Dear Reader,

If you haven’t already guessed, the X3F Defense Force Podcast is dead.

The team has decided that producing the show has become more of a chore than a fun experience, and that it would be better to cancel the series than let the quality deminish. Some listeners may have noticed that shows were being released less regularly as time progressed. This was down to multiple reasons including conflicts with work & leasure/editing time and technical problems which resulted in multiple “lost” episodes. we appologise to all our listeners and thank them for taking the time to listen to us voice our opinions. We’d also like to say thanks to the guests which populated quite a few of our episodes, including the guys from Xcast, Knuckles Dawson from Achievement Hunter and who can forget the interview with Sean Baptise From Harmonix.

And now we would like direct you to some of our current projects, so without further adieu, let the plugging commence…

Jonah

Jonah is still one of the major bloggers over at Gamestooge.com. With daily news post and a personality to bring a smile to your face, those who want a site to get a more general view of the gaming news (X3F is kinda restriced) should definatly check the site out.

Matt

Matt Jo is still as achievement mad as usual and can be found at his new home over at gogaminggiant.com. He’s teamed up with Yaniv & Dalibor from the JPAG to build a brand new gaming site centered around reviews, podcasts and a growing community. The first podcast is coming soon but in the meanwhile, check out the forums and reviews already posted.

Patrick, Holly & Richard

Matt’s not the only one pursuing new opportunities. Patrick, Holly and Richard have all come together, along with the JPAG’s Randall Smith, to produce the Mega Extreme Awesome Podcast, a podcast which covers just about anything Mega, Extreme and/or Awesome, including the Xbox 360. In the coming weeks they will be doing a Best (and worst) of 2008 Awards show so make sure you add the subscription link into itunes or podcatcher of your choice. Richard has also focused his creative juices into producing Highlight reels for his Grifball Team, Sarge’s Angels. If you have 10 minutes you wish to fill, go and take a look and marvel at the sport which is being considered as the replacement for every event in the 2012 Olympics, Grifball.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to download and listen to our shows. We hope you will continue to support us in our chosen paths and the X3F team.

Regards,

The Xbox 360 Fanboy Fancst Defense Force Team

[Originally posted at GameStooge.]

As you may have already found out, those who preordered Left 4 Dead have access to the demo, which is a fairly meaty experience, as you can sample the gameplay from both single player and co-op multiplayer for two levels. Not included is the versus multiplayer experience, in which a group of people take the role of the hording undead.

The game really stresses a cinematic experience – players “star” as one of the four survivors on the poster of the “movie”. Bill, my personal favorite, is the grizzled Vietnam vet, Louis is basically Ben from Night of the Living Dead, Francis is a biker dude, and Zoe is the rich girl. They interact with each other nicely – calling each other by name, shouting out orders and information (ie. “I’m reloading!”), and even calling out targets. It’s one of the rarities in a game in which you can truly identify with the heroes of a shooter, especially since they rely on each other for survival.

The object of the main modes are simple: get your ass to the safe rooms. Through it all, you have to pick weapons, grab healing kits, and other items. This is one of the few games in which everyone desperately needs each other. For instance, healing kits are one shot deals in which you can either heal yourself or heal a teammate, and you won’t hesitate to heal an ally, even when you’re at medium health.

The game uses a “director” to heighten suspense, so you never get the same scenario all at once. A handful of shambling, blase zombies can explode into a mob rush of a hundred 28 Days Later-style attackers. The specialized zombies are truly annoying – especially the boomer, who not only explodes to cover you in goo that obscures your vision – but the goo actually summons a horde of attacking zombies to your position. Other hazards include the hunters, who behave like the fast zombies in Half-Life 2, and smokers, who not only emit a fog, but has a long prehensile tongue that can snatch a survivor away, and woe to the group if the smoker is far away and drags the victim way, way from the group.

Teamwork is always stressed. People who rush off solo will quickly be zombie chow, especially since they can only be revived by other teammates. Hunters will pin a survivor, requiring another survivor to get it off. All the while, the choreography is staged so that disaster occurs at the worst possible moment – making for the best possible experience.

If there is a single complaint, it’s that one must play at the hardest level of difficulty to provide a real challenge, and as usual, if you randomly choose players, you may not get a cohesive team. But when you’re playing at the deadliest level, and you manage to shut the door on a boomer who was inches from entering the safe house with you, it’s about the purest gaming experience you can get.

The game comes out in a little more than two weeks on November 18, and we’ll post a review not soon after. If you want to sample some gameplay, simply preorder it for the PC via Steam or the Xbox 360, and get to play the demo – it’s better than most multiplayer shooters available now.

By: Jonah Falcon

We apologize that it’s not a full show but we decided to put a little something together as it has been so long since our last “show”.

We hope to return next week with a full show, with everyone and in our usual format. Next week we will discuss Fable 2 and Fallout 3 much more in depth, both games are so big that we have so much more to say about them than we did in the show and we’ll also talk about Gears of War 2, Guitar Hero World Tour and the mirrors edge demo next week. Stay tuned!

