Fallout 3 Collector's Edition
by Bethesda
|
List Price: Our Price: $66.99 You Save: $3.00 (4%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: Video Games See more product details |
|---|
Video Game Reviews of Fallout 3 Collector's Edition
Customer Review: Amazing RPG-Shooter
Summary: 5 Stars
Been playing non-stop since I've got it. Living to to all my expectations and moreCustomer Review: All potential lost
Summary: 1 Stars
The potential of this game is erased because the makers wanted to go ahead and secretly add copy protection software and in effect ruin it for me and many more potential customers. AT LEAST PUT A STATEMENT ON THE BOX WHICH SAYS THAT IT WILL COME WITH COPY PROTECTION SOFTWARE. That's just low. But what can you expect, all these companies are concerned about is money, NOTHING ELSE. You would be a fool to believe that they care about you and what you think and what you feel. NO, they might say that but only because they want your money. OK - now you know.Customer Review: Fallout 3, Worth every penny.
Summary: 5 Stars
I just picked up the Fallout 3 Collectors edition and it is completely worth it. Some people are complaining that it contains SecuROM, and while it does, it is only used as a CD check. The Activation and Installation limits that are causing the controversy with BioShock, Spore, Red Alert 3, etc. are not used here. I have seen people complain that the developers lied when they said "there will be no DRM", "only a cd check just like Oblivion", etc. Well, Oblivion used SecuROM as well, and just like fallout 3, is was only used for the cd check.
No installation limits, no activations, just pop in the disc, install and play, reinstall to your hearts content with only a CD Check like just about every other game until the recent rash of activation.
It has a nice way of walking the player through character creation, by playing through a select set of events during the characters birth, childhood, and eventual escape from Vault 101, making it approachable even for people who are not familiar with RPG's. What each skill set and bonuses do is cleanly explained and laid out. As the game progresses your character continues to develop. Decisions made early on impact what sorts of quests are available later on. This is definately a game that should be played several times through to explore all the different paths and options with virtually infinate replayability.
Being from the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area, it is interesting, if a bit creepy, to explore the bombed out ruins of the area I live and work.
Fallout 3 has lived up the the promises and anticipation, both in terms of minimal DRM/Copy Protection, as well as the game itself with it's wonderful graphics that can still scale down, infinite replayability, good game mechanics, etc.
Customer Review: Rejoice, both old and new CRPG fans, and prepare for the future
Summary: 5 Stars
War never changes but `Fallout' has, for the better.
What `Bethesda Softworks' has created here is something more than just a video game of the year in the days of pseudo-journalism bombarded by the floods of video game magazines that has more commercials than actual substance, websites plagued by flaming fanboys armed to the teeth with ignorance beyond repair, big corporations running rampant trying to take our hard-earned money on a regular basis for what used to be free of hassle hobby without creating anything of substance, ...I could go on and on. The landscape of the video game has changed drastically for the worse during the past decade. It's now a much bigger industry than the movie industry. The production cost has increased astronomically, in parts due to publishers going overboard with the marketing to build the hype rather than developers speak for themselves with quality of games. Generally for sixty dollars, you get to play around 5-12 hours single player campaign on console. The media keep chanting mantra of `Multiplayer' and `Online' but that's a copout to squeeze more out of bare minimum. Some games even require you to pay additional money for some features in the very game you paid to play for these days. What happened to the good old days when you build your own PC, install your game without any installation limit, and just enjoy your game at your own leisure for a long long time? Well, now you can take the nostalgic trip back into the good ol' time once again with a brand new game that features all the advantages of the current technology. Bethesda has always focused on making single player only game that offers you so many different ways for players to choose and play. And the contents of the game are once again gigantic as any of TES series.
Who better than Bethesda, the maker of the renowned TES series to pick up the torch where `Fallout' series, two of the most nonlinear open-ended RPG ever created, left off?
`Bethesda Softworks', the new SSI of the decade, the Interplay / Black Isle / Troika Trinity of the 21st century, has now become a formidable CRPG game studio, and made a successful and proven blueprint for the future TES series, the very game that started the long and quite often difficult journey for the studio to obtain the holy grail of CRPG.
