Review: Fallout 3 on Xbox 360

Nuclear holocaust is one of the most frightening thoughts in the modern world and the game Fallout 3 gives us a look at what could have happened if history had unraveled in a different way. The Fallout universe diverges from ours after WWII, the technology advances but the 1950’s mentality sticks, robots and fusion cars are staples of the world by the mid 21st century. However the Cold War did not end in 1989, instead it continued until it reached a culmination point in 2077 where China shot off nukes at the US and in about 2 hours the world as we knew it was gone. Fallout 3 takes place 200 years later in the wasteland that is Washington DC. You play as dweller of Vault 101, around your 19th birthday your father leaves the vault and you are forced to follow.
This is where the real gameplay begins, you have the option to traverse the massive open world that is the Capital Wasteland, doing good or wreaking havoc, the choice is yours. But anyway you play it the wasteland is a dangerous place to live; you will encounter bands of raiders, ruthless mercs, feral ghouls, super mutants, mirelurks, deathclaws and the enclave (the remnants of the US government) to name a few.
To combat these foes (and keep you alive) there are a wide variety of weapons, armors, food, stimulants, health packs (called stimpacks) and other things to find so it’s a good idea to open every cabinet, desk, box, and footlocker in a given place to stock up. All of these items can be sold for caps, the currency of the future. You can then use caps to repair equipment, buy new weapons, ammo, or anything else you want to, the choices are vast.
The combat is unique in that you use the VATS system (Vault Assisted Targeted System) to fight enemies. You can fire weapons with the right trigger using a crosshair but the VATS system lets you decide where to shoot your enemy to try and deal the most damage. It also slows the game down and lets you strategize, when you press the right bumper it enters the VATS screen and the enemy is zoomed in on. The game pauses and you can toggles through targets on the body of the enemy and each part has a percentage that shows the likelihood that your shot will succeed.
Your Pip-Boy 3000 (a wrist computer that acts as the pause screen) is essential to the game and it is where you do all of your interactions such as equipping weapons, using stimpacks, and listening to audio tapes. You can also listen to radio stations and sometimes “Three Dog” of Galaxy News Radio will reference you and your exploits. You actually get to meet him in the course of the main storyline.
One thing that the game does exceptionally is show how America never left the 1950’s and everything that is still standing in the wastes is a throwback to the 50’s. Even the hairstyles of the characters and the clothes mirror the styles of 1950’s America. This helps you get immersed in the game’s fantasy timeline and it makes everything seem more possible because of how close it is to reality. This game really makes you wonder what would have happened if the USSR hadn’t collapsed and the major world powers fought a nuclear war. It is a rare “deep thought invoking” game that while it does make you think it is still fun and simple.
The game features an experience system, just like any RPG, and the max that you can get to is level 20. Along with the experience system is a karma system that acts as a good/bad meter, helping people gets you positive karma while hurting people gets you negative karma. There are different achievements for reaching xp levels with a certain type of karma so it’s up to you. The scale of this RPG is one of the biggest I have ever seen, you can spend hours just traversing the landscape and checking out what is left of Washington and its surrounding areas. Discovering locations on the map and exploring can be very lucrative so every now and then just get lost and see what you can find.
I could talk about the story and the sidequests for hours and literally write a book detailing my experiences with this game but that is an experience that is best left to each individual gamer. The story itself is solid and you actually feel like you are making a difference when you save a town from raiders or find a home for a little boy who has just lost his parents.
The game performs well technically with load short load screens (relatively for an RPG) and very little framerate slow up. The environments are impressive from a distance but can be blurry up close, however that is to be expected in a game that has this much content. The night to day transition is nice a fluid and the pace of the day seems to be just right, it isn’t real time but the days don’t zip incredibly fast.
Overall Fallout 3 is a fantastic open world game that incorporates stellar gameplay with an awesome story, an incredibly vast number of plot choices, and a convincing post-apocalyptic world. I would highly recommend this title to anyone that has the time to commit to it because you won’t want to put the controller down once you pick it up.
Gameplay: 9.5
Story: 10
Replay Value: 10
Graphics: 8.5
Overall: 9.5