X3FFDF Podcast Episode 6 – Bangers and mash (Right click and save as)

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Enjoy!!

If you listen to the podcast then you will know I am a huge Guitar Hero fan. I have defended it against Rock Band 2 multiple times. Guitar Hero World Tour was one of my most anticipated games this year but is it a disappointment? Or is it really a Rock Band 2 killer?

So here we are again. Another music based rhythm game for the current generation of consoles. I’d like to think I’m a professional in the music genre by now. I started with Guitar Hero 2, and since then I’ve played Guitar Hero 3, Rock Band, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Rock Band 2. I have not yet played the most recent music game, Rock Revolution, but then again I don’t think anyone played that. Music games are always very similar, consumers usually make their purchasing decision based on songs and what new features the game has added to make itself stand out.

The Guitar Hero franchise has traditionally stuck to guitars for their past games but with World Tour they added in drums and a microphone. I’m sure everyone’s first question is how are the peripherals. The answer is, great! The peripherals for Guitar Hero World Tour are awesome, better than the Rock Band peripherals. The microphone is not that different but the drums and guitar sure are. The drums feel alot better! Most people were worried that by adding two high hats (two elevated pads) onto the drums it would disrupt the feel and play of them. This is not the case at all. It is easy to get used to and feels more authentic to play. The guitar is also miles ahead of the Rock Band 2 guitar. The major addition to the guitar is the touch pad. The touch pad is a welcome addition but an unnecessary one. They remind me of the solo buttons in Rock Band 1and 2. They are a neat idea but they were not needed. We didn’t need a touch pad. It works fine but like the solo buttons it really was not needed. The parts of the song that can be played with the touch pad are marked by transparent notes. Personally after trying the touch pad a few times I didn’t bother with it. I would play those sections normally, in fact the sections that are done in transparent notes that are for the touch pad can just be hammered on. You don’t have to strum for those parts, even with the normal guitar buttons, you don’t need the touch pad. Maybe it’s just me but I like the standard five button control scheme. I don’t want any touch pads or solo buttons. It may just take some getting used to but for now I see the touch pad as a cool and welcome addition but not one the we really needed. That being said all the instruments are still miles ahead the Rock Band 2 ones.

One thing before I go on is that I would like to mention a small but important feature. In the previous music games I would hate how after pausing the game and then clicking resume it would throw you right back in the game. It would be almost impossible to hit the first few notes after resuming from a pause. In Guitar Hero World Tour after you hit resume from the pause menu it gives you a five second countdown to get ready before the notes start again. This makes it much easier to hit those notes after a pause and is a much appreciated addition.

Another minor tweak they made that I appreciate is that in the last Guitar Hero and Rock Band games let’s say you did a career on expert and got stuck near the end. You couldn’t just switch to hard and continue on. If you switched to hard you had to do a whole new career. With Guitar Hero World Tour they switched it up. Now you have one career. Before you get into the set list selection screen you choose your difficulty. You have one career for all difficulties. This means if you do the first few sets on hard and find you should really be playing on medium that is not a problem just switch to medium and continue on. The best part is every song has a marker beside it showing which difficulty you beat it on so it’s real easy to tell which songs you have passed on which difficulties.

The design and UI of Guitar Hero World Tour is almost identical to Guitar Hero 3. All the menus and layouts and graphics are very similar. The story is told in the same way it was in Guitar Hero 3. Short animated cut scenes with no dialogue. There really is not much of a story though. The crazy stage set ups, bizzare stage effects and odd creatures that appear on stage in Guitar Hero 3 are back in Guitar Hero World Tour. The design was pulled right from Guitar Hero 3.

The gameplay hasn’t changed much either. You still have the usual suspects, a scroll board, notes, hammer-ons, pull-offs, a note counter, star power meter etc. When playing with a band the set up is almost identical to Rock Band. If you have ever played or seen a Guitar Hero or Rock Band game you know what to expect here. Nothing new in that area. One thing different from Rock Band is that if a member of the band fails you can not save them, everyone fails out.

There are your standard career modes for each instrument and a band career mode. You can name your band, create logos, and everything else you would expect. The career mode is the same as in previous games. Play set lists and advance on, with the occasional boss battles. Although in Guitar Hero World Tour it has been tweaked a little bit. Now instead of playing set list after set list you have gigs. One gig may have five set lists with each set lists containing 2, 3 or 4 songs plus an encore. You only have to complete a couple of set lists to move onto the next gig. With the band career mode you can play online so that’s always a good thing. As you go through the career you can earn money to buy items in the shop. Exactly like in previous games. The career can be completed very quickly considering you may only have to do one or two sets before moving on to the next gig/level, although there are plenty of gigs if you choose to play them all. Boss battles do return in the career but power-ups are gone. Before you start complaining, don’t worry, you can still do battle with power – ups in online modes and versus but in career there are no power-up based battles. These battles do pit you against various bosses. The bosses are real musicians like Ted Nungent or Sting but the battles are more of a face off than anything. There is a meter in between your fret board and your opponents fret board. You play the entire song and the point is to end the song with the arrow all the way on your side of the meter. That is how you win. Even if you don’t win though you can still continue on with the set list and the game will mark off the battle as completed.

