Bethesda do it again with their new take on a classic game

User Rating: 9.5 | Fallout 3 X360
As soon as the game loads up you can tell it's been made by Bethesda, throughout the entire beginning training scene, the controlling methods, the visuals and the dialogue, but don't get me wrong, it's not just Oblivion with a new skin, it's something new and amazing.

First of all, I'll discuss the graphics - sheer beauty, not in the Assassin's Creed way, but in a completely new way, the landscape is absolutely enormous and just seems to go on forever, and with the new method of displaying main landmarks in the distance and smaller ones as you move towards the landmarks is great. There has never been much emphasis on lighting from Bethesda, and although during the day etc, the shadows from landmarks etc are good, but as for shadows on characters, it seems like a big no... No dynamic lighting perhaps? The character models are very very good, although the third person mode isn't something that Bethesda should be proud of, as it doesn't seem to react to the environment at all, always stood at 90 degrees and running the same... Not that you notice this during the V.A.T.S mode, which really does look great.

The integration of the Pip-Boy 3000 is really cool, especially if you use the medicine to make your stealth 100% which makes you invisible, because when you bring up the Pip-boy, it's transparent (think Stealth mode on Metal Gear Solid), except for the text floating in the air.

Bethesda have done surprising well on the dialogue this time, considering their previous titles only have three or four voice actors, which is incredibly irritating. The voice acting is very good, and the choice of responses is even better, although I still wish to this day that you could just press 'B' on the controller to go back to the previous page, instead of scrolling to the bottom and press "Let's talk about something else...".

Other than these, there's nothing really to worry about, the firing systems etc are very good, the new V.A.T.S system is amazing. They really have made an all round excellent game, which I know I'm going to spend up to 100 hours of my free time playing.

Here's one tip whilst playing the game: turn your text display colour to white, it looks way better than green, amber or blue.