Fallout 3: Awesome

I have been playing Fallout 3 on the PS3 and finished the game last night with all achievements unlocked.

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world following The Great War between the US and China, a conventional and nuclear war that occurred on October 23, 2077 and lasted less than two hours despite causing immense damage and destruction. Before The Great War were the Resource Wars, during which the United Nations disbanded, a plague rendered the United States paranoid, and Canada was annexed.

The game’s gameplay is very similar to Elder Scrolls and glitches on the PS3 just as much as on any other platform. It took my roughly 40 hours to finish all main-, side- and some freeform-quests. Unlike the open-ended Elder Scrolls, the introduction of achievements made the game more enjoyable and at least had a few goals to pursue (something I never managed to do with Oblivion).

Playing on normal difficulty is fairly easy and once you reach Level 10, the game does not provide a challenge anymore (other than completing the quests). You will have enough ammunition and health, and nothing gets in your way. Fallout 3 caps the maximum level to 20, at which point I had most of my skills at 100 (barter, science, repairs, speech, big guns etc).

I did not feel like playing the game 3 times (to achieve reaching level 8, 14 and 20 at good, neutral and evil karma) and saved before levelling up, then did actions influencing the karma to get the achievement.

While the PC-version allows you to cheat via console commands, the PS3 is less forgiving. Save often, as you will run into glitches and you will regret that you did not save. This happened to me in the last 30 minutes of the game, when I realised that I will not be able to get the platinum trophy, as I was far off from the “Silver-tongued devil” achievement. In the beginning my speech skill was too low and I lost most of the challenges, I also made certain choices which did not involve speech.

Thanks to a glitch in the game, I came across Knock-Knock (figure yourself out where you find her) which allows you to repeat the same speech-challenge several times.

Can’t wait for the add-on content coming in towards the end of June.