Back to the Wasteland

The Christmas of 97' (I think it was 97..) stands out to me simply because that was when I discovered Fallout. I remember the tagline was something like "Out of the dungeons and into the wasteland." The game was directly challenging the for-the-most-part standard of high fantasy being the only world you could set an RPG game in. I remember working my way through the game and drawing a story in my head that was beyond what the graphics could actually achieve. While many will disect what made Fallout such a good game, I'll just say something that stuck with me was the total idea of feeling like a scavenger. You didn't fight to simply get an awesome rare item (which hey that is still cool), you fought because you needed every bullet you could get your hand on. You need to scavenge that raiders armor to have enough to trade for more grenades and stimpacks. I am not going to get into the mechanics of it (I'm no designer), but whatever they laid out in that game really worked for me.

Now Fallout 3 has arrived (well it arrived a bit before) and I know, dear reader, that I have been dead wrong about other games (see my now-embarassing Too Human posts) but this is truly one of the most amazing games I've ever played. Whatever the scavenger element was in the previous Fallout's, they got it down perfectly in Fallout 3. On top of that, the world is so compelling that I find myself excitedly wandering, with no quest in mind. I wander with gun in hand, looking for camps of raiders or other baddies, while searching the ruins of America. Thats one thing that I wasn't prepaired for when I got into the game: the enviroments are stunning. So many times in the game you will wonder into an area and have no need for someone to give you lengthy dialog. The world itself will tell you what happened and that makes exploring so much more worth it.

I can't get enough of this game and considering times have been tough personally, its nice to have such an amazing world to step into and dish out sweet wasteland justice. Warning to you evil-doers out there in the wastes - be on the look out if you see a lone man in power armor. He carries grenades...and he knows how to get more.