What I’ve Been Up To

by Darius Kazemi on November 17, 2008

in game,reviews

It’s really been more than a month since I’ve posted here. Sorry about that, it’s not for lack of things to say. I’ve been traveling a lot: I did some traveling for business, and this past week I was in San Francisco for the IGDA Leadership Forum. Tomorrow I drive to Montreal for MIGS.

I spent a good chunk of the last month playing two games: Mother 3 and Fallout 3. Here are some short reviews.

Mother 3: If you liked Earthbound, you will like Mother 3. It is not as epic in scope as Earthbound, but it shares much of the same sense of wonder and joy as that game, albeit very much grown up. Just go grab the fan translation and a ROM from somewhere!

Fallout 3: I hate Oblivion, and I love the first two Fallout games. So I was reticent about Fallout 3. Long story short, the whole game is completely fucking brilliant… right up to the very very end. This isn’t exactly a spoiler since I’m not giving away any plot details: the epilogue is short and does not tell you the fate of all the different towns and people you come across like the first two games do. This is sad, because it downgrades Fallout 3 from “favorite game of all time” contender to “favorite game of the year” contender. Still, favorite game of the year is pretty high praise! It’s certainly my favorite AAA game of the year, with Braid being the other contender as a non-AAA title. So I still recommend it in spite of the disappointing lack of epilogue.

{ 4 comments }

Johannes K November 17, 2008 at 5:38 am

Pretty funny that your last post before disappearing for a month was titled “Where’s Darius?” …

solipsistnation November 17, 2008 at 6:20 am

So you didn’t think that the ending of the Main Plot was just crap overall? You liked it aside from the lack of epilogue?

I mean, I agree that it’s overall pretty awesome, but that ending? The single choice, ignoring all the other possible options? What the hell was that?

Darius Kazemi November 17, 2008 at 1:13 pm

(vague spoilers ahead, I don’t name any names)

solipsistnation: I sort of consider the whole last quest the “ending” — so when I visited, um, the boss in the secret military base, I got my chance to talk him into killing himself. I got a similar chance just before the very end when I ran into the boss’ henchman. And in addition to the binary choice concerning your own fate, you do get a chance to do (or not do) the dastardly thing that the boss-guy asked you to do.

In Fallout 1, there are really only two options: kill The Master, or join him. Granted, there are three ways to kill The Master, but still, that’s a pretty binary option right there.

I haven’t beaten Fallout 2 yet, so I don’t know about that one.

Eric Doty November 22, 2008 at 6:21 pm

Wow, I thought I was the only one that didn’t like Oblivion.

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