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FALLOUT 3 |
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David Field
flew to the States to get a look at this controversial
new title in a classic series. |
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I have a
question that I'd like to ask you, and I
challenge you to answer with something
other than 'Atmosphere'. |
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What single
quality makes a game truly memorable? |
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Every other
answer is just a smaller component of a
game's atmosphere. Its storyline,
gameplay, art and everything fold into
the atmosphere as you play it. |
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The Fallout
series was originally developed by
Interplay in 1997, and has made it into
countless list of top ten games of all
time. The latest instalment is being
created by Bethesda of Oblivion fame.
This is Fallout's first entry into the
3D realm, but the basic premise of the
game is the same: nuclear war has forced
humans underground into vaults for
years, but something happened that has
forced you to venture outside. |
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What you see when you walk
outside the vault for the first time is hauntingly
beautiful. This may be Washington D.C. but the ground is
scorched, hardened and yellowed. The water seems to have
a viscous, murky green sheen to it. Even the sky seems
barren. The whole game world looks and feels like a
functional junkyard. This is what Pompeii would have
been had it somehow been resurrected and recolonised
after Mount Vesuvius erupted. |
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Everywhere you look, the
world seems to be hanging together by threads. it's not
just the husks of towns that have been nailed back
together into ramshackle and desolate outposts some of
the in-game characters have been hit by the explosion
and have had their skin ripped apart!
The characters you bump into
while exploring the world all have unique personalities
and their own agendas. Early on in the game, you head to
the town of Megaton, where an ad-hoc religion has sprung
up around an unexploded bomb. The mayor wants it
dismantled. The preacher wants to convert people. |
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A seedy
character in the bar wants to blow it up
and take the entire city with it. And
the others just shrug off the whole
situation. |
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This is just
a microcosm of the huge and splintered world of Fallout
3, which shows how people deal with, adapt and interact
with grim new surroundings and each other in the wake of
a nuclear slate cleaning. Outside the walls of Megaton,
an I-Bot drifts by, spouting propaganda from the
President (voiced by Malcolm McDowell!) that drones on
about how he's going to save everybody. Nothing is ever
clear in the game - even what passes for central
leadership - since there are so many splintered
factions. |
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The choices and adventuring branches out
quickly, and takes you all over the
wasteland. You can go wherever you want
(certain skills permitting), however you
won't stand a chance in some areas if
you walk in as a low level character. We
found ourselves wandering over to the
heart of DC, partly to admire the
fantastic art direction of the shattered
monuments and partly driven by a desire
to explore. We walked up a flight of
stairs and were blown away by edgy and
paranoid militant NPCs. |
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We bumped into a pair of hardened and
seedy drug cooks trying to survive on
the backs of miserable survivors. You
can choose to run errands for them (or
not) and sift through the layers of
dialogue to uncover more about the
world. Pick up items within their field
of view and you'll be attacked, and will
have to fight them off. Which leads to
the beautiful combat system. |
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Although you can simply point and shoot
at your enemies and take pot shots, you
wouldn't want to. Fallout 3's RPG roots
kick in when you decide to properly aim
at an enemy. The world slows to a halt
and your enemy's limbs are sectioned off
in green, along with the likelihood of
you hitting them and the damage you'll
do. |
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There's more to this than just praying
you'll hit the head to take them out
quickly, because if you hit the arm
they're using to fire, their accuracy
will fall. You can slow them down by
aiming for the leg. It's all very nicely
balanced, and an incredible blend of
turn-based and real-time combat. |
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For Further
Information, please buy a copy of Atomic @ myNEWS.com
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