modding community sustaining itself are pretty slim.

Even without mods, Fallout 3 is offering a lot of replay value rarely found in a game.  But with a large modding community, Fallout 3 could be so much more.  I continue to hope for an official release of an editor from Bethesda.  I am pretty optimistic that this will happen.  I just hope it comes soon enough that there is still interest in using it.

After many an hour and quite a few posts on this blog, I have finally finished the main quest of Fallout 3.  Now, I feel like I finally know what everyone was complaining about.  The main quest ended up being quite short and pretty unsatisfying.  I won’t spoil the game for those who have yet to complete it, but suffice it to say that the game’s ending is not particularly epic.

It really leaves me wondering why Bethesda would spend so much time crafting a wonderful, immersive gameplay experience, but then leave the main quest so lacking.  While I personally put in a ton of hours on other aspects of the game and thoroughly enjoyed it, anyone who just blazed through the main quest will undoubtedly be left disappointed.

Be that as it may, I fully intend to go back into the game with a new character.  My first play through was by and large as a goodie-two shoes, and it will be fun to try out some of the more evil roleplaying options.  Also, I am very hopeful that Fallout 3 will inspire some good mods.  Unfortunately, it remains to be seen whether an official editor will be released.  If Bethesda does get their act together and release a proper editor, there will undoubtedly be a great deal of gameplay left in Fallout 3, both for myself and many others.

It has been a long time since the days of Windows 98. While the famous “Blue Screen of Death” was a common occurrence for users of that operating system, most of our readers have probably only seen a handful of full-blown computer crashes in say, the past year.

Unfortunately, while Microsoft operating system stability has improved by leaps and bounds since the 90’s, the same can not really be said for the games that run on Microsoft operating systems. At least these days when a game crashes, you generally only need to restart the game, not the whole computer. But many PC games, even the very high profile big budget titles, still crash with distressing regularity.

For a recent example, look at Fallout 3, a game that has sold a lot of copies and received a huge amount of press.  The latest patch supposedly fixed several crashes related to alt-tabbing behavior and updating the game.  I did not experience these crashes.  I have however had a steam specific problem: unless I disable the steam “in-game” client, Fallout 3 crashes immediately at startup, every time.  This is obviously not an issue that affects every player, or it would have been fixed by now.  Still, it is an issue that affects me, and it is quite annoying - when I play TF2, I really want to have the Steam in game options, so I have to enable / disable this feature every time I want to switch between games.

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The latest news is — if you can believe it — that Fallout 3 has already made $300 million in sales across all platforms. That’s way better than most movies can even pretend to aspire to. And according to our resident Fallout expert, the returns are deserved, as it’s a really good game.

I also find it kind of hard to fault Bethesda Software in deciding to dumb down Fallout somewhat in order to bring it to consoles. They wouldn’t have come close to $300 million in sales without selling those millions of copies for the console. We’re definitely seeing a trend here that has gone from emerging to mainstream: expect pretty much all AAA PC game titles to be released on gaming consoles as well from here on out. After publishers made such a killing on Bioshock, Far Cry 2, and now Fallout 3, there’s no way to financially justify to their shareholders the release of a PC-exclusive game these days. There may be a few remaining exceptions (such as Blizzard), but even they will “see the light” eventually. Heck, even Id Software is developing for consoles now.

After spending about a week with Fallout 3, I think I have experienced enough to write a decent review.  I haven’t spent much time on the main quest, so I won’t be able to talk much about that.  However, I do have a character currently at level 11, and have seen a pretty fair fraction of the game world.

Being a high profile, hyped title, Fallout 3 automatically received glowing reviews from the majority of the mainstream gaming press.  However, there has been a very real concern from much of the fan base that the game suffers from being to much like Oblivion.

It is true, Fallout 3 does feel similar to the previous major title from Bethesda.  If you totally hated Oblivion, you will probably hate Fallout 3.  If, instead, you thought Oblivion was a pretty good game, but marred by some serious flaws, there is a good chance you will love Fallout 3.

