Fallout 3 -- Final Opinion.

I put in roughly seventy hours into Fallout 3 and came away with the full one-thousand Gamerpoints. I can't say that I loved the game. I'm not even sure I can say I liked it. I feel drained, as if I really have been slogging my way through a post apocalyptic wasteland. And I don't really think that's a good thing no matter how you look at it. Make no mistake about it, this is Oblivion with a coating of radioactive glowing green paint splashed on it. Which is why I find my reaction to Fallout even more perplexing considering how much I enjoyed Oblivion. I can't really point to anything in the game I especially liked. I wasn't engaged by the story. I found it to be too goofy and even ludicrous. I didn't care about any of the characters. They're all very one-dimensional and too stereotypical. I wasn't moved by the world itself. I've heard people talking about the bleakness of the world and how overwhelming it all is for them and it just never resonated with me at all. The graphics are decent. I found the art direction to be bland. I wasn't a fan of the 1950's retro-future aesthetic as I was expecting to be. The combat was generally annoying. As a first person shooter the combat is severely lacking and behind the times. The much touted VATS system just wasn't that balanced. I was seriously annoyed from the start at how random it all is. The RPG conventions of damage rolls and hit percentages are just pointless beyond adding frustration. It made the combat feel broken overall. The voice acting was decent if a tad repetitive. Too few voice actors doing too many characters. I can appreciate the level of work Bethesda put into the title and that clearly shows. I just didn't happen to care for most of it. I'm giving Fallout 3 a 7, mostly for the respect for the effort.