Because I am one petty motherfucker.....and somebody let me borrow it, I did a bit of a session with it. It's not awful, it had amusing parts....but holy shit is it anything but a good action game.
Twinfalls said:
Wrong. My point is that FO3 has RPG elements, some choices, and open play areas, in addition to all the basic requirements of an action title (which should have been obvious).
No it doesn't have the basic elements or requirements.
It has the varied arsenal
Not at all. Guns are merely damage potential and ammo type, with range only mattering on the scoped guns and only outside of VATS. Boy was it funny when my scoped magnum had the same percent chances to hit as my hunting rifle and my sawn-off shotgun against some raiders from pretty much equivalent distances. Fundamentally, everything is pretty much the same, with little unique feel.
Well...no. Pretty much enemies are divided into things that shoot you, and things that run at you and try to hit you. Not very exciting. With the shooting enemies, go for multiple arm shots in VATS or shoot their weapon and it's game over for them after you take advantage of their helpless selves with a few clips of the oh-so abundant ammo. With the running enemies, go into VATS, unload, run back while shooting to get more VATS points, and then repeat until the enemy dies. Go for leg shots in VATS to make it even more fair, though most enemies (even on Very Hard) can't survive more than one burst from a combat shotty, the 44 repeater, or a plasma rifle.
The enemies are dull and boring, there's no interesting mechanics, no enemy synthesis, no interesting AI routines, they're just generic.
So because it looks good, it makes it better? Because there weren't any environmental factors that made things interesting. Radiation, while better implemented than in previous Fallouts, still poses no threat thanks to the abundance of chems in every nook and cranny, and even with advanced or severe radiation poisoning, it only hits your stats, which Bethesda pretty much destroyed, sans Intelligence.
Are you kidding me? The dungeons in Fallout 3 are terrible, whether it be the identical metro stations dotting urban DC, the boring offices, or any of the loot-ridden monster holes. Case in point, Vault 106. Here Bethesda could have made something amazing, like a cross between Bloodlines' haunted hotel and all the Malkavian stuff. Instead, all we got was two hallucinations of the Vault looking new and pristine, a terminal with some goofy "dialogue", and a hallucination "boss battle" where all you did was just shoot more and more. Oh, and couple it with a bunch of survivors who instead of doing something interesting, just run at you. Great job Bethesda!
See, the thing is, I don't think you get what good level design is. Good level design is keeping things fresh, exciting, and weaving in the environments with game mechanics. Good level design is something like Devil May Cry, where they make every mission vary the enemies up, they make the environment sometimes a hindrance, sometimes something to be taken advantage of, and they make it look pretty to boot. Bethesda just makes template dungeons, fills them with one enemy and a little backstory and leaves it at that. Almost every dungeon I visited follows the same formulas from Morrowind and Oblivion. Bethesda just half-asses it on this.
consistent and challenging level of difficulty
I'll give you consistent, but not challenging. Maybe I just play a lot more action games and pick up on how to best exploit them, but even on Very Hard, it was a cakewalk once I figured things out.
and excellent atmosphere that one would expect.
What. The. Hell? Excellent atmosphere? Like what? One time I see my father get dunked by radiation, and the next some woman is asking me to go out and voluntarily get advanced radiation poison while spouting out dialogue that seems written by Sarah Palin. Is that excellent atmosphere? Or how about stuff like the AntAgonizer and the Mechanist?
VATS is a fine and novel addition
Not in terms of an action game it isn't. The whole point of an action game is to get some good visceral thrills, not have the computer shoot for you. It's okay at first, but damnit does it get boring waiting 30 seconds because Todd liked slow motion gore so very much.
AI is not the greatest ever but it functions well enough
Oh this is just bull. Enemies get caught on walls, stuck on rocks, and do stupid things all the time. The AI barely functions at all. Compare to games that came out years ago,like Ninja Gaiden, Halo, Far Cry, even a contemporary like Mass Effect or STALKER to see how terrible Bethesda does.
I mean, you also missed the fact that the animations are terrible, and that good animations are one of the fundamental properties of good flow in an action game. That's why I had my doubts at first, and my doubts were correct. Bethesda's terrible animations make the "action" clunky, jerky, and a bit of a chore. Point o all the previous stuff...you're wrong....it doesn't do the fundamentals right.
As I stated before, I don't consider this a great action game.
No..."fantastic" was the word.
It is no System Shock 1, it is no Terra Nova. But it's better than Bioshock and HL2 for example.
So it's better than two mainstream, watered down pieces of crap that took themselves far too seriously and is good because of that? That would be like saying that Mass Effect was anything more than mediocre because it was better than KOTOR and Morrowind, two highly acclaimed RPGs.
Sure. The railroading in HL2 is beyond criticism. OK.
And Fallout 3's isn't at times? How about "Taking it Back"? That's just like Dog and the big aliens in Half-Life 2. Or the whole Raven Rock thing?
It also begs the question - why are you so determined and willing to expend so much energy in order to establish that FO3 is a terrible game, when you have neither played it, nor intend to?
Well you made a false assumption there, and I could ask why you are white-knighting for a game that owes you jack.
Real sophisticated, non GameFaqs-like material right there.
Your argument silly. But feel free to mudsling.
Just making a joke. Though feel free to use it as more mudslinging material. Don't rightly care either way.
Summing things up, I just don't get how you think this is some "fantastic" action game and feel justified in thinking it. It's obviously not. It lacks the fundamentals and attempts to compensate with half-assed RPG elements. Maybe you could call it a "great sandbox RPG", but it's most certainly a shitty action game, and a mediocre RPG at best. Maybe you enjoy it because it pushes the right buttons, or because you really aren't into action games and wanted a "Morrowind with Guns and a set of Fallout paint" and it scratched the itch. I don't know.