First of all, Fallout 3 takes all the strengths of Oblivion and makes them its own.  The immersive nature of a first person game with gorgeous graphics is definitely here.  The annoying stuttering issues with Oblivion while outside are gone as well.  More importantly, Fallout 3 also has an incredible atmosphere going for it.  Everything from the wastelands to the scattered settlements to the Washington D. C. ruins fits beautifully into the game to create a sense of immersion far greater than anything seen in Oblivion.  The use of some of the most recognizable landmarks in the United States, such as the Capitol building and the Washington Monument, creates a sense of awe, something rarely seen in a video game.  (Disclaimer: I live and work in the D. C. area.)

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It’s finally here.  Fallout 3, the sequel I (and many others) have been awaiting for nearly a decade.  In fact, it has even been four years since Fallout 3 was officially announced.

While I have only barely scratched the surface of this game, it is telling that I found it quite difficult to tear myself away long enough to write this mini review.  Like every high profile title these days, Fallout 3 has received pretty much nothing but glowing praise from the mainstream gaming press.  Unlike many of those other titles, it is looking like Fallout 3 may deserve it.

Here are a few of the things I have found notable so far:

• Quest design is damn good.  I haven’t really gone anywhere with the main quest yet, but I have done a couple of the larger side quests.  Both have been very well written and engaging.  They have been a mix of exploration, dialog, combat, and a tad of puzzle solving.
• Dialog options are vastly greater than in Oblivion.  This game has a ton of dialog - I have spent a significant fraction of my time so far just talking to people.  You tend to have several interesting responses to choose from in most situations, as well.
• VATS is a lot of fun.  The much vaunted VATS combat system is actually pretty cool.  Not only is it useful for carefully planning out tougher encounters, it is also quite cinematic.  Watching heads get blown off and then roll down hills has never been so much fun.
• Real time combat is fine, but not amazing.  It does feel very fast and somewhat hard to control.  In the end, it just not of the same quality as a good shooter.  I personally don’t have a problem with this.  Fallout 3 is not a shooter, and if you want to experience some fun combat, just make use of VATS.
• Visuals are great.  Graphics quality is very high and everything looks just like it should.  If I had one word to describe the game’s visuals, it would be “immersive”.
• The game does not hold your hand nearly as much as Oblivion.  It is hard to find a good balance between hand holding and being frustratingly non-specific.  So far, I have found Fallout 3 to do this exceptionally well.

While my impressions are pretty much strictly positive so far, your mileage could vary.  Note that I (obviously) loved the original Fallout games, and also had quite a good time with Oblivion.  I ultimately spent an inordinate amount of time working with mods for Oblivion to fix various flaws.  Many of these were not all that apparent until I had spent quite a bit of time with the game.  So, while my first impressions have been good, I am not completely sold on Fallout 3 yet.

Now this will be interesting if it holds up to further scrutiny: A gamer has managed to get his hands on an early copy of Fallout 3, and reports his impressions that it is eerily similar to Oblivion. Fallout 3 was created by Bethesda Software, the same studio responsible for Oblivion, and they heavily reused code from Oblivion in creating Fallout 3 (basically the entire game engine, if reports are to be believed). As a result, Fallout 3 apparently feels a lot like Oblivion, just in a different setting and with (thankfully) different level-up mechanics.

So the real question is — is this a good thing? Now I’m not going to accuse Bethesda of being lazy, because, as a software developer myself, I know how important code reuse is, and if I have a perfectly good engine sitting around, I’m going to adapt it for use with a new task rather than create something new from scratch. And I did play Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV a fair amount, and I did like it. So that isn’t automatically a negative on Fallout 3. What’s really at issue here is if you spent a lot of time playing Oblivion to the point that you got bored with it (like Grokmoo did): are the similarities with Fallout 3 going to be a negative? I could see an eerie sense of deja vu developing.

Still, I’m eagerly looking forward to the release of Fallout 3, and I’ll report back here regarding whether I find it disconcertingly similar to Oblivion.