Fallout 3 has an amazing amount of content and a sort of dumb difficulty curve, and is quite fun to play. That's been covered before, so this review will focus solely on the mood of the game.
Fallout 3 has no idea what mood it's going for. The main quest goes for 'Epic tale where much is sacrificed but which eventually reaches a happy ending' The game world and sidequests keep switching between 'It's a horrible world, everything is radioactive and Humans Are Bastards.' and 'Hur hur hur minigun'. The 50's based black comedy (which was one of the most important factors when I decided to buy the game, and an large part of the game's marketing) barely exists in the actual game. Actually, there is a bunch of 50's-inspired humour, but it's less Stepford Suburbia and more I Love Nuclear Power, something which very much clashes with the 'horrible world' mood mentioned earlier. The rest of the humour in the game is mostly double entendres, pop cultural references and... Um, the room of deadly plungers. Some of the rarer pieces of equipment go for camp as well, such as the repellent stick (A stick partially covered in glowing green liquid, which causes mutant rodents' heads to explode) and the rock-it launcher (a device crafted from various household items, which can use almost any item as ammunition. Including teddy bears, mutilated body parts and a jar containing a piece of your own brain). Also, there is a bunch of clothing items that would be more appropriate in Animal Crossing.
The DLC's only makes this problem worse; Broken steel tried to supply realistic, grey military gunplay, an ambition that falls flat when the first mission revolves around a giant laser-shooting robot. The pitt introduced moral ambiguity and very many shades of orange. Operation: Anchorage started with a sniper/stealth mission that differed from everything else in the game ever, but then went back to a whiter and more linear version of normal gameplay. Point lookout was all about horror (Of both the cosmic and the slasher kind), hillbilly jokes and blatant racism. Mothership zeta went full camp, by beaming the player to a flying saucer, complete with little green men that wore aluminium foil space suits and wielded ray guns.
Fallout 3: A mess of intentions, mood-wise.
Fallout 3 has an amazing amount of content and a sort of dumb difficulty curve, and is quite fun to play. That's been covered before, so this review will focus solely on the mood of the game.
Fallout 3 has no idea what mood it's going for. The main quest goes for 'Epic tale where much is sacrificed but which eventually reaches a happy ending' The game world and sidequests keep switching between 'It's a horrible world, everything is radioactive and Humans Are Bastards.' and 'Hur hur hur minigun'. The 50's based black comedy (which was one of the most important factors when I decided to buy the game, and an large part of the game's marketing) barely exists in the actual game. Actually, there is a bunch of 50's-inspired humour, but it's less Stepford Suburbia and more I Love Nuclear Power, something which very much clashes with the 'horrible world' mood mentioned earlier. The rest of the humour in the game is mostly double entendres, pop cultural references and... Um, the room of deadly plungers. Some of the rarer pieces of equipment go for camp as well, such as the repellent stick (A stick partially covered in glowing green liquid, which causes mutant rodents' heads to explode) and the rock-it launcher (a device crafted from various household items, which can use almost any item as ammunition. Including teddy bears, mutilated body parts and a jar containing a piece of your own brain). Also, there is a bunch of clothing items that would be more appropriate in Animal Crossing.
The DLC's only makes this problem worse; Broken steel tried to supply realistic, grey military gunplay, an ambition that falls flat when the first mission revolves around a giant laser-shooting robot. The pitt introduced moral ambiguity and very many shades of orange. Operation: Anchorage started with a sniper/stealth mission that differed from everything else in the game ever, but then went back to a whiter and more linear version of normal gameplay. Point lookout was all about horror (Of both the cosmic and the slasher kind), hillbilly jokes and blatant racism. Mothership zeta went full camp, by beaming the player to a flying saucer, complete with little green men that wore aluminium foil space suits and wielded ray guns.
Still, as I said, it's quite fun to play.