I’d hate to start another review by reminiscing about my past but, in this case, it’s simply unavoidable. Fallout 1 & 2 feature prominently in my list of formative gaming experiences. I spent far too many hours glued to my PC hunting for water chips and instigating gang wars in New Reno. To be honest, I was quite skeptical when I heard that the series would be revived some 10 years after the release of Fallout 2. The feeling I felt was akin to the prospect of visiting your hometown; you just hope things haven’t changed too much since you were a kid.

So this latest foray into the wastes has been developed by Bethesda Softworks and is a sandbox first-person action RPG. The game takes place in a post-nuclear war ravaged Washington D.C. At the outbreak of war a lucky few took shelter in underground bomb-shelters/biospheres called Vaults. For 200 years the residents of Vault 101 lived peaceful and isolated lives. The Vault is all that your character knows until your father mysteriously disappears whereupon you journey out into the wasteland in pursuit.

The character creation process is one of the most unique that I’ve experienced. It seamlessly integrates setting your character’s sex, appearance and attributes with an in-game tutorial and prologue. The attribute system of stats, skills and perks is the same as previous Fallout games. But the developers have tweaked and streamlined it so that just about every skill has its uses. Quests too have multiple solutions, which allows players to create any kind of character they want without feeling punished. This freedom is extended to the morality of your play style as well. You can steal, murder, buy slaves or find homes for orphans and heal the sick. The karma system keeps track of your actions balancing naughty with nice and people react accordingly. Thankfully there is a good mix of righteous and dastardly individuals so those evilly inclined need not worry, there are plenty of likeminded people for you to hang with.

The graphics in Fallout 3 are solid and maintains the post-nuclear war look mixed with the 50′s-version-of-the-future charm that is the hallmark of the series. The music is spectacular and probably one of my favourite parts of the game. The old jazz and big band tracks that are piped on the Galaxy News Radio station in-game, though few in number, really add to the 50′s ambiance and is a surprisingly good accompaniment to slaughtering hordes of Super Mutants. The overall presentation from the environment down to the menus quintessentially looks and feels like part of the Fallout series. From the towns made out of bombed out houses and scrap mental to your trusty Pip-Boy 3000, everything just feels right.

Fallout 3 can be played in both 1st or 3rd person views. But the over-the-shoulder view is really only useful to take a good look at your character which is rather important as there is a wide variety of clothing, armour and accessories to wear. (Personally I prefer combat armour, black-rimmed glasses and a fashionable fedora.) It becomes evident quickly that the game was designed to be played from the 1st person view, especially in combat.

The combat mechanics are essentially the same as a bare bones FPS with the addition of VATS. VATS is Fallout 3‘s reinterpretation of the body part targeting system from previous Fallout games. It allows quick and easy targeting of the torso, head or limbs for tactical purposes. Using VATS you can disable an opponent’s weapon, cripple arms to reduce their accuracy, cripple legs to slow them down or just go for a good old-fashioned headshot. Fortunately, the combat mechanics outside of VATS is robust enough that the you don’t have to rely on it as a crutch. Fallout 3‘s FPS traits also allow for greater flexibility in your choice of weapons. As long as you can aim and shoot with the analogue stick, you’ll be able to use just about any weapon you find with relative efficiency even with a horrible skill level for that weapon type. Though were extremely funny, the critical miss feature from previous Fallout games have been removed so you don’t have to worry about guns back firing in your face or breaking a leg while kicking someone in the face.

There may not be any critical misses but there are certainly areas where Fallout 3 misses the mark. While the team at Bethesda worked very hard to stay true to the spirit of the Fallout series, it certainly feels different from its predecessors. It lacks the a little of the wackiness, pop culture references and raunchy jokes that made Fallout 2 so endearing. The word on the street is that the PS3 version (the subject of this review) is relatively more problematic in comparison to the 360 or PC variants. During my 45+ hours with Fallout 3 I encountered a dozen or so minor bugs (teleporting or getting stuck in the environment) and total lock ups on 2 occasions. This, in addition to the well documented 2-second freeze during every PSN alert.

In general, Fallout 3 serves up a really meaty and fulfilling experience. Because of the way in which it blends action and RPG elements, it should appeal to most gamers save those with the most narrow of tastes. The plasticity of the character creation, quest solutions and sheer scale of environment will mean that after your first play through you’ll want to start all over again just to see what else you can do. As a result, the replay value alone far outweighs the $65 CND price tag. Fallout 3 is an easy recommendation to just about anyone: fans of Oblivion, The Fallout Universe, shooters or RPGs. Take a trip to the wasteland way back home, you won’t regret it.

The PS3 version of Fallout 3 was played for 45+ hours, purchased for $64.99 CND and is available in stores now also for the Xbox 360 and PC.