Fallout 3

Welcome to the future, it's bleak, it's bloody, it's dark and yet, it's undeniably enchanting. Fallout 3 is very much Bethesda's game, if you've played Oblivion you'll notice a lot of similarities: it's open ended and vast, so vast it would probably take a hundred hours to explore the entire post-apocalyptic wasteland. It's also better than Oblivion; it's tighter, more focused and more immersive. No longer are you a great warrior in a clichéd fantasy world, but a young exile, brought up in the confines of a bomb shelter known as Vault 101, searching the nuked remains of Washington D.C. for your dad.

 Fallout is not an FPS, however much it may look like one. It's an RPG through and through; behind each bullet is an array of stats and skills. During the games majestic opening segment, where you experience the first twenty years of your life, in a form of gaming montage, your choices and actions determine your stats. There are a number of regular skills to scale such as strength, intelligence etc. More unique to the series however, are the feats you will accumulate throughout the game every time you go up a level. These range from the functional; such as having a strong back to allow more inventory space, to the more obscure; such as Cannibalism, which allows you to feed on the dead for health at the cost of Karma, or Mysterious Stranger which will occasionally see an odd figure in appear in VATS combat to brutally finish off your opponents.

 Ah, VATS combat, I don't know how my life got by before without you. VATS is, put simply, the ability to freeze time and aim more precisely for different parts of an enemy's body. It's odd at first but you'll soon begin to wonder how you ever did without it and the always entertaining over the top death animations it causes. Without VATS it's unlikely you'll survive for very long in the wasteland.

 Fallout is very much all about survival. One moment you can be fine, tooled up and ready to go out with your dog at your side. One ambush later you'll be on your knees, both legs crippled by mines, drinking desperately from the irradiated contents of an old toilet bowl for health; your precious ammo gone and your faithful friend lost forever. Combat is fast, deadly and oddly balletic, you're not invincible and you'll be made to feel very weak for the first twenty or so hours. Due to this however, victories, emphasised by the bloody limbs of your foes spiralling through the air, are all the more special; very few RPGs offer such endlessly fun violence.

 The game is somewhat of a Monet when it comes to visuals, from far away glorious vistas, awash with barren bronze and gold colourings amaze the eyes in a way very few other games have done; up close however you'll experience one too many smudges and the odd muddy texture. The character models are also one major down point, faces are often so inexpressive it's hard to stay interested. Seriously Bethesda, Half-Life 2 mastered facial animation 4 years ago!

 Despite its many flaws such as glitchy animation and repetitive radio stations, I've fallen for Fallout. For every emotionally detached character, there are moments of true feeling, like the last words of a dying man to his daughter, recorded and discarded in a ruined hotel, which become truly poignant when you later meet his daughter all grown up; or the sight of two skeletons huddled together on a bed, aging remnants of a world long dead. These aren't even moments that the game demands you witness, but a small number of many details strewn across the wasteland, just waiting to be found.  After ten or so hours playtime you slowly become a part of this expansive world and even though the characters and dialogue may not be the best at times, the persona of the wasteland itself will have you forever captivated.

 It would take nothing less than a small book to detail all this games complexities, this is not a pick up and play title, you need to set entire days, nights and bleary eyed mornings aside for this. No matter how much you wish it, you cannot slot a quick half hour in before work (and believe me you'll want to). You will be late. It will total your social life, replace your relationships and nourish you more than meals, it's stealing my life away, and I love it.