Justin's Game of the Year 2009: Fallout 3

Well, it's about that time, closing up the year of gaming. We played a lot of games. We covered many genres. We played on many consoles (not the PS3 though!). So what is your favorite game of the year?

This year, I'm picking Fallout 3.

At the beginning of the year I was coming down off of Call of Duty 4, a revisit from last year, that I really never let go of. I took a hiatus and spent some time with my Wii, buying more games for that than any other this year. I also bought quite a few iPod games. I even played Spore on my Mac.

Then Fallout 3 came out and I knew it was going to be a toss up between it, Halo: ODST and MW2 to make my most played game of the year award. I couldn't talk myself into yet another driving game. They're repetitive and don't really bring much to the table. I probably spent as much time driving in Forza 2 as I did painting the cars in it. The other games pretty much ended up being sequels as well. More of the same. More of the same fun, mind you, but just more story with slightly better graphics.

But Fallout 3 was such a departure from the last few years of gaming that I had to pick it just because of it's differences that I ended up enjoying so much. Besides some issues I had with the crappy voice acting and bad animations (walking around for instance was like watching a bad 80's computer generated music video), getting into a deep RPG with fully a customizable character was just what I needed. I liked the missions. I liked the choices. I liked zeroing in on people's body parts and blowing them off with a scoped magnum. This was so much better than the space epic, Mass Effect (a game that had superior voice acting) that I tried last year and got tired of real quick. Roaming around generic looking planets that could have been modeled on a G3 Macintosh with Google Maps overlays. Of real boring places. Seriously, look at this crap.

In further...

• Wii GOTY: Excite Truck
• iPod GOTY: Crush the Castle
• Retro GOTY: Excite Truck
• Car GOTY: Burnout Paradise
• Human GOTY: My son

4 Hour Review: Fallout 3

Against my better time management judgement, I bought Fallout 3 and, sadly, it's a keeper.

There's work to do in the basement. There's painting to be done in the nursery. Vacations are coming for the holidays. Christmas is only two months away. But here I am, ankle deep into Fallout 3, knowing full well that this is the role playing action shooting game I was hoping Mass Effect was last year.

What I've actually come to realize is that I enjoy spending time between areas, sometimes rooms even, manipulating inventory, applying experience points, fixing weapons, applying medicine, and all the other busy work that's involved in roleplaying games. I feel like I have more control over my character, when in other games, I'm more worried about controlling how the game ends.

Having started the game by escaping your home of a fallout shelter for 20 years, looking for your Dad, you immediately get the feeling that finding your father isn't the only thing your going to run into. And I think that's what I'm liking most about the game so far. Your not feed the game ending objective right from the start like 95% of other games. It's open for you to figure out on your own by talking to characters, doing missions for people, and making game altering decisions about your character.

Fallout's setting, post-nuclear Washington D.C., is unlike any game I've ever played. Gears of War had a war time, massive destruction type of feel to it, but Fallout's distraught landscapes have you feeling desperate to find your father, or whatever your current mission is, especially when you can see for miles and not see any refuge. The city is dirty and broken. You constantly wonder if the next life sign you run across will be friendly or not. You want to keep moving. You want to listen to what characters have to tell you.

I easily find myself getting sidetracked sucked into any building that has a door to see what's inside. I tried exploring a picked-clean grocery store, but the rebels inside had other ideas (and bigger guns). Buildings and subways that you can enter each feel like separate challenges. Some have new groups of people to talk to. Some just have giant fire breathing ants.

My complaints about the game so far are technical. Save points are non-existent in big areas. If you forget to save the game yourself, you'll be starting over sometimes 30 minutes back with none of the items you collected, dialogue you previously heard or experience points you had assigned. Also, the targeting system is slightly broken: when I can clearly aim at someone from behind cover, most of the time I shoot the cover instead. Luckily, moving out of cover isn't as detrimental is it sounds because enemies can shoot through cover that you wouldn't think they could.

So with game reviewers talking about spending 30 and 40 hours playing the game, I have a feeling this games going to be in and out of the 360 for a couple months. I can tell I'll be looking forward to the baby sleeping a lot more than for just my own peace and quite. I'm going to want to play this.