This was a mistake. I mean, I knew I was going to Fallout 3 eventually, because there’s no way I’m going to miss out on seeing what Germantown looks like 200 years after a nuclear holocaust. (It looks brown, as it turns out.)

Thing is, I just don’t have any time to play this right now. This isn’t a short plot-driven game like Gears of War 2 or Dead Space that I can finish in a week or two. This is a giant explor-a-thon that needs to be enjoyed leisurely. Plus, there’s that whole thing about it being broken to bits. But are were only so many hundreds of glowing forum posts I can read about this thing before I have to at least see for myself what the fuss is about.

Now that I’ve committed, what I’m hoping to see out of it is more “Morrowind with guns” than “Oblivion with guns.” I want to be able to poke around places I’m not supposed to be, stumble over caves with enemies that are way too tough for me, pull it off somehow and emerge with some crazy artifact that lets me wipe the floor with the plot quests and random bandits.

So far I’m getting a bit of an Oblivion vibe, though, particularly from the glassy-eyed stares of all the NPCs that I’ve interacted with. They still haven’t gotten character rendering quite down over at Bethesda, and the animations are all kind of stiff and weird too.

I’ve gotta say, though the opening character creation is beyond brilliant. It starts at the moment of your birth and is experienced from a first person perspective. “Let’s see, are you a boy or a girl?” *menu pops up for gender choice* “It’s a boy!”

As good of a start as it got off to, I’m going to have to shelve Fallout 3 for a little while until I have time to play it. If this keeps up, I’m going to be up to my neck in games until at least July of next year.

<iframe id=”kwcWidgetFrame” name=”kwcWidgetFrame” frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” marginwidth=”0″ marginheight=”0″ width=”300″ height=”250″ src=”http://www.kwanzoo.com/widget/customized/170″></iframe>

Popularity: 2% [?]