Of course as in previous games there is a character customization mode. The mode is sufficient but once again it’s the same as any other music game. Speaking of characters one thing I really enjoyed was seeing a bunch of new characters in the game. In Guitar Hero 3 you were able to play as rock and roll icons such as Slash and Tom Morello. In this game you have a lot more characters to choose from. You encounter these characters in career mode and have to unlock them. You can choose from characters such as Sting, Ozzy Osbourne, Ted Nungent etc.

The biggest addition to Guitar Hero World Tour is the music studio and GH Tunes. Music studio lets you create your own songs and then publish them to GH Tunes. In GH Tunes you can preview, browse and download other user created songs. You can lay down drums, bass and guitar tracks but no vocals. While this seems like a good idea on the surface it’s not all fun and games. GH Tunes has the potential to be a mess. Currently there are not that many songs on but when the game is released worldwide there are gonna be people putting up songs left right and center and the way the interface is on GH Tunes now, might make it a bit hard to find what you are looking for. Now Acitivision has thought of this and they have various ways/categories that you can browse by and before you upload your song it has to meet certain criteria yet I think it is going to be very hard to find the best songs or find what you are looking for. There is a section called Top Rated which may help show off the best songs but with potentially thousands of songs being created it is going to be interesting to see how well it holds up. Another thing is that you only start with a few slots to upload songs, kind of like how Bungie’s File Share works in Halo 3. You can name your song, set the genre and all that but to gain more slots to be able to upload more you must download and rate other songs.

The other thing about this whole idea is that it’s not the easiest thing to create a song. Now don’t get me wrong, there are tutorials and for the most part almost anyone will be able to lay down a solid guitar track or drum track but to really create a full song will take some time and skill. The recording studio can get quite complex, you start by choosing your tempo and beat and then you lay down the tracks and then you can mix it. With the tutorials it isn’t to hard to figure out what’s going on, but to really create a fun, good song might be tough. I was hoping to be able to create songs from my favorite artists like the Beatles and Rolling Stones. I’m sure people will be able to but only people with experience in music and sound mixing and recording. When laying down tracks each button is a different note and you can play around with scales, add effects and all that but like I said unless you put in the time to really learn the system or have a prior experience in the field then your not going to be creating great songs.

Guitar Hero World Tour has all the usual online modes one would expect. You have 1vs1 and 2vs2 modes of Face Off, Battle, and Pro – Face off. You can also play Band vs Band. The online does not lag from what I could tell and if you enjoyed Rock Band or previous Guitar Hero’s online modes you’ll enjoy these modes, it’s more of the same.

The most important aspect of any music game is always the songs. In my opinion the set list here is much better than Rock Band 2. Once again though it is all based on opinion. Some of my favorite songs in this game are Band on the Run by the Wings, Are You Gonna Go My Way by Lenny Kravitz, Santeria by Sublime and Hotel California by the Eagles. This is my opinion though, you may hate all those songs I previously mentioned. I’m not going to talk to much about the songs because it really does depend on what music you like but I personally love the set list and prefer it to Rock Band 2. The songs also all feel like they are charted really well unlike alot of the songs in Guitar Hero 3 that felt over charted. While on the topic of charting I’d like to add that overall this game is easier than Guitar Hero 3. In terms of difficulty it is best compared to Rock Band 2. It has its tough songs but overall it’s not that bad, nothing like Guitar Hero 3. I’m playing through on expert and I’m having no problems.

One of the things this game lacks is depth. The gameplay and modes all feel very shallow, especially when compared to Rock Band 2. The band world tour mode in Rock Band 2 is far better than what you are presented with in Guitar Hero World Tour. Overall the game just feels shallow on features and modes and lacks that depth we saw with Rock Band 2. There is no challenge mode, no hiring of staff for your band, no playing charity gigs or filming music videos. This was all seen in Rock Band 2, but the band career in Guitar Hero World Tour is the same as the solo career, shallow.

Being an achievement whore I always look at the achievements in video games. Guitar Hero 3 has notoriously hard achievements and it’s a good thing Activision listened to the community for this game. They have changed the achievements drastically and for the most part they are very easy. I think I could get all 1000 points in this game. You have the usual ones for beating the careers on each difficulty, you have ones for getting certain scores on certain songs, there are achievements for playing as different unlockable characters and so on. One thing I did not like is that a handful of achievements require you to be playing with 4 people in a band. If you do not have people in real life to play with your gonna have to find 3 people online who can help you with the achievements. Although with the amount of people who will buy the game that shouldn’t be to difficult. Overall the achievements are easy and you should have little or no problem with them.

