We here at Brutal Game Review Team were deeply impressed with Fallout 3 and what Bethesda Studios provided to the gaming community in this game of epic win. Once again, we'll try and give a review without spoiling too much.
Fallout 3 is about a resident of Vault 101 trying to find his/her niche in the Capitol Wasteland; Washington D.C. in post-apocalyptic form, who will eventually become the savior or destroyer of the Capitol Wasteland.
The overall gameplay is greatly varied on how you wish to play the game. The peeps at Bethesda have created a open environment for you to get lost in. In this environment is a series of story-related quests and a huge variety of side-quests to where you, the player, can ultimately choose the outcome of those quests. The combat can be slow or fast-paced depending on how you choose to deal with each encounter with Super Mutants, Raiders, Ghouls, etc.
Bethesda has created a tool that with greatly increase your abilities to kick-ass: VATS mode. VATS mode is literally a device that lets you pick which body part of an enemy you want to blow off. The results speak for themselves.
Like Oblivion, you are given a wide variety of perks that you can upgrade your character with to further increase his/her effectiveness. So you have a nice blend of RPG/shooter elements in Fallout 3.
You have a decent physics engine. Although most of the world isn’t destructible, the graphics and physics engine more than makes up for it.
The A.I. is pretty decent, too. Although you’ll have certain moments when the enemies are complete retards, such moments are extremely rare. There are a nice wide variety of baddies spread throughout the Capitol Wasteland, all with their own unique looks, characteristics, strengths and weaknesses.
The health system is pretty simple: get hurt, patch yourself up. Get sick, go see a doctor. Get your legs blasted off, have your relatives find a nice grave for you to be buried in.
Here are some of the main highlights that we find most enjoyable in the game. First off: WEAPONS!!! The game gives you a huge arsenal of basic and unique weapons, to shoulder-mounted weapons of mass destruction. The Capitol Wasteland is full of these goodies so you’ll never be in short supply. We like to collect nearly every weapon available in the game and then just stockpile a crapload of ‘em. Ammunition is also plentiful (with is also another thing we like to stockpile, because you can never have too much ammo).
Second: APPAREL!!! There are, like the weapons, a huge variety of apparel that you can outfit your character with. The Brotherhood of Steel power armor = wearing sex. You can find apparel anywhere. If you’re running around in your skivvies and need some clothes, just kill a raider or a wastelander and strip ‘em. Wuala! You have clothes!
Third: VATS Mode!!! We know we already explained what it was earlier, but we can’t help it. We just love the idea of epic slow motion death sequences of dismemberment and blood explosion extraordinaire.
Now for the story. Fallout 3 follows directly after the storyline of the original Fallout game, only set on the East coast instead of the West. Set 200 years after the nuclear holocaust of humanity, you find yourself as a Vault 101 resident. You are kicked out of your vault (courtesy of Vault-Tech) and forced to wander the ruins of Washington D.C. because your father left the vault, which you had no knowledge of. Now you have to explore the Capitol Wasteland in search of your bastard father. Thanks a lot Dad.
The characters are very animated and the voice acting is great. However, Bethesda seems to like to use the same voice actors for different characters over and over again. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it just can be annoying at times. You walk into a small neighborhood and meet and old guy with an old accent, then walk into a ruined town and meet another old guy who looks completely different, but sounds exactly like the other old guy. You can’t help but say, “didn’t we just met?”
The scripting is incredible. It’s involving, funny, witty, and genius. It really draws you into the Fallout universe when you listen to the lines that these people say. Bravo!
Now that we got the positive things out the way it’s time for the negative:
BUGS!!! 
LOTS OF BUGS!!! Glitches everywhere! We find ourselves walking around and discovering holes or gaps in the world or enemies that walk around with half their body beneath the dirt! Also the game freezes because it sneezed or something. You have instances where you load previously saved games and find that half your inventory is missing. One particular bug that I discovered is that Fallout 3 will delete saved game data of other games! It is no coincidence. Campaign progress of Gears of War 2 is gone, the A.I. in Halo 3 have been stupefied, being demoted in Rainbow Six Vegas 2, it’s one thing after the other.
Then there’s the downloadable content. Even though the DLC for Fallout 3 is full of win, it’s also full of bugs and glitches too. Bethesda has been, instead of releasing patches for the game, shoving out DLC filled with bugs. But that was a few months ago. Fortunately, Bethesda has been taking action lately by making sure your copy of Fallout 3 is constantly updated on Xbox LIVE, which should get rid of , or at least tone down, most of the bugs you’ll encounter in the game. So make sure you update. If you don’t, then you’ll stay in bug central.
So overall we give this game a 5 out of 5. Even though the game is buggy, it is still full of win! The wonderful gameplay, and a retro/classical soundtrack to boot is enough to have you overlook the bugs while playing it. Plus, the updates for the game help keep the bugs in check so we forgive you Bethesda. We forgive you.
