Fallout 3 - Review @ The Crypt

5 Llamas is the score.

Bugs aside, there is no doubt in my mind that Bethesda has crafted a spectacular instalment of the Fallout universe and their best game to date. While the main story can be finished in a rushed 20 or so hour stint, you’re doing yourself an immense disfavour by not exploring the rest of the wasteland, an exercise that can probably take close to 150 hours! The four years of development Todd Howard and his team have lavished upon this magnum opus have given birth to a game true to the world’s canon and abundant with all the original elements that have made this franchise the cult classic that is. The Fallout universe has always exhibited a combination of dark humour, ridiculous pop culture references and disturbed individuals co-existing within a blighted land rife with bloodshed, death and utter devastation. This is a world where you will experience emotional extremes from minute to minute, where the horror of walking through a raider’s torture chamber is counterpointed by the last few computer log entries of survivors, stricken with radiation sickness over two hundred years ago. Walk through Arlington National Cemetery amongst the headstones of the fallen, as the dust billows around you and faint trumpet wails echo off the shattered surroundings. Scour the countryside and ruined townships north of D.C. as you listen to various radio stations broadcasting the latest news or popular tunes from our 1950’s. Rest assured that over every hill and around every corner there will be something fresh and unexpected waiting to absorb another hour or two of your life. And at the end of it all, when you’ve seen and done all that you can, climb to the top of Tenpenny tower at dawn and savour the view one last time as the Washington Monument pierces the horizon in the distance.

This is the world of Fallout at its immaculate best.