Fallout 3 — Holy Jumping Deathclaws, it’s Good!

Before we get into this I’d just like to say that any slack-jawed moron who seriously uses the phrase “Oblivion with guns” is a filthy cockmongler who needs his priorities re-adjusted with a steel pipe. You can figure out where I stand in the Great Fallout Debate from there.

So now Bethesda’s desecration of the great Fallout lineage is on the shelves and word has filtered down the street. It’s good. Great, even, a shiny syringe filled with poison to kill any productivity you might have been planning in the next week or two. At least, if you bought the console version. And didn’t pre-order.

The pre-order crowd once again has taken a well-deserved ass reaming for being stupid enough to give a company their money well in advance while locking themselves into a single retail outlet as the sole source of their gaming heroin. Why should the stores care about getting pre-orders in on time? They have your money! They have your soul!

I found the game a day in advance on the shelves at 7-11.

Likewise, the PC version suffers from the whimsical cruelty of the Securom DRM system, which has been denying access to game after detecting emulation software that doesn’t exist. A patch has been sent out to correct this, but it may or may not actually work for you. Crashing issues and random slowdowns have also plagued the PC version, but that’s nothing new, is it?

If you’re one of the lucky few who can actually play the game, you’re in for a ride. The look is Fallout, the general wastelandy feel is Fallout, and the humour is blacker than the heart of Hell. Also, there’s a live nuke some ten minutes into the game, so that’s nice. Those who suffer through the tribulations of the PC version will be able to take advantage of an unholy fusion of FPS modders and Fallout fanatics, which should see some rather incredible mods on the horizon. Deadly, evil mods. With boobs. By all accounts, this game has a long future of nude patches and pornomachina ahead of it.

Buy Fallout 3. Be prepared. Join the future. They have flamethrowers that are also swords, you know.