1 – Fallout 3
Yes, alright, I probably ought to make some effort to explain why it’s my favourite game of the year. I’ve already covered the nuts and bolts in my last post, and there’s not a lot more to add there. So instead I’m just going to tell the story of what happened in a little over two hours’ worth of play last night.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
Starting from the ruins of a Washington DC suburb now turned into a stronghold for Mad Max-style leather-and-mohawk raiders, I set off south-south-west toward a tower-block I could see jutting up out of the lone and level wilderness on the horizon. Almost immediately I ran into a bunch of heavily-armed well-entrenched fanatics in power armour who told me that they were outcasts from another bunch of heavily-armed, well-entrenched fanatics in power armour who weren’t sufficiently heavily-armed, well-entrenched or fanatical enough for the outcasts’ liking. The folks I was talking to were on a mission to preserve what technology still remained in the wasteland, but I figured that I was doing a decent enough job preserving all the (mostly shooty) bits of tech I’d found so I bid them a cheery farewell and went on my merry way.
On the way south, my careful and quiet progress was interrupted by a wild-eyed fellow who came racing up to tell me that a bunch of raiders had rigged him with explosives. Never one to turn down a) the opportunity to help my fellow man or b) free explosives, I had a pop at trying to defuse the pack. Unfortunately, it was beyond my skill and before I could offer apology the poor schlub ran away back into the wilderness to take his chances with the mutant mad bears.
Arriving at the tower-block, I discovered that it was an enclave of insular bigots led by a spectacularly unpleasant former mercenary who spent his days sitting on his balcony with a sniper rifle taking potshots at passersby. I expressed my disapproval at his lifestyle choices by shooting him square in the noggin, stealing his clothes and his sniper rifle and chucking his corpse off the balcony.
It’s the only language they understand.
From the tower I turned east, walked past the headless body lying on the ground in its pants and started to make my way back across country toward the city. Walking along a ridge, I saw motion in the near-distance and whipped out my spanking new sniper rifle to get a proper dekko. It appeared that some citizen of the wasteland had bumped into a pack of four vicious mutated giant mole rats, and before I could get a bead on the creatures the poor sod went down under the combined weight of their attacks. With his fate sealed there was no point in wasting precious ammunition, so with a philosophical “rather you than me chum” shrug I shouldered the gun and ambled onwards.
On the outskirts of the city, I found a little community protected by rusty barbed-wire and barriers made of timber and corrugated iron. The only person in sight was a small boy who told me that he was annoyed that his father was making him marry the daughter of the only other family in the settlement. The lad wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t seem right for him to marry the daughter of his father’s brother. No, it probably isn’t but given that the land’s barren, the water’s poison and getting out and meeting other people means risking getting wired to explode by lunatic raiders, getting savaged by mutant mad bears or getting eaten by mutant giant mole rats, I couldn’t hand on heart say it definitely wasn’t the lesser of several evils. I said a slightly uncomfortable goodbye and picked up my journey east, making my way past a seemingly largely-intact cola bottling plant and paused only to use my mad technical skills help out a bloke with a faulty robot (and to get given some power cells for my laser rifle in return) before continuing on into Washington DC proper.
The wilderness was dangerous, but the streets were even more so. I had to pick my way carefully through the rubble and ruins playing a tense game of hide-and-sneak with unnervingly large packs of raiders as I carried on east. Every once in a while I picked off an isolated enemy with a sniped shot to clear my path and eventually I reached my goal – the building that’s spoken of as the last surviving library in Washington.
I could have stopped there. But I realised my wanderings had taken me as close as I’d ever been to what was rumoured to be the largest town in the DC wilderness. Given that I’d come this far I’d be an idiot not to investigate it, wouldn’t I? So, onward. A short while later my radio picked up a long-forgotten Chinese propaganda station, presumably set up for the war two centuries ago and still broadcasting the message that the Alaskan front had been lost and that the US’ defeat was inevitable. The signal sputtered and faded away as I passed into the shadow of the imposing walls of the Pentagon, still largely intact and now home to the bunch of heavily-armed, well-entrenched fanatics that the previous group of heavily-armed, well-entrenched fanatics I’d run into had splintered off from.
Even with applied cajoling, these pantfish wouldn’t open the door to me so with a hearty “screw you, then” I went for a quick swim across the narrowest part of the Potomac. At that point the river was only maybe fifty metres wide and I was able to get across quickly enough to suffer no significant sickness from my exposure to the highly radioactive water, allowing me to reach the Jefferson Memorial more-or-less intact. However, the Memorial appeared to be absolutely crawling with giant, green-skinned, automatic-weapon-armed super mutants so I stayed low and hugged the coast, giving the place as wide a berth as humanly possible. I’d almost made it to safety when one inconveniently sharp-eyed sod spotted me, so I put a couple of bullets in his head and made a run for it over the bridge to the river’s eastern bank. There, I pretty much stumbled smack into a huge dust-up between a trader caravan and a nest of super mutants, and I dived in at the tail end of proceedings for some cheap experience points and cheaper salvage (which I cheekily flogged to the bloke who’d just done most of the killing, natch) before parting from my new chums and strolling over a slight rise to see the end of my journey – a beached and broken aircraft carrier that a band of inventive settlers had cobbled together into massive, glorious rusting hulk of a city.
Dunno, does that sound appealing at all?
OK, OK, that’s it I promise. I won’t bring the flippin’ game up again. Cub’s honour.
