In case you guys haven’t been paying attention, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of Fallout 3. So on its release date, the soonest free moment I had I went to Best Buy and snagged myself a copy. First off I was thinking about getting the Collectors Edition for the bundled bobble head, but sadly they didn’t have any. Another thing to note is that this is the first PC game I’ve bought in a long, long, very long time. I believe the last one I purchased was Guild Wars back in 2005. So needless to say this was a fairly big event for me. Sadly though I could not play it immediately due to the fact I had community service, but it was only an hour and a half so it wasn’t that agonizing a wait.

After service was done I raced home, popped in the DVD, and waited for the agonizing install to finish. Booted it up and watched the intro scene which was basically an extended version of the “Set the World on Fire” trailer we’ve all seen with Ron Pearlman as the narrator. Then I finally started a new game dying with anticipation.

So cutting to the chase, overall it’s a pretty fun experience but in the end I can’t help but feel a little disappointed with it. It could be that I’m just a ten or so quests into the game but I was hoping it’d be more than it is right now. My biggest gripe is it just doesn’t feel epic. I’m not really sure what’s the reason for this is but it just feels like you’re a minor part in the game. It could be the story, it could be the barren wasteland, something just makes me feel fairly insignificant. Another of my gripes is “Why can’t I move faster!!” With all the traveling you have to do it get so boring running all over the place. Sure there’s the fast track system, but it can only be used on places you’ve already been. One of my quests involves me running from the center of the world to on of the corners and guess what? I haven’t been anywhere in between! So that means I’ve gotta run all of it. Joy. Maybe there’s something later on that’ll allow you to move around faster but honestly it’s boring. If things were a bit denser populated ( yeah it’s a barren wasteland but still ) it wouldn’t be as monotonous.

Besides these two gripes it’s a pretty fun game. VATS is awesome especially with Bloody Mess. The “tutorial” and skill assigning parts are pretty unique and cool. The monsters are fairly neat. So yeah all in all I like it.

There is another nice thing that came out of this game. I am thoroughly hyped to play the next Elderscrolls game. Oblivion is one of the best games of all time in my opinion and building on what they did with Fallout 3, I’m excited about what they’ll do in the next installment. Also it may be Oblivion’s fault for me being slightly disappointed with Fallout 3. Ah well. It’s still a fun game and you should get it if you can.