Sure, the tranquillity of my Route 355 vantage point would soon be lost when my attempt to negotiate the descent resulted in a 50 metre fall but, in itsД®arly stages at least Fallout 3 does have that vital feeling of being alone on a brutal and vast frontier. Bereft of the immersionsapping load times of STALKER when moving between zones and the near-constant wolf and bandit attacks of Oblivion, this game is draped with a feeling of solitude. You see, my first reaction to playing Fallout 3 was how empty it felt There are wandering monsters and pockets of Raiders here and there - but the feeling of stalking through a barren wasteland is like no other.

In my entire five hours of playing Fallout 3, this was the highlight. To the south the half-dried up Potomac River meandered past the remnants of the capital, where I could just make out the Washington Monument Everything was brooding under an atomic sky while cheery '50s music discussing the prospect of 'seeing my sweetheart again' was piped from my wristmounted Pip-Boy. I'd come up to peek inside a truck balanced precariously over a 50 metre drop, but stopped to admire the view. Sadly west wasn't on the menu (Vault 101 backs onto a mountain) so with the less catchy epithet of 'Go northeast, young man' ringing in my ears I set off on a post-nuclear hike to see what I could see.ДЄn hour later I was standing on a jut of highway sticking its nose over the lip of a nearby hill, a bombed-out town in the Bethesda district of Washington DC. I Intended, Upon leaving Vault 101, to strike out west in true pioneer spirit To begin with, I wasn't interested in Megaton and I wasn't interested in hunting down my errant father - I just wanted to push Fallout 3 as far as it would go. In the meantime, the bomb has dropped, and I'm sat atop it hollering with joy. We re meeting up with Bethesda next issue to ask whether adult themes of sex and drugs, dogs called Dogmeat and a parade of glorious brown will also be making a return.

It's still Fallout, but a Fallout adapted to better suit our tastes and times. You can blast away from your FPS or over-the-shoulder viewpoint, but also freeze the skirmish and spend your action points by choosing different body parts to fire at - each with a certain percentage chance of success. Most interestingly, though, the action points formerly found in Fallout's turn-based combat remain - now twisted and used in combat that's halfway between stop-sart shootage and realtime.

The PipBoy remains, now in its 3000 model, with familiar quest and record-management duties. A robust 'karma' morality system remains. The SPECIAL system remains with its perks and traits. The game is causing the expected grumbling in the Fallout community, but for my part 1 certainly didn't expect so many of the hallmarks of Fallouts gameplay to be returning. It all leads up to the age of 19, when dad mysteriously disappears, the fabled rolling door is opened and you emerge clad in a familiar blue boiler suit under the glare of an unfamiliar sun. tests to determine personal skills and traits. What's more, every time you'll be subtly nudged into making vital decisions usually played out on a character-creation screen, and learning the way the game works.ДЄt birth, your father (played by Liam Neeson) will analyse your DNA and you'll choose stuff like gender and ethnicity on your 16th birthday, you'll take your G.O.A.T. To intensify the claustrophobic feeling within Vault 101, where your people have lived in confinement since the bombs began, the game begins at your birth, then fades in and out of your childhood. Said seaboard includes a wrecked Washington DC, a place called Rivet City built inside the rotting hulk of an aircraft carrier and smaller places primed for nonexistence, such as the town of Megaton with its worshipped, unexploded nuclear bomb. Even the part of this game before you come to the surface, with its wrecked Eastern seaboard, sounds like a slice of RPG genius.

Fallout 3 64 bit