The main problem I have with Guitar Hero World Tour though is that not enough has been changed, nothing stands out and says “hey buy me instead of Rock Band 2″. It feels like they took Guitar Hero 3, made a few minor tweaks and added a couple instruments and pushed out Guitar Hero World Tour. With such competition coming from Rock Band 2 one would think they would really revamp the series and make it the clear choice of being the one music game you need to own this holiday season. This being said, Guitar Hero World Tour is not a bad game at all. It’s just the same game as Guitar Hero 3 for the most part. If you like Guitar Hero 3 though then you have nothing to worry about. I personally love music games and I love this game, I just felt like it was a bit of a let down since there really weren’t that many new features implemented, it feels recycled. It’s still a fun game though.

Guitar Hero World Tour is a solid game, it takes a old formula, adds a few tweaks and produces a nice package. The only real complaint I have is it is way to similar to Guitar Hero 3 and it feels a bit rushed. I was hoping they would really go all out on this game but it turned out to be a bit of a let down. Sure the music studio is cool but how many people are really going to use it properly and create good songs or covers? If you like music games then for sure check this game out, it doesn’t do much wrong and you will enjoy it. If you already have Rock Band 2 though and are tight for money I would think carefully before spending the money. Aside from the better set list (in my opinion) and the music studio there really isn’t much different that makes it stand out. If you have enough money though and feel like playing some new songs then pick up Guitar Hero World Tour, you won’t regret it.

Guitar Hero World Tour – 8/10

Let us know what you think! Leave a comment on the review.

[Review originally posted at GameStooge.]

The original Saints Row was a delightful surprise in the summer of 2006, an open-world game that was very much a Grand Theft Auto III clone, right down to the gang theme and colors of San Andreas. However, what made it delightful was that it fixed most of the problems that plagued the GTA3 series: bad aiming, no GPS system, and other niggling issues. Most of all, it was goofy fun with a surprisingly effective storyline, buoyed by the excellent voice acting by such notable actors such as Keith David, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Michael Rappaport.

Volition, wisely as it turns out, waited until after the release of Grand Theft Auto IV to release its own sequel, and in doing so, supplied all of the things that GTA3 fun that GTA4 lacked, and this time went multiplatform, releasing for not only the Xbox 360, but the PlayStation 3 and the PC (the Saints Row version of each being dropped in favor of simply releasing the sequel.)

Saints Row 2 is about your character barely surviving the explosion at the end of the first game; as a device to explain why your character is different from the first game, you’re told you underwent plastic surgery to repair damages. Of course, the damages must have been really severe if you choose to be a woman, as that is now an option.

As before, you face off against four gangs, including the Ultor Security Company; the five factions you face off against will involve missions and strongholds. Most of them involve bang-bang gunplay, but the game does mix it up a bit. However, the meat-and-blood of the game remains in its activities; the original ones such as Mayhem and Escort return, but are joined by even wilder ones, such as Fuzz (you dress as a cop and do a little police brutality for TV ratings on a COPS clone), Septic Avenger (spray crowds with sewage. Why? Who cares?), Heli Assault (shoot people and things with a helicopter), and a strange game in which you’re set ablaze, put on a buggy, and go around setting people on fire and blowing up cars. Zombie Apocalypse is an in-game arcade game that is basically everything that was good about Dead Rising – kill waves of slow moving zombies with guns, objects and whatever – and without Otis. There are now also Diversions which harken back to GTA3, in which when you commandeer a taxi or an ambulance, you’re given the option to do missions with them for bucks.

The game is really funny, as well, even when it’s not being juvenile. One Fuzz mission had the dispatcher saying in a weary tone, “I can’t believe I’m saying this… but there’s a chainsaw massacre in progress. Please break it up.” (Sure enough, when you arrive, a dozen citizens are running around wildly wielding chainsaws. I don’t know which was funnier – the dispatcher or the riot.)

Multiplayer is cut back a little from the first game. Now, there’s just Gangsta Brawl (deathmatch) and an entertaining two team game in which two gangs try to take over neighborhoods by engaging in activities. The biggest online gameplay, however, comes from the drop-in, drop-out co-op mode, in which you can join someone else’s game and help them out. The mode is an absolute blast, and highly addictive. This mode makes the game leap from “very good” to “hella fun”, especially when you get to check out whatever freak your friend decided to go with. You can play through the entire single player campaign in co-op, and even start the game together in one. (The save game is separate from other saves if you’re joining.)

If you want an open-world game, and are frustrated by Grand Theft Auto IV, or even if you enjoyed GTA4, Saints Row 2 is a nice, non-serious change of pace that will constantly put a grin on your face. It’s whacked out, over-the-top, and, most important, reminds you that games should be fun.

Review score: 8.8/10

Review by: Jonah Falcon

Exceptional, groundbreaking and defining are not words I throw around much when it comes to videogames. Every once in a while though a game will come by that just amazes me; a game that simply floors me, Fallout 3 is currently that game. No game is perfect and I don’t think any game will ever be perfect but Fallout 3 is probably the closest any game has ever come (sorry Bioshock and Call of Duty 4).

