Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition Review (Silhouette Fleur)
Don't let the seven hour gameplay on Steam's records fool you, I have played this game on both xbox and playstation when it came out, and played it to death until New Vegas dropped, and then played it some more.
Steam's recent seven hours of my gameplay comes from two things, that it finally works on modern hardware that is much different than what Bethesda built the software for at the time, which was surprisingly optimized really well, and that I finally noticed.
Regardless of critiques of this game by some very popular youtubers, I think they fundamentally misunderstand this game.
Fair is fair, it /is/ a little bit shallow, it /is/ a little bit moustache twirlingly evil when it gives you the option to be.
But since we're being fair to those points, I'm going to say something that surprises even me, for once, we have to be fair to Bethesda.
Bethesda bought this franchise because they were fans of it, and they understood a lot more of the design philosophy of the first two games than given credit for; however, it is undermined by developer fear that the player base would not like this new direction, and so, we get the fan service of caps as currency, super mutants on the east coast, and all the other hits, but we get little to no satisfying explanation as to why they are here.
That said, the atmosphere is bleak, and if you choose to play with the radio off, the environmental sound track is absolutely amazing.
The wasteland is also desolate and sparse, filled with hostility, with points of interest few and far between.
People critisize the whackiness, the likes of Moira Brown, but not only is she a matter of comedic juxtaposition true to the first two games, she is a good highlight that people of the wasteland view you with a apathetic disposability, if you die, she's just going to ask the next person gullible enough to say yes, she is actively taking advantage of someone who does not know what the wasteland is like, and on a meta note, also introducing us the player to exploration.
That Fallout 4 is almost the exact opposite of this is practically our own fault, a collectathon plastic result of vehement fanbased backlash, combined with lessons taken on board from New Vegas surprisingly enough.
Suffice it to say, if you want a true modern experience of the old games, Fallout 3 is where it is at.