Be Excellent To Each Other

F-Day minus 22.

Preparations are proceeding well. Calculations of optimum head-shot percentages almost completed. Various Louis Armstrong songs have been procured for background noise.

Routes to various purveyors of videogamery in the environs are being investigated, in order to plot the quickest routes come F-Day.

Minor setbacks are occurring due to an increase in weeing with excitement. While this is currently at a once per hour level (rising to twice per hour if screenshots are viewed), this has not yet become uncontrollable so high hopes that F day can be reached without any accidents.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

SQUEEEEE!

Super-special bobblehead edition ordered a month ago. Since then I have taken huge steps to avoid viewing any previews (apart from, of course, the excellent 'Peace, Freedom and BACON AND EGGS!' one) and will continue to do so as these have a HORRIBLE MOVIE TRAILER-ESQUE HABIT OF, in their fast-paced cuts of numerous scenes, spoiling loads of it.

I'd planned to book a few days off on release to play it... but this coincides with a number of other personal social events, AND my colleague is already booked off on leave, likely precluding me from doing so too! FUCK!

So, the only thing I'm doing, really, is trying to decide what to make my character look like (she will be the third generation of the venerable Sheelagh the Unwashed Vault Dweller family, named in honour of her distant relatives from FO1 and 2 (Sheelagh and Sophie, respectively). So, likely a goth chick-esque piece of perkiness (no pun intended) with night person and small frame (if they're available) who specialises in small arms, long range combat, sneakery and technology.

Ho hum. There's still time to finish Eternal Sonata again AND Arse Effect one and a half more times while I wait...

Quite possibly I'm really hopeful that it can fulfill all my dystopian future needs, given that I personally don't care for Mass Effect, and as STALKER is seemingly still a million years from a 360 release. And I didn't even play the originals that much.

Fact is - Bethseshsedhdha haven't made a bad RPG... ever?

Whuh? I've not spent any money yet myself - is that wise? Last I heard, it was still looking awesome. The intro movie alone made me moist.

I have frequently spent top dollar on shit games. This will not be one of them. Or the world will end in a rain of fiery vengence.

So, what's this game, then? I've not really been paying attention.

It's a sky-diving simulator.

Is it an rpg? I've never played an rpg, as they're usually goblins and dwarfs and stuff, but this seems different?

sell it to me!

It's mad max, basically, but without the cars. It's in a Post Apocomalyptic Holocaustal Landscape populated with the ragged remnants of humankind, dressed in makeshift armour and carrying scavenged guns.

I suspect one may be more excited if one played Fallouts 1 and 2, which, while not perfect in terms of game mechanics, had very involving, very grown up storylines. They also had fantastically brutal combat, which included bits being blown off by shotguns, rather graphically. Location specific damage made for excellent fun in deciding whether to chance an aimed shot at some big fucker's eyes so he couldn't keep spraying you with his minigun.

The ammo and equipment conservation aspect was also pretty good, as it meant that, in random encounters, you needed to consider whether you'd actually be able to afford to barter for more ammo for that particular gun with the proceeds of your scrap. This stays an issue later on, as if you upgrade to bigger and better guns the cost of the ammo goes through the roof - and the more exotic stuff like caseless ammo is fairly scarce.

It's hard to do justice to the briliance of the Fallout series in a post, really. Along with Planescape:Torment, they were the best PC RPGs of, well, ever. And we thoroughly expect #3 to be even better. Well, more hope than expect, but there we are.

do you think that 3 would be a good one to start with, or should I really play the first two first? (I appreciate that this is probably impossible to answer as 3 hasn't been released yet)

Um - the first two are sort of growers, really. I'm not sure how well they stand the test of time for newcomers, either (As they're pretty old), but I'd deffo give 2 a go. Just grit your teeth through the annoying, obligatory "bit in the tunnels" at the start. It takes about half an hour to get going really, but it's worth it. However, you most certainly wouldn't need to play the first two to enjoy the third.

The first two are isometric third person games, and 3 is pretty much using the Oblivion engine as a first person effort, so they'll be pretty different in terms of gameplay. It's the setting, atmosphere and story that should make it a winner, really.

As it's out in 21 DAYS I'd just start with 3, as you can whack it straight in your 360 without pissing about on a PC.

I tried playing the first one a couple of months ago, and didn't get on with it at all. Sadly, I expect you had to be there when it was first released.

I'll give 3 a go once it hits £15~.

Fallout 3... you know those 1950s comic book/movie/etc visions of the future, which is to say - 1950s optimist atomic age streamlined chrome everything? Cities on the moon, nuclear cars with fins, chromeplated household robtos, but your mother still stays at home and is named 'Doris' and your dad wears a hat and smokes a pipe? Now, imagine that future has a nuclear war.

Your grandparents survived because they'd bought a space in a giant underground self-sufficient bomb shelter. Hundreds of years have passed, your shelter isolated from the desperate remnants of civilization on the surface. Now, you have to leave the shelter, go to the surface, see the sun for the first time in your life.

To call it merely 'Mad Max' is unfair to both Fallout and Mad Max. Fallout is the aforementioned 1950s American techno-uptopia blasted into ashes; Mad Max is the modern world struggling to avoid anarchy with a collapsing economy and rising fuel prices (don't forget, Max is a highway patrolman tasked with stopping biker gangs) in the aftermath of a war over oil.

Fallout 1 originally intrigued me with both the setting of the demo (the first screen of Junktown) and the character creator. Yes, the first bit of it (and the sequel) are horrible excuses for tutorials, and the whole 'tribal' thing in the second one in particular puts loads of people off as they think the whole game is going to be like that.

EXCEPT, IT DOESN'T, DAMMIT. Once you've done the temple of trials in Fallout 2 and left the stupid tribal village, you don't EVER need to go back EVER. EVER. Forget about it, pretend it was a bad dream, get on with your life in the proper world.

I'll post my Fallout fanfics at some point, to keep you slavering lot sustained with Fallout-ness in the run-up to the release.

I've been watching a few videos for this recently:

(spoilers within)
Gameplay Video 1

Gameplay Video 2

Gameplay Video 3

Gameplay Video 4"

Gameplay Video 5

It looks terriffic, and has a bit of a bioshock on land feel to it.

The pause and auto aim thing seems a bit odd. Why would you bother shooting normally, when your guaranteed a easy kill using the auto aim?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. If you've just cursed the game by saying that, the last thing you'll ever see is your own anus as I shove your head up it.



Constant pausy combat might get annoying... being able to pause at will, however is lovely. Using the VATS doesn't guarantee you a hit any more than using target shots in the original games did, though - it just lets you attempt to get a critical hit on a specific body part.

Trench warfare?

It's a kind of trenchmouth I wouldn't avoid getting.

I've read that quite often, the trenches were right up against each other, and that conditions therein were very moist.

Eurogamer publishing a retrospective on Fallout, on the heels of another one on GameTrailers, reminded me that I never posted this, which is one of the more amusing comment I've ever read on a gaming site:



The last-but-one paragraph kills me every time. "Thanks a lot, bitter Fallout 1 fans!". Heh.

The thing I never understand is if you're not appealing to the existing fan base, what's the point of using the franchise you've paid a ton of money for? Why not call it 'Dark Future'*?






*I expect only Mr Chris to get this.

That would be a great game, though.

Anyway - it's all about the feel and the atmosphere. From repeated watchings of the gameplay demos, they seem to have captured the "spirit" of the Fallout games perfectly. In fact it seems much, much better. My favourite thing (other than the FALLOUT) is that the Pipboy has a radio on it, and the only broadcasting station is a 50s one - it's pretty brave to have the soundtrack for a videogame as entirely stuff like Ella Fitzgerald and Roy Brown.

Also - it's all about the Pipboy Boy, man. He's worth the franchise cost on his own.

fallout is possibly my favorite game ever, and i was a bit disheartened when i heard bethesda bought the copyrights. Yes, fallout 3 by bethesda is better than no fallout at all, but bethesda's strenghts are the complete opposite of what fallout was all about. Fallout was about choices & consequences, characters and good dialogues. Bethesda games all suck in that categories.

Yet, it's hard not to be anticipating this, because if they pull it right with they're strenghts (good exploration) with will be great to wander in the wasteland, even without c&c and good dialogues.

Apart from Bioshock. I was gutted at how shit the 'soundtrack' CD included in the collector's edition was. Perry Como, Bobby Darin, Billie Holiday? Nope... three ghastly remixes by Moby. Fuck off, please.



He's the Vault-tec Vault Man. And the way he 'gives the guns' in the trailer is just WRONG.

I want more Meaty stories.

Did anyone actually read those? I didn't get a response or PM or anything so I assume people looked at the length and balked.

I did. I enjoyed them.

Very well, the third story will go up today, the EPIC FINAL STORY will go up either tomorrow or Thursday.