The first and second TES `Arena' and `Daggerfall', impossibly gigantic-humongous sandbox RPG even by today's standard, were so ambitious in a time when technology was not even available. It was a tremendous undertaking and ultimately noble failures of sort in terms of the end result compared to the goal they set out to achieve. They were also so ridden with so much bugs, `Daggerfall' was actually dubbed as `Buggerfall'. After numerous patches, Bethesda abandoned the second game altogether forever. Any other game studio would have gone under at that point, but `Bethesda Softworks' was acquired by a media mogul `Zanimax', which directly results in, for all intents and purpose, unlimited resources. The studio no longer has to worry about the financial part of the game making, solely concentrate on making game. After couple of TES spin-offs `Battlespire' and `Redguard', Bethesda released the third entry `Morrowind' and its two expansion packs `Tribunal' and `Bloodmoon'. For CRPG stand point of view, it was bona fide runaway hit. Although shrunken in scale of the landmass, everything was individually created with more depth than its predecessors and it was at this point we witnessed not just a great video game but the glimpse of possibility of the future in virtual reality. Bethesda fixed many problems that plagued `Arena' and `Daggerfall' and redeemed itself.
The fourth entry, `Oblivion' proved to be something more than what was expected. Of course it was even bigger financial success than `Morrowind', but more importantly it is the game that paved the way for this game I am about to review, `Fallout 3'.
I can already hear some of the die-hard old school fans crying foul for ruining their beloved game. Hey, I too am an old school who owns just about every single PC games one way or another, especially CRPG. And I loved first two. What is amazing about the game is, despite the fact this is not a direct sequel related to any previous storyline, it really feels like a sequel to the seminal game. Wasteland, Vault-Tec, dark blue Vault uniform, brotherhood of steel, dogmeat, pip-boy right down to the cheesy green monochrome color, every iconic element all return. Character creation, perks, karma, NPC interaction, quest progress, you feel instantly home if you ever played any previous entry. Although more people will play this game as a FPS when it comes to combat, VATS is back too. Remember anything you want to do in the previous games, you must have enough action point? Anytime during combat, you can pause to queue up your action using action point. You can play as a real-time action FPS or more cinematic battle using your action point. However, `Fallout 3' being RPG, your shooting skill is directly related with your stats, so playing this game like any conventional FPS is not the ideal approach, especially when your character is at a lower level. To Bethesda's credit, the kinetic feeling of FPS is nicely incorporated here. Once your stats are improved, you can play like FPS to a certain degree. Profanity, dark humors, violence, explosion, dismemberment, you name it, just about all the atmospheric quality of the previous entries is back. It is a perfect jump from 2D to 3D that rivals Zelda, Metroid, and MGS.
Part of the reason Bethesda was able to capture just about everything from the previous entries, beside its passion for the genre and obviously talented team at their disposal, is that classic `Fallout' entries were so ahead of its time, and shares so many aspects Bethesda has been trying for since the inception of TES. Voice-acting all the dialogue in 1st person interface was pretty much unprecedented at the time, the feat few even dared to achieve long after 1997.
There are fewer NPCs in this game than `Oblivion' but they are governed by the improved version of Radiant A.I, bringing out more depth and realism. Each NPC offers you more detail conversation choices and branching options this time. Different conversation choices result in different reactions. Your conversation and action will result in many different endings in this game. Furthermore, you will get some extra conversation options or even totally different ones depending on your karma, perks, and skills. This was very possible in `Oblivion' too as some of the user mods have proven, but they had to tone it down due to its immense scope. `Fallout 3' was created by slightly modified and more refined version of TES construction set. Although you have less NPCs, there are plenty of hostile humanoids and creatures for you to kill in a game world slightly smaller (approx. 15 square mile) than `Cyrodiil' (16 square mile) but even more jam-packed with places to go and things to do.
Environment comes into play much more than it was in `Oblivion', now fully utilizing havoc engine because of various projectile, explosive and range weapons. Many things in environment are destructible.
Character animation is smoother, little more fluid and varied than `Oblivion'. I guess various excellent animation mods released by fans for `Oblivion' using TES construction set gave them better ideas about how they should handle animation.
You can play in either 1st person or 3rd person view, but just like `Oblivion', 3rd person view is not as effective as 1st person. It's just a mere vanity mode like `Oblivion'.
The game starts like `Oblivion'. You create your character anyway you see pleased with all the traits, sex, looks, go through tutorial while you are told about your main quest. This initial tutorial section is arguably the most memorable tutorial presented in any game in the history. Right before you leave the underground lair, you are given another chance to fix your character traits, then to the great wide open. The same feeling you get when you first came out from the prison dungeon in `Oblivion'.
