Fallout 3: Setting the world on fire

This week’s gaming has been dominated by a series of extended Fallout 3 binges on Playstation 3. I originally played Fallout 3 on PC shortly after its release but abandoned the post-apocalyptic wasteland roleplayer about halfway through, frustrated by constant crashes and other technical problems. With the game available at a knockdown price ahead of the release of the Game of the Year edition later this month, I decided to start afresh on a more stable platform, with the added bonus of being able to enjoy it on a big TV from the comfort of the sofa.

On my first playthrough, I opted for the stealthy approach but constantly found myself coming undone early in the game as Super Mutants shrugged off my pitiful rifle bullets like so many flies and introduced my face to the business end of a sledgehammer. Over and over again. This time round, I chose the path of least resistance and rolled a character primed for balls-to-the-wall combat. On reflection, choosing Big Guns, Small Guns and Melee as tag skills and pumping points into my Strength, Endurance and Dexterity attributes probably verged on the side of overkill but I soon found that the one-man army approach yielded far more satisfying results than focusing on stealth, lockpicking, medicine and science.

I became a hardened survivor, in a very real sense, eking out an existence in the middle of the Capitol Wasteland, living off my own wits and pachydermic constitution. With stimpacks restoring only a small fraction of my gargantuan health pool, I guzzled radioactive water to recover hit points, only occasionally returning to town to have a friendly quack decontaminate me, sell off my hard-earned swag and, of course, turn in quests.

Ah, yes, the quests. From the outset I was determined that, this time round, I was going to play Fallout 3 as evil incarnate. In games with Karma or Morality systems I inevitably find myself following the ‘good’ path almost by default but Fallout 3 makes committing unsavoury deeds. seductively easy. Before I’d even left Vault 101, the Overseer lay dead in a corridor, his face tastefully rearranged by my Police Baton. A few hours later, I watched from Tenpenny Tower as Megaton was consumed by a nuclear blast, along with its inhabitants, and pocketed a sizeable purse for getting my hands dirty. Elsewhere, I sold out a group of escaped slaves to their former masters and began dabbling in a little slave-trading myself. It’s hard work being evil.

Perhaps unusually for a game of this ilk, Fallout 3 doesn’t hesitate to pass judgement on the player’s karma choices. Though it has little effect on the game’s final outcome, it’s jarring, to say the least, the first time Three Dog (bow wow wow) berates you on public radio for your dastardly deeds. It’s one thing to have the odd NPC respond unfavourably to you over the course of the game and another entirely to be called a “bastard” or “scumbag” over the air as news breaks of the latest atrocity you’ve perpetrated. Stranger still is receiving a stern dressing-down from Liam Neeson (the voice of your father, no less) for your involvement in the destruction of Megaton. Happily, the poor bugger was gassed to death before he had the chance to send me to bed without any supper.

Elsewhere, I’ve been re-discovering some older titles in preparation for a series of upcoming “Rearviewmirror” articles. I’m not giving too much away at this point but I can reveal that Gamecube classic C’thulu-em-up Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem will be the subject of DttP’s very first retrospective feature later this week. I also investigated the Brutal Legend demo which only reaffirmed a) my belief that the game will be all fur coat and no knickers and b) my intolerance for all things Jack Black. I’ll probably pick it up in six months time when it’s going used for a tenner, but only because the soundtrack is astoundingly good.

The week ahead will likely be dominated by the release of Uncharted 2 on PS3. While certainly excited, I have to confess a small degree of trepidation about the game, what with all the unanimously glowing reviews. I loved the first game to pieces, in spite of the combat:exploration ratio being skewed ridiculously in favour of the former and the completely unnecessary zombie-monster enemies later on, but I’ve been burnt in the past (here’s looking at you, Mass Effect) and the collective gushing over Uncharted 2 has left me a little wary. I’m also not sure what to make of the multiplayer element. Though the beta somewhat unexpectedly proved to be quite fun, there is a certain whiff of the tacked-on about it and I suspect that the real meat of the game is going to be in the single-player. Or at least I hope that’ll be the case.

And a final thought for this week’s edition of ‘Now Playing: I will happily trade a kidney for a copy of Demon’s Souls on PS3. Everything I’ve read about the game suggests that I will absolutely love it, brutal difficulty level and all. Rather than holding out for a European release, I’ll import from North America but with finances a little tight, to put it mildly, it may be a while yet before I can afford to splash out on it.

Welcome to Death to the Pixel, a new videogames blog by Edinburgh, Scotland-based journalist and veteran gamer Jodi Mullen. DttP aims to be a different kind of games blog – a collection of thoughts, opinion pieces and anecdotes drawn from my own gaming experience – and a more thoughtful and personal alternative to the big news sites.

Let the games begin.