Fallout 3 is extremely awesome. It's familiar enough that you know Bethesda developed it, but definitely its own game.
The graphics are bumped up from Oblivion and painted with several thick coats of pure atmosphere, aided by some great music and sound work. Characters look much more like real people than the horrid monsters that infested previous Bethesda games and their voices are much less mechanical and a lot more fluid, something that benefits from better and more diverse writing.
Yes, the game is brown, brown, BROWN, unlike the lush green of Oblivion, but somehow it feels so much more fun to explore. Every little room and building and out-of-the-way corner of the world feels like it was put there for you to gawk at, rather than randomly generated using some computer program. Indoor areas are particularly nice, especially with soft light filtering through the windows.
Did I mention that the writing and voice acting is greatly improved? Because it is. Each town has numerous NPCs with their own personality and voice actor, as well as numerous lines of dialogue. There's also multiple dialogue options in virtually every conversation. Not all of them make a big difference, but you can tailor your responses to suit the character your playing as.
Character faces, while vastly improved, don't move too much aside from flapping lips. It's certainly not a game-breaker, but it's annoying to listen to someone yelling at you in panic while their face shows dull boredom. Especially when everything else in Fallout 3 has seen such a huge improvement over previous Bethesda games.
V.A.T.S. is cool, even if it is something of a glorified cheat button. Basically, it lets you hit enemies on any part of their body, generally with a high degree of accuracy even at low gun skill levels. But holy Moses is it fun to use. Not using V.A.T.S. is still very much a viable option, but it feels positively pedestrian compared to its skill-based brother.
There's lot of healing sources around, generally in the form of water fountains or sinks and the like, but the trade-off is that it gives you a dose of radiation. So it's best to keep some RAD-X on hand when things get dicey. Or, take your chances and hope the next town isn't too far off. Weapons, armor, and ammo are fairly plentiful, especially in raider camps, but guns wear out over time and the areas in between are...well...mostly barren. Money also seems to be farely tight, so don't blow your caps on useless stuff.
So far I haven't really used my skills too much, although I did notice that one sidequest requires a repair skill of at least 30 to complete. There's also a ton of perks that offer you various skills and bonuses. I'm sticking with the old Swift Learned mainstay to start out with.
Also, it runs pretty good on my computer. Load times of quick and I haven't really noticed in frame rate hiccups. I'll try bumping a few things up later and see how it goes.
I've only played for about 3 hours so far, but this could very well be my favorite games this year. It's THAT good. Based on first impressions alone I'd be very temped to give it a high 9.