One thing that strikes me is that just like the previous games, you are not bound by the main quest if you can call it. Once you step outside the vault, you are to do whatever you like to do. The main quest to locate your lost father is so much less immediate than the typical whole world going to perish main quest variations from other RPGs. But this is the very reason the game feels so much more open-ended than every other CRPGs ever released barring `TES' series. Since leveling is governed by experience points, the points you gain and use are limited and the game ends upon completion of the main quest, you cannot possibly experience everything by playing just once. This is perhaps the strongest point of this game. Many games claimed to be non-linear, open-ended CRPG in the past, but very few actually delivered and the rest were merely linear but partially free-formed games like `Mass Effect' or `Fable'.
I've already read many posts about bugs and instability of the game along with `secuROM' issue. To the best of my knowledge, I installed this game with Internet disconnected. I've encountered a few issues with later versions of `secuROM' before but nothing so far and I have `Nero Ultra 9' installed on my PC. No installation problem and no bugs encountered so far into 15 hours. There's no key code that needs to be entered, no Internet connection required, and no installation limit. Instead of using 'fallout launcher', use 'fallout.exe' to install your game. No secuROM, no DVD required once installed. My now ancient, 6 years old customized PC with 3 GHz P4 HT with 2 GB of RAM and NVIDIA 7800 GS runs this game surprisingly well with high setting and the game runs quite well most of the time both indoor and outdoor. The loading time is on par with `Oblivion'. I get some frame rate stutters during combat with multiple foes but using VATS really offset the problem. I cannot run this game very well with the ultra high setting, everything maxed up. It stutters too much with frame rate dipping well below 10. But high setting is more than enough for my old PC. Any graphic card below 7800 series (even 7600, 7300 are not ideal) and less than 2 GB of RAM is definitely not recommended. Minimum system requirement is barely good enough for medium to low setting.
Fallout 3 can appeal to many different groups of gamers, old school CRPG fans, both `Oblivion' fans and classic `Fallout' fans all alike, but if you are fast-paced FPS fans, you might be disappointed. Casual gamers will be overwhelmed at first with mountains of contents but Bethesda did wonderful job to make it easier to follow the quest line but it's done in subtler way than `Oblivion' due to monochromic nature of `Pip-Boy' screen so hard-core fans won't be bothered.
This is not a game made by programmers and art designers who work for the big company set out to make a profitable project rather than great game. This is a labor of love created out of passion for the genre by same old school CRPG geeks like you and I, headed by Todd Howards, who knows why people play CRPG, set out to one day make a truly living, breathing virtual world.
Morrowind, Oblivion, and now Fallout 3, Bethesda scored a hat trick. I am disappointed that no construction set for the PC version has been released at this time. TES series became what they became partly because of the construction sets, which were utilized by hordes of dedicated fans to create tons of mods. TES has arguably the most dedicated fan support for any game out there ever with several thousand mods already available for free download. If you don't like something about the game, chances are, you can find some mod to fix it. If you ran out of quest, you can have plenty more. Bethesda diligently listens to the fans who made `Bethesda' who they are now at the official forum. I hope they soon release the construction set for `Fallout 3'.
But even without the construction set available yet, this is not a game you breeze through for a few hours, have blast with your cronies, claim it as the best game ever, then discard for good never to touch it again and move on to the next hype and repeat. Minimum 100 is a given as in all Bethesda games or old school CRPG for that matter. Pete Hines claims that it has 200 different ending. If that is really the case, then I don't think I'll ever see even half of them, but so good to have such freedom and choice.
`Fallout 3' combines the best elements from both `Morrowind' and `Oblivion' in the world of `Fallout' tradition, no easy feat.
Now one last thing, unlike `Arena' and `Daggerfall', which are hopelessly outdated, `Fallout' 1 and 2 has aged surprisingly well. Since `Fallout 3' manages to make several things better than `Oblivion', does that mean `Fallout' series are now my most favorite CRPG over my beloved TES series? Don't answer that. Just thinking about the world of Tamriel with branching conversation and many different endings, I am already in pain waiting for TES V.
Customer Review: I Got a Lunch Box!
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow, I got a Vault Tech lunch box! That was worth the extra. The hard back art work was well thought out and it was riviting to see all the concepts and then to play the game and actually see the costume, vehicle, or structure. I haven't got to the 'making of' DVD yet, I want to complete the game first. All of these extra's easily make this a value! Thanks Bethesda!