Review: Prototype on the Xbox 360

Prototype is a good open world game that utilizes superpowers pretty well and has an interesting plot line to match. The game follows the story of Alex Mercer who wakes up in a morgue in New York and has no idea who he is or why he has superpowers. The military is after him and there is a virus loose in the city that is mutating the populace. Alex soon realizes that he has the ability to “consume” people and take their memories he sets out to find the people that made him what he is and find out who he is and what is going on. The main story line is told through a series of flashbacks as we see Alex talking to a mysterious man on day 18 of the infection. After some narrative the game flashes back and you play through Alex’s story. You have the choice to either continue the main plot progression or go on a number of side quest type missions. This is where the open world element comes into play, it is very much like the Spiderman games where you can go to the main story or side stories, or you can just run around the city. I played the game on normal difficulty and it took me about 10 hours to complete just the main missions so there is a good amount of content.

Now on to the gameplay itself, Alex will gain a number of powers and all of these can be upgraded in the menu of the game. For every opponent you kill you get EP (Evolutionary Points) and these can be put towards the upgrades. There are upgrades for your powers, movement, combat, survivability, weaponry, and vehicle use. On my first playthrough I had plenty of upgrades that I couldn’t purchase by the end of the game but if you play through the free roam element I’m sure there is enough EP to upgrade fully. These powers and other upgrades are really cool and become essential later in the game. Some of the best are the glide move, the groundspike, the longshot with the whip which lets you hijack helicopters from a distance. But the most essential power that you have is the ability to “consume” and become anyone in the game, if you want to pilot a tank then you can consume a tank commander and you will know how to drive the tank. You can also use this to fool enemies, if you consume a soldier, for example, and then walk up to a military base no one will suspect and you can get in close without being fired at. This has a lot of uses but if military personnel see you as Mercer you need to duck out of sight and turn into someone else to lose them or they will continue to attack even if you look like someone else, there are also detectors and certain enemies that will know who you are even with a disguise. But consuming people also restores your health and you will need a lot of that. When you buy the critical mass upgrade you can continue to accumulate health past the max and then you can use that to unleash a “devastator” attack. This attack takes some time to charge but it is a massive attack that will take out or seriously cripple all opponents in about a 20 foot radius.

The control is nice and fluid for movement but switching between powers can be clunky and annoying, the mechanic is that when you press the left bumper a wheel screen comes up (like in Mass Effect) and you select what power you want to enable, this itself is fine but it doesn’t pause the game like in Mass Effect, it slows the game down for a brief period then the game goes back to full speed so you need to be quick and that is annoying. It was also more difficult to find the right weapon when the pressure was on, if they had an option to put your four favorite powers on the D-Pad that would have been great. There is no block button but if you have armor or shields equipped it will automatically engage if you are being attacked. This is a little annoying because certain enemies can beat you to a pulp in a corner and with no block you keep getting knocked over so you can’t attack and you get stuck. The left trigger locks on to targets but I found that when there were big boss battles it locked on to the smaller targets a lot and it really should stick to the boss unless you manually switch it so that could have been improved.

The graphics on the CG cut scenes are absolutely gorgeous, especially the opening cut scene but the in-game graphics can be pretty mediocre at times, perhaps this is a side effect of the massive amount of info on the disk but many of the textures on certain buildings and people got blurry and pixilated at seemingly random times, however regardless of how crazy the action got the frame rate never slowed up so that is really good. For the most part the city and characters looked impressive and there was no lack of blood and gore so the graphics were good for the most part.

The game has a lot of replay value because of the new upgrades and the side quests, after the main story ends you can still free roam the city which is a nice touch. Overall the game is satisfying on all accounts, the graphics are good for the most part, the gameplay is solid mostly but it can get unfair at times, and the story is good but slightly tough to follow at times. What this game does well is the integration of superpowers which is something that has not been done very well in video games to date. I would recommend this title.

Gameplay: 8

Story:9

Replay Value:9

Graphics:8

Overall: 8.5