What follows can't rightly be called a review since I have not as yet finished the game (and probably won't for some time), so let's call it a preview to the review.
Fallout 3 takes place in an alternate time-line to our own that branched off sometime during the 1950s. The year is 2277 and the world has been ravaged by a nuclear war that lasted 2 hours. Luckily for us, nuclear war doesn't just evaporate everything instantly like it does in real life; instead it just leaved everything in horrible disrepair. This state of decay is beautifully rendered in Fallout 3 as the visuals in the game perfectly engross you in the Capital Wasteland and produce a believable replica of Washington DC post-Armageddon.
The game is played largely in first person, but you would never confuse this game for a FPS as the focus is clearly on exploration and character development rather than just killing everything. You'll meet many different denizens of the Wasteland and are totally are at liberty to help them, tell them to fuck off, or just kill them outright. Be aware that everything you do has consequences though. Now, I know we've all heard that line before and usually the consequences were you not having as much money or something mundane like that, but the consequences in Fallout 3 are some of the most far reaching yet. For example in one town, some of the citizens worship a live, unexploded atomic bomb. You can choose to do nothing with that information, but the other choices are way cooler. You can choose to disarm the bomb and save the town from eventual evaporation, or you could rig the bomb to explode and make everything all destroyed, leaving a smoking nuclear crater where Megaton once was.
The character development also works quite well in that everything you do or can do is determined by a basic skill set of 7 attributes. Everything from talking to people and being able to get them to give you info (or just getting told off) to disarming mines (or getting your leg crippled) will be based on how you dole out your skill points at every level. These attributes are further augmented by Perks that you can choose as you progress. Perks are basically just enhancements to your basic skills, but some have other applications like Bloody Mess that increases the likelihood of your opponent exploding into... well, a bloody mess.
The few complaints with the game are really an attempt to search for a gripe as opposed to genuine problems, but here they are. The character animations seem a bit stiff at times, even though the facial expressions accurately convey emotion which puts most characters squarely into the uncanny valley. There are times when using the VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) that the camera seems to prefer what a wall is doing as opposed to the action, which doesn't really effect game-play, but can be pretty annoying when you're sure something awesome is happening.
Over all though Fallout 3 is one of the best games I've played since Bioshock and for anyone who owns a console (other than Wii) or a PC, consider your life incomplete until you own Fallout 3.
