Fallout 3

The Good
True enough, it offers almost limitless freedom of actions, perhaps more than Oblivion ever did. You explore huge devastated city, with no chance to ruin something for yourself if you get there ahead of time. Nice implementation of VATS - they found use for those old turn based action points, to placate old fallout fans no doubt. Amazing soundtracks and 2008 graphic at its best. Voicing isn't bad either, at least much better than Oblivion is.

The Bad
None so far, beside little accidental crashes, but happens VERY rare. Some small items a little bit easy to miss, but I guess it's part of realism.

The Bottom Line
98% of people will love it, as its unmistakably best mix of RPG and FPS yet, but then again, those 2% who like the pure genre (skipping through talking, or finding it to be too much of an action game) will absolutely hate it. Oh and don't let anyone say it's short, there is no way one can skip through it in 7 hours unless maybe they sit with a guide in their lap and skip all conversations in mindless effort to pass it in record time (and even then I doubt it possible without cheating). Absolutely worth time spent - hopefully they will release add-ons, it seems to be build pretty much like Oblivion, with .esm files loading at start.

The Good
The exploration that you can do in game could keep you amused for hours, there is just so much to see and people you can meet. Add to that the amount of side quest's you can do just add's to this. Most of these are acquired from the people of the wasteland, who you could enjoy talking to a lot.

One of the big plus points of fallout 3 is it's diverse range of weapons (and customised one off's you can find) can be a joy in itself. They are so varied, just about everyone has they're favorite. and there is just about one for every type of situation you will encounter in the wastelands.

One of the most interesting and unique features is the V.A.T.S targeting system. It do have limited usage of it, but is such a help, and so fun to use, just from a visual stand point.

The Bad
It's main quest line suffer's from a plot that is not exactly very original, but this is not a major bone of contention.

The ending, however is. Put simply, it's so rubbish, it ended up getting patched as part of the DLC.

The only other annoying feature is it's autosave. Or to be exact, how it won't save after you have just walked across the wasteland. Especially frustrating when you were killed by something like a lone raider or a landmine.

The Bottom Line
Worth buying. It is one of the current generation of consoles greatest games.

The Good
It improves on Oblivion in some ways. The environments are more interesting and varied (but most feel more artificial than Morrowind). The faces look normal again (still miles away from e.g. Mass Effect or Crysis). Level scaling seems to be mostly absent. The PIPBoy interface is well done. Physics is improved, and by improved I mean that cups are now bolted to tables and so on.

The Bad
Fallout 3 is really an action-adventure title and not a RPG. The stats are mostly meaningless.

The set pieces vary from decent to abysmal and do not from a coherent whole. The nature of presentation in previous Fallout games left a lot to the imagination and you could fill the details yourself and pretend it made sense. In F3 everything is available in very graphic detail and it does not come together well.

Radiant AI is still crap. The results are either hilarious or frustrating, depending on your mood.

There's some swearing, prostitution, and tons of gore, but it doesn't feel like it's part of the world, but rather it that it was just tacked on to make the game edgy and mature. This is a rather dubious addition to a game which mostly feels like a Disney production.

They tried hard to include "Fallout features" like being able to put explosives onto people but apparently it didn't occur to them that some were a design flaw in the first place and while it was cute in a 2D isometric RPG game in 1998 it's kind of stupid in a modern fully 3D first-person game.

The Bottom Line
It's Oblivion with guns. It's very far from an ideal "Fallout 3", but depending on what you are expecting it might still be enjoyable. Playing it I can't help but feel that the target audience for Fallout 3 is ten years younger than for the previous Fallout games.