PC Game Fun Time

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.

Seeing as how both of my housemates have to get up two hours before I do to make it to work (their jobs suck, huh?), I typically go to bed long after they do. So since they’re not around to play games with at this hour, I need to find something else to occupy my time with. Hence this Late night discussion post, which I hope to turn into a regular feature. This is for everyone else who’s staying up late (or has the audacity to live in a different time zone).

The first Spore expansion is coming out in less than a month. Details are sparse, but it’s looking like it’ll cost $20 and consist of new parts for the creature/object editor and … that’s it. If you aren’t thoroughly underwhelmed by this, you must be in the target market.

Does this piss anyone else off? I remember way back when I used to play The Sims (don’t give me that look). The expansions for that game seemed to serve no purpose other than to enrich Will Wright. I wouldn’t even call them proper expansion packs, merely content packs. I couldn’t justify spending my hard-earned money on them, and so I didn’t. So I’m very disappointed that Spore seems headed down exactly the same money treadmill that The Sims perfected, but seeing as how Electronic Arts is running the show, would you have expected it to go down any other way?

I suppose it might be time to write off Spore. I wasn’t impressed with the initial release, but I held out hope that it would get on the right track with the inevitable expansions. “They didn’t have enough time to flesh out all of the stages of the game,” I reasoned. “They should be fixing it soon.” In hindsight, the naiveté inherent in these statements is hysterical. Are there any serious PC gamers left who haven’t given up on Spore yet? I’d love to hear from you. Please convince me that Spore can still be saved, because I’m thinking that all signs point to fat chance.