Fallout 3 is without a doubt the best video game of 2009. Fallout 3 effortlessly succeeds in reviving a much beloved game franchise while still being able to appeal to a vast majority of players. Fallout 3 is an all-consuming experience that will absorb you for weeks or months depending on how you play the game. It appeals to all players whether they are attracted to the adventure, the roleplaying, the action, or the overall appealing atmosphere that Fallout 3 has to offer. Bethesda, the creators of Oblivion, has once again created a masterpiece that will be praised for many years to come. Welcome to the Capital Wasteland everybody.

Fallout 3 beings with the phrase "war never changes" as it thrusts you into the post-apocalyptic Washington D.C. Mankind has destroyed the world with nuclear weapons and most of the human civilization now live in underground vaults or either live above ground trying to stay clean from rads(radiation poisoning). Fallout 3, unlike most RPG's (role playing game), starts with your birth giving you a million ways to customize your character. From your birth you are pushed through snapshots of your childhood until you become sixteen. This is when your father, a very important figure in the game, leaves the safety of the vault and goes above ground in search for something that can help humanity. From here the main story of the game unfolds the way the player wants it to. The main story in of itself is perhaps forty to fifty hours, but that does not even begin to scratch the surface of this game. Fallout 3 gives the player the impression that this is an actual world, so the game is filled with cities, people to talk to, extra quest, and rare items that every nerd must find. If an average player was to complete the main quest and the side quest it would probably take about two hundred hours, and I am not making this up. The scope of this game is simply amazing. The game is based off of a karma system. In short if you do good things then you are a good person and get the good ending, and vice versa for bad. This allows affects how certain characters in the game will perceive you.

However, the thing that makes Fallout 3 most memorable is not only the story or the scope of the game, but the gameplay. Like most RPG's your character starts from lever one and only gets stronger from there. Fallout 3 gives you certain skills you can learn (Ex. lockpick for instance, which allows you to pick locks and get goodies) that will shape how you play the game. In theory the game has infinite replay value because each time you play the game it plays different. Fallout 3 is also the king of micromanagement. Not only do you have skills, but perks (something like a subset of a skill), guns, armor, explosives, a weight carrying limit which is a pain because you have to continually drop things to get new stuff, a health meter, a rad meter to watch your radiation poisoning, the list goes on and on. Fallout 3 gives the thing every player wants most... variety. On top of this the way the combat works is simply genius. The game plays on the V.A.T.S. (vault attacking targeting system) which allows you to freeze the game and decided where you want to hit your target whether it be the chest, arm, head, ect. Please know that Fallout 3 is a mature game which means that it has mature content. I would not
recommend this game to anyone under the age of fifteen. However, once again this shows just how much variety a player really has in Fallout 3.

Last, the overall appearance of Fallout 3 deserves recognition. Bethesda did an amazing job of creating a beautiful post-apocalyptic wasteland. The first time I reached the surface I had an "Allegory of the Cave" experience; I was in simpleshock of how beautiful yet devastating everything looked. You could never imagine how a blown up Washington D.C. could look so good, but Bethesda was able to pull it off. Once again the scope of the game is incredible. It took me about two hours to go from corner to corner of the map, and that does not include all the buildings and caves you can go into! However, Fallout 3 has a few numbers of glitches and bugs, but aside from this the ambience of the game is like nothing I have ever experienced before. Fallout 3 is without a doubt the best game of 2008, and if you are willing to pay the sixty dollars you will find that you can lose yourself in this beautiful, yet tragic world of Fallout 3.