I skimmed them, but not knowing anything about the Fallout story or series probably didn't help.

They seemed well-written, though.

F-Day minus 3

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

*wees*

To placate the missus (I've warned her it comes out and I'll be very busy playing it) I'm going to go see the Quantum of Bollocks on Friday afternoon, and then the evening apparently is mine to partake of Falloutyness.

I can't wait to see the new James Bond film, I watched Casino Royale again the other day and completely changed my mind about it. I'm looking forward to Quantum of Solace far more than I am some shonky sci-fi re-skin of Oblivion, anyway.

*ducks and covers*

Don't get me wrong, I do want to see it (I don't think there's a Bond film of the last ten years I haven't gone to the cinema to see, and I *never* go to the cinema) but I'll be thinking about Fallout 3.

A bit like when I was eight, and my mother was buying me the Micro Machines airport, but on our way we were going to see Roger Rabbit.

Reviews for Fallout 3 are appearing. Eurogamer gave it 10/10. IGN gave it 9.6/10. Metacritic is showing 93% over 16 reviews.

I'm leaving until January - bye!

Eeep, the PC version's finally leaked. Apparenly takes some minor tinkering to get it working in english, but otherwise all present and correct. And at the same time BitGamer re-opened signups too. CURSE YOU AND YOUR VILE SIGNS, THE INTERNET.

Can I wait until my pre-order activates on Steam? Can I bollocks.

Of particular note is that Fallout 3 doesn't have Oblivion's levelling system. You get XP for quests and killing people, XP gives levels, levels give abilities. Stuff in the game world doesn't level with you so you get murdered horribly for entering the wrong places.

Oh good because that was why I gave up on Oblivion, I'll probably end up getting this but just feared the worst when I saw that gameplay video posted up this page. It seems to show the character doing a dungeon crawl type thing and then you get to make your character just before emerging into the world.

I refuse to read any reviews... especially a smug EG one. Their 'retrospective' went on for three pages and didn't really say much, did it?

I read a little bit and then he started listing things that are great because you just stumble across them, so I stopped before he fucking ruined any more of it.

Yeah, and I note that it's almost entirely about the original game.

And it makes the point about how dark and gritty and hopeless it all is. Several times over.

Also also, 'no helpful villages'? Uh, Shady Sands, the first location you come to? They're helpful!

Eeeeerrrrccckckkkkkk

I know I'm going to buy this and then not play it, just like Oblivion. I managed a whopping five hours in that, loved it and then never played it again.

The pull of Gash Wars was too great?

5 hours pffffffffffffftttttttttitiittiitties

Getting on for 100 now for me.

I believe teh Gaywoode is forbidden from playing it ever again by his missus, as the constant repeating music as he grinded his alchemy skill did her head in.

T'would have been nice to have a few new songs for Shivering Isles.

Paaaaaaaah Pa Pa Paaaaaaaah, Pa Pa Paaaaaaaah, Pa Pa Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Paaaaah Pa Pa Paaaaaaaah Pa Pa PAAAAAAAAAH!

You've mentioned that twice now, but she's never mentioned it to me. Where did you get this from?

Thing is, the only period of the year I seem to get away with playing games the lengths of time most of you guys seem to manage is around Christmas, which tends to put me off life swallowing games. That's one reason. The other reason is that I actually hit a spot after a few hours of playing games where I feel guilty for wasting my time and stop. Then another reason is that immersion doesn't seem to work for me to that extent with a lot of games.

So, what this equates to, is that I can rack up 60+ hours playing something like Geometry Wars if I do a hour of two every other day. But the chance of me sitting down regularly to spend 5-6 or even 3-4 hours regularly just doesn't happen for some of the above reasons, which is how I feel some of these more in-depth adventurey games should be played. I should add that I know this is stupid as I'm not MR EFFICIENT who utilises his time to the best of his abilities, or I wouldn't be wasting time writing this, would I.

Draw your own analogues.

In other news about in-jokes where Gaywood is the subject matter but doesn't understand, I've now seen him pulling shapes in CoD4!

You probably let it slip while drunk, which breaks the first law of Kathotics.

1: Never ever mention Kath online.
2: Never ever admit that Kath actually dictates these rules
3. What Kath decides is final and absolute and not open for discussion. Especially online.
4. You must respect Kath's decision as she knows best and she's much harder than you.
5. Failure to adhere to any of the above will be met with extreme hugging.
6. Kath bitches about you in front of you while drunk and you ignore it.