From the moment the game starts and you are witnessing your birth I knew the game would be something special. The game opens up with a brief introduction of the current historical situation in the world and what is going on. The world has gone through a nuclear war and Washington D.C. is now a wasteland. Your character survived by going underground and hiding in a vault along with a number of other people. Everyone lives and dies in the vault. No one enters, no one leaves, this is how it has always been. You start the game with your character being born. It is at this point where you choose your character’s name and you can customize his looks. The customization options certainly are not the deepest I have seen in a video game but they are damn good. The first hour or so of the game takes place in the vault. You complete simple tasks for each stage of your life. You start as a baby and then the game flash forwards and your nine years old, the next stage is sixteen and then so on. It is through these “levels/stages” that you shape your character into what he is going to become.The way you shape your character is integrated into the game so brilliantly that it almost feels natural. For example when you are a baby you are told to pick up a book. The book is a short little baby book with pictures and a couple sentences per page, it looks like something you would find in the toddler section of a baby store, but the purpose of the book is far more interesting. The book is called You’re Special and it has seven pages, one for each letter of the word special. Each letter stands for a primary statistic in the game, whether it is strength, perception, intelligence, agility etc. After you flip through the pages and you have read a sentence or two about each primary statistic it is at that point you set up your character and give him a certain amount of skill points for each stat. The way it is done though is so clever and different from other games.

As you progress to the age of 16 you are told to go to class to take your G.O.A.T (Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test), to fit in with the storyline, your father tells you this test is mandatory and it determines which job you will be placed into in the vault. When you arrive to class your teacher says since he likes you he can forge your test and let you choose whatever you like but I decided to take it. I’m not a cheater and I wanted to see what the test was about, there is also an achievement for completing it. The test gives you several questions and at the end you hand it in to your teacher at which point he tells you what job you will have. Although the true game mechanic behind this test is to let the played choose his skills. After taking the test you can choose your skills and which ones you want to tag, whether it is, medic, science, speech, sneak, there are many options. By tagging certain skills, they will become your core skills that you are best at and will improve quicker than the ones you don’t choose. Some of these skills may seem unimportant but they will all help you and are all useful. Speech for instance is a great skill to have; with it you can persuade people to see things your way, give you information, and help you out if they are reluctant and many other things.

The game really starts though when you turn 19, your father has escaped the vault and has told no one of his plans. The people who run the vault are coming for you; they think you know where he has gone. The fact that your father has escaped is critical because for 200 years no one has ever left or entered the vault. Eventually you escape from the vault and get out into the real world, where your search to find your father, and where the real game begins.

The first thought that enters your mind when you step out of the vault and see the world is, massive. The world that Bethesda has created in Fallout 3 is massive. I was blown away when I exited the vault and saw what was in front of me. It was unbelievable, it was a world torn apart by nuclear war, a complete wasteland, but in a sense it was beautiful and damn impressive. The graphics in Fallout 3 are excellent. Although they do not stack up to Gears of War they are far better than many XBOX 360 games. The attention to detail and the design that Bethesda has infused into this post apocalyptic Washington D.C is in a word, incredible.

I love games that create their own worlds that are rich with detail and character and Fallout 3 does exactly this. In such a big world one might think it would be hard to manage and get around. It is quite easy though.

On your 10^th birthday you received a device called a Pip Boy 3000. It is essentially your “storage device”. It keeps tracks and displays everything. It shows your current health situation, which limbs if any need tending to, your radiation poison level etc. It also keeps track of all items, displaying which are equipped, which each does, the stats of each weapon, pretty much everything you need to know for items. The last section is data, where all the information about current quests is stored. The data section also has maps where waypoints can be set and if you have already visited an area/city, you can travel there instantly by clicking on it on the map, which helps a great deal. The Pip Boy 3000 will be your best friend, it is incredibly detailed and has everything you need and need to know to succeed in the game. The actual HUD itself is very limited showing only your health, a little compass at the bottom so you know where to go and a few other minor things. It is ok though because the Pip Boy 3000 is an excellent device.

The game is an RPG so of course it has RPG elements. Aside from the skills and stats you picked in the vault you also gain perks. Your first perks are gained once you exit the vault and much like in other games your perks can be upgraded and you gain new ones throughout the game. You only start with a few but as you level up you gain more. You can also upgrade the perks to higher levels. Various perks include Little Leaguer which gives you five points for the melee weapon and explosive skills every time you rank up, Master Trader which gives you 25% discount when purchasing items or Thief which is every time you rank up you gain 5 points in the sneak and lock pick skills. Rest assured you will do much hacking and lock picking in this game, which can be tedious at times but it is part of the game so it works well.

You gain XP by just about everything you do, quests, killing enemies etc. Every time you level up you get to choose new perks, add points to stats, etc. Simple enough and easy to manage.

From the get go almost the whole world is open to you, I did not encounter any areas that were blocked off. The world is populated with tons of people and they all got something to say to you. Just about anyone can be talked to. The dialogue in the game is handled well. The game let’s you choose what to say and based on what you say the other person’s dialogue and the outcome of the current situation will be different. It will be very hard to find two people who had the exact same game experience, not only because of dialogue options but because of choices. The characters are engaging and entertaining to talk to, you may find yourself sitting there for longer than you expected not even doing missions, just simply walking around talking to characters. You really feel as if each one has their own personality and their own story that you are interested in. The characters don’t only talk to you either, they talk to each other. I would walk around the city and see two characters having a full out conversation with each other. It was incredible.

Many developers promise that you can choose your own path and the choices you make affect the game. Unfortunately not many developers deliver on it, in Fallout 3 though this could not be truer.

Not only does the dialogue provide many different paths but the type of person you are also determines outcomes of situations. You have karma in the game and based on the choices you make and things you say/do your karma is good, bad or neutral. Steal a plate from a person’s house, you gain bad karma, save a child in need, you gain good karma. It isn’t always that simple but the game keeps track of what you are doing and determines your karma accordingly. From the very start though you have to make tough choices, in one of the first missions one person asks you to save his town by disarming a bomb, while another man tells you he will pay you a great deal to let the bomb go off. The money was tempting but I chose to have morals and I disarmed it. These choices affect the game, and you can see this from early on. The choices will come back to haunt you. In fact no character is really ever safe, in my game, what I thought was one of the main characters, actually died about an hour and a half into the game, because of a choice I made. In my friend’s game that character is still alive and he is almost done the game.

Fallout 3 really delivers on the choice element and you will be tasked to make tough choices all throughout the game. Not only does Fallout 3 give you choice in dialogue and actions but also in quests. If someone asks you to do something you never really have to do it. You may have 3 or 4 open quests at a time but you will only have to choose 1 or 2 to progress the main story. In fact you have so much freedom that at anytime you can stop doing a quest and move on to something else. You can just literally stop in the middle of a quest, go off and do whatever else you want, including another quest and then come back at any time and pick up right where you left off on that quest you had abandoned. I reccommend doing all the side quests. By opting to do additional/side quests not only will you get more from the game but it prolongs the experience and certain achievements are tied to certain quests. Based on this, the game could be as long or short as you want. Thankfully the “side” quests are not boring and tedious like in other games, they are engaging and entertaining and you should do all of them, that is if you can find all of them.

The thing that amazed me most about the side missions were how much depth they add. In my game a character died early on and it prevented me from doing one of the side missions. My friend told me I should load up an earlier save to do the mission because I was missing out. I decided to do that. I loaded up an early save and did the mission. I expected it to be a 20 minute little side mission that required me to fetch something. Boy was I wrong. It turned out to be an hour mission that took me to three different locations and had me interacting with many new characters. I discovered locations, cities, areas and characters I never even knew existed. To think that if I had just continued playing my game and not gone back to that side mission, I would have never known about any of that. That is the thing that amazes me about Fallout 3. You can go up to a friend and you might have both beaten the game but if you ask him about a mission or start talking about something in the plot, or you mention a character, he might have no idea what you are talking about. I am sure there are hours and hours of gameplay I have missed and tons of characters, locations and storyline that I just never discovered.

Fallout 3’s game play is really tight also. You can engage in combat with melee objects and guns and other weapons. Fallout 3 implements a system called V.A.T.S or Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, this system stops time and you can highlight certain areas of your enemy’s body. The game then shows you the percent of your chance of hitting them in that spot and the damage it will do. Once you have selected everything the game goes into a mini cut scene and shows your character taking out the enemy by hitting them in the parts of the body you highlighted. It is a system that is hard to explain and is better understood by watching it, but it works well and is very cool.

The system is especially helpful when you are not ranked up much and your skills and stats are weak. The rest of the game play is handled well. Melee combat although rarely used(at least by me) seems to be fine, transportation is never an issue seeing as once you have already visited a location you can “warp” back there anytime (as long as no enemies are present), and the AI in general is great.

The thing that amazes me most about Fallout 3 though is the world they have created, almost anyone can be talked to and most people have multiple dialogue trees(meaning there are many options of what to say or ask them) meaning each conversation will be unique to what the player chooses to say. Characters will also act and react differently to you based on how you talk to them (if you are rude or kind etc). There is also a great amount of detail that shows in Fallout 3. Sometimes it is just little things like assigning a weight to each object in the game so you know how much you can carry at once, but sometimes the detail stands out far more and it is apparent Bethesda thought of everything. Each person you encounter can be talked to and the vast majority have various options for questions for you to ask and responses you can answer with, making each conversation unique. In fact there are so many characters and so much information that can be obtained from them that it almost becomes overwhelming. They will tell you pretty much about anything, and usually it will have nothing to do with the main story line but it will all be related to the Fallout 3 universe. It’s quite something. In fact you are given so much information(if you ask for it) that it may get confusing. I have spoken to so many characters and asked so many questions and had discussions with so many of them that I myself am getting a bit confused as to what’s what and who’s who. This is not a bad thing at all, it simply shows the amount of depth in this game.

I said before no game was perfect and this is true, even in the case of Fallout 3. Fallout 3 has minor problems here and there. For one, if you have not visited a location yet, the auto-warp option is not available and sometimes trekking through the wasteland for a while with no other people in site can become boring. Another problem is that at the start of the game you feel very underpowered. The health system is not regenerating and ammo is scarce, mix that with the fact that you are sometimes shot without knowing where from the game can be very difficult. You can be walking, minding your own business and all of the sudden you’ll get hit by two shots and die. You won’t even know where the shots came from. The game feels unbalanced in this way that it puts you in situations early in the game that you are clearly not adept enough to handle. This is because the whole world is open from the get go. This is a minor issue though because you can switch the difficulty to “very easy” or “easy” rather than normal and eventually you will level up and become very powerful plus you can carry items with you that will heal you so it is not a major concern but it is still an annoyance. I would not overlook the game because of this though. Like I said I was playing on normal so you can switch difficulties and you do level up eventually and it is not a problem anymore.

The game may also feel too big at times and you may be overwhelmed and not know what to do next or where to go. Another issue is that at night the game can get very dark. It makes it hard to see and therefore hard to wander around and do missions. This is easily solved though by pressing the back button because this allows you to fast forward time by the amount of hour you please. So every time it starts to get dark just fast forward to the morning. Although in some cases you are underground in dark environments such as abandoned subway tunnels. It can get very very dark in these places. Even with the help of your flashlight it is hard to see and find your way around.

The map in Fallout 3 does help but it is not as detailed and helpful as it should be for a game of this size. The navigation issues may frustrate you and you may find yourself lost and feeling as if the world is too big but you will always find your way. It just may take a bit of exploring. If you don’t have the patience for this then you may find yourself getting annoyed. The map usually does a good enough job though, like I said it’s not as good as it should be but it does the job and as long as you follow it and you understand all the symbols on it you can get through ok.

Lastly, Fallout 3 has some survival horror elements in it in the way that you always feel low on health items and ammo. This may not be true for everyone, maybe I just go into battle under prepared, but I can not tell you how many times I found myself without any more ammo or health items in the middle of a mission. There were many times where I found myself just swinging a sledge hammer to defend myself because I had no ammo. Now with that being said every enemy drops items(ammo and health) and everywhere you go in the world you can always find ammo and health items but still there were many times where I had no ammo and was low on health and did not think I’d make it. I am not holding this against the game. Most likely it is my fault for not buying enough items and not managing them well enough. I am simply saying I found myself in many situations/battles with little or no ammo/health items.

With all that being said I still think that these are all minor issues and they do not damper the experience of the game at all. The good thing about sometimes not knowing where to go is that you stumble upon and discover other areas you may never have known about. Even once you think you are done with the game I assure you there will be cities, characters, quests and other hidden things that you had no idea existed. The game is so large, I feel sorry for who ever has to write a strategy guide for it.

As an achievement whore I always like to look at the achievements in a game. In Fallout 3 they are fairly easy, many are just for playing the game. Although be warned, by skipping side quests you will miss many achievements. A lot of the achievements are for completing quests, both main story quests and side quests. There are also achievements for reaching certain levels with bad, good or neutral karma. As far as I can tell the game will have to be played three times if you want the achievements for reaching those certain levels with all three stages of karma. If you are in this game for achievements though be prepared for multiple playthroughs, guaranteed! Not all the achievements can be gained on one playthrough, it is impossible. You can’t choose every single outcome/path, you can obviously only make one choice in each situation, so be prepared to play multiple times for all the achievements. Also please do not use a guide your first time through this game, I know some situations may be frustrating and you will have no idea what to do or where to go but you will miss out on the experience if you use a guide. If you have to ask a friend or post on a forum here and there do so but don’t go through the whole game with a guide.

For those wondering the save system works two ways. You can manually save and have several save slots and the game does auto save.

I don’t know what else I can say about Fallout 3; it takes a vast and richly detailed world and infuses elements of RPG’s, action adventure games, survival horror and shooters. The story can play out however you want because of all the choices the game gives you and any way you play it, the story will capture your attention.

Fallout 3 is an exceptional game by any account. It can be anything you want it. It can be a short to the point shooter or a long drawn out RPG or anything in between. It is clear Bethesda has put everything they have into this game. I thought no developer would ever create a world as incredible as the city of Rapture from the game, Bioshock. Rapture was masterfully crafted and the entire city came alive as a character. The amount of detail and background that went into that city was tremendous. Bethesda has set the bar higher though. Their in game world is so expertly created that you really feel as if this could be a real place. The amount of interaction in the world is simply fantastic. Fallout 3 is one of those games that do not come around to often. Even if you just want to only do the main missions and rush to the end you still owe it to yourself to see and experience this game. As of now Fallout 3 gets my vote for game of the year and I think I will still feel that way in a few months. The game is amazing and incredible in every sense of the word and it is by far the greatest video game ever produced. I can not recommend this game enough.

Fallout 3 – 9.5/10

Like what you read? Leave a comment let us know how the review is.

]]> http://x3ffdf.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/fallout-3-review/feed/ 12 n/a starout3 fallout3vault_wideblog fallout3-1 fallout-3-4 raiderette 20080602_fallout3_01 http://x3ffdf.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/x3ffdf-vs-jpag-special-edition-podcast/ http://x3ffdf.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/x3ffdf-vs-jpag-special-edition-podcast/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2008 21:46:37 +0000 x3ffdf http://x3ffdf.wordpress.com/?p=248 ]]> Some of you may know that we at the Defense Force have a small rivalry with the Joystiq Podcast Appreciation Group (JPAG), who run their own little podcast (the JPAGP). On October 18th (that’s tomorrow), we’ll be fighting it out once and for all to raise money for Sarcastic Gamer’s Extra Life charity gaming day. The X3F Defense Force and the JPAG will be going virtual toe-to-virtual toe over xbox live to see which cast is the most 1337 and which is the biggest bunch of n00bs.

3 games, 2 teams and only 1 winner.

You can get up to the minute results from the event Live from the X3FFDF Twitter feed.

To get into the mood, the guys from both podcasts have come together to produce an ultimate-super-mega-explosive-over the top-once in a lifetime-spectacular combination show, where we discuss what’s happened recently on each respective site and talk about why we’re doing what we’re doing. As you can tell, I’m rambling, so what are you waiting for?!? Hit that download link below! And while you’re at it, you can sign up to donate to extra life here. Thank You.

X3FFDF Vs JPAG Special Edition Podcast (Right click and save as)

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Zune Marketplace link coming soon….

Remember to email us with any questions, concerns, feedback or fanmail at x3ffdf@gmail.com

Also please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. A good or bad review, it doesn’t matter, all reviews help.

Enjoy!!

PS: Stay tuned to the site because we will be bringing you our written review of the higly anticipated Fallout 3

Despite the fact that we don’t have a full show we still got something for you. We have a special interview with Sean Baptiste who is the community manager for Harmonix, which is the studio that developed Rock Band 2. Best of all Sean answer’s your questions, if you participated in the post over at X3F where you could post questions for Sean than most likely your question will have been read and answered.

We let our Rock Band fanboys/girl(Patrick and Holly) conduct the interview but we are all there in spirit. So tune in and give it a listen. As always don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes and leave a review.

Any questions or comments can be sent to x3ffdf@gmail.com

Remember to leave a review on iTunes, good or bad it doesn’t matter!!

X3FFDF Special Edition – Interview with Sean Baptiste from Harmonix (Right click and save as)

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I know it’s not like having a fresh podcast to listen to but trust us, next week we’ve got one hell of an episode on our hands. At the end of next week’s episode we will be interviewing none other than Sean Baptiste, Manager of Community Development at Harmonix Music. Have you got a Rock Band related question to ask Sean? If so you can visit the dedicated post on X3F and leave a comment with your question. If it’s any good we’ll read it on the show, but act fast, because we’ll stop taking questions tomorrow afternoon. In other Rock Band news, our own Patrick Young will be attempting the endless setlist tomorrow from 8 am to 3 pm est and will be streaming it live to the interwebs . To see if he’ll make it, tune into his Ustream page.

Once again, I apologise (The English spelling. What? I spell Defence with an S for you people. I’m not giving up another word to the American way of spelling things) for the inconvenience. I’d also like to thank Frank Romano(TheMan661) from Xcast Online and Phil Meza(SempraFi) from Xcast Online and Talking About Games and for coming on as guests on this “Lost show”. We appreciate your time and maybe next time you’ll get a full episode released.

Richard Elliott

Podcast Producer at X3FFDF

The following track is taken from Patrick Young: Greatest Hits Coming Soon

Patrick Young ft. Richard Elliott – Pokémon MP3 (Right click and save as)

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On this week’s show we have Jonah, Richard and a sick Matt. We talk about Duke 3D, Rock Band 2, the Halo 3 update and many other things.

X3FFDF Episode 5 MP3 (Right click and save as)

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As always we have our usual segments like Achievements 101 and This Week in XBLA. Although due to the absence of Holly, Patrick and Evan we had to skip over segments such as This Week in Rock Band.

Unfortunatley Holly and Patrick weren’t here to disucss Rock Band 2 with Matt as we are sure there would have been a heated debate between them and Matt but that will have to wait for next week.

Unbeknown to us we also had a special guest drop in who just so happened to be in the neighborhood.

Don’t forget to stick around after the show as we have a special interview that I think you all will enjoy!!

As always don’t forget to subscribe in iTunes and leave a review

Also any reader mail can be sent to x3ffdf